Lessons from Sino-Indian border issue

The Indian media have one obsession: the Sino-Indian border issue. From time to time, the Indian media have reported "Chinese troops crossing the border" into Indian territory. Such allegations have not only been denied by Chinese spokespersons, but in many cases brushed aside by senior Indian officials.

The reason is simple: The border that led to a war between China and India in 1962 has never been demarcated. What lies instead is the Line of Actual Control, a line not verified in terms of alignment. And without a clear idea of how the alignment really goes, patrol troops could end up entering an area perceived by the other side to be its own "territory". And tensions have flared up sometimes.

There are two ways of looking at the Sino-Indian border issue. One could easily argue that negotiations at different levels have so far failed to yield expected progress and haven't prevented, for example, quite a few eyeball-to-eyeball standoffs since the 1980s. Nevertheless, there has been no conflict since 1962. For over half a century, not a single bullet has been fired across the border.