NOOSE TIGHTENS AROUND CHINESE RATS - India Is on a Himalayan Building Spree to Prepare for a Clash With China
To Leh
The current road closes most of the winter.
Zojila tunnel
The tunnel will reduce travel time between Kashmir and Ladakh from 3 hours to 20 minutes.
Emergency escape and ventilation tunnel
25 ft. high
31 ft. wide
9 miles long
At Pangong Tso Lake, which straddles the border, Indian and Chinese troops have clashed at multiple points over the years. The 80-mile lake, which extends from Ladakh into China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, is under dispute.
Both sides rushed to build more buildings and roads after the 2020 fight in nearby Galwan Valley. Beijing constructed dozens of buildings and trenches partly as a show of force, said Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, resident senior fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Last year, China finished building a bridge linking the north and south banks of the lake, allowing troops to cross it instead of going around it.
At Pangong Tso, an alpine lake that straddles the border, India and China have clashed multiple times over disputed territory.
China has sped up construction around the lake after the 2020 border clash. That includes radar sites such as this one along with buildings, trenches and a new bridge linking the north and south banks.
China is also building and expanding military bases near the lake, raising fears of future conflicts between Chinese and Indian forces.
India has also rapidly upgraded its outposts along the river and expanded its road system.
Sources: Google earth; Planet Labs
New Delhi followed suit by expanding its outposts and upgrading roads along the shore and in bases nearby. Despite a 2021 agreement to disengage troops at the lake, both sides maintain a military presence there.
In contrast to occasional patrols before 2020, the Indians now “believe that you have to have constant, regular, 24/7 monitoring of Chinese movement,” Rajagopalan added.
The budget of the Border Roads Organization, a construction agency under the defense ministry, has grown to $810 million this year, from $280 million in 2020. During the same period, India’s total military spending has jumped nearly 60% to $80 billion. The building agency has already constructed thousands of miles of new roads along the border.
India has also built over 30 helipads and upgraded and built several airstrips along its border.
At nearly 14,000 feet, the new Mudh-Nyoma air force base in Ladakh is India’s closest airfield to the border, with China 19 miles away. The base is capable of handling India’s heavier military transport planes such as the U.S.-made C-130J plane that the Air Force chief landed at the base in November, when it opened for operations. The base will serve as a staging ground for troops and equipment headed to border areas.
Mudh-Nyoma airbase
Hanle base
2019
2025
For decades, India avoided large-scale construction along much of its border, calculating that the soaring Himalayas and a lack of roads would deter a Chinese incursion.
“It was like rolling out the red carpet to a Chinese invasion,” said Daniel Markey, senior fellow at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank. “The Indian perspective was that building significant roads was actually militarily detrimental to them.”
By the mid-2000s, however, New Delhi saw China speeding ahead by building tens of thousands of miles of roads and railways to strengthen its borders and pull the restive regions of Xinjiang and Tibet closer to the rest of the country.
Construction crews in the Himalayas have to contend with landslides, avalanches and extreme weather. Construction halts for months during the winter, when freezing temperatures make tasks like mixing cement impossible. The Zojila tunnel’s completion date, for example, was recently pushed back by over a year to at least 2028.
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In recent years, China began showing increasing assertiveness by sending troops over the border and sparking occasional standoffs. In 2017, Chinese and Indian troops faced off for months over a road that China was building in an area claimed by China and Bhutan. If China gained control, Beijing would be within striking range of the Siliguri Corridor, a narrow stretch of land that connects India to its landlocked northeastern states. Both India and China eventually pulled back.
China has built new villages along disputed areas in Ladakh and the state of Arunachal Pradesh, which Beijing claims almost entirely and calls South Tibet.
Analysts said India’s infrastructure push increases the chance of a conflict, as the two countries accuse each other of infringing on sovereign territory. The 2020 clash was partly sparked by Chinese opposition to India building a new road near the border leading to a strategic air base, Daulat Beg Oldi.
“Both sides are going to areas beyond where they normally patrol,” Rajagopalan said. “Therefore there are increasing chances of the two forces running into each other.”
Analysts and officials said India’s goal isn’t to catch up to China’s vast infrastructure buildup but to create enough of a deterrence to make any further Chinese encroachment more costly.
“We’re not going overboard,” said Singh, the retired general. “At no stage should we ever try and catch up with China.”
Write to Shan Li at shan.li@wsj.com and Ming Li at ming.li@wsj.com
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