Tit-for-tat buildup on the LAC

On 12 November, India operationalised its Mudh-Nyoma air base in the frontier Union Territory of Ladakh — a $26 million upgrade. At its foundation stone laying ceremony in 2023, defence minister Rajnath Singh had said the Mudh-Nyoma air station — located at an elevation of 13,700 feet and only 23 km from the LAC — would be a ‘gamechanger’ for the armed forces, significantly enhancing India’s strategic capabilities and enabling quick military deployments in the high-altitude terrain.

Both India and China have been lavishing billions of dollars on creating and upgrading border infrastructure, though China’s 2025 defence budget of $249 billion is over three times India’s ($78.4 billion). While India fortifies its borders keeping in mind the twin threats of China and Pakistan, China’s infrastructure push is aimed not only at the LAC but also the Sinicisation of Tibet.

China has vastly expanded troop accommodation, upgraded air defence systems, expanded runways and hardened blast pens to house fighter aircraft, additionally bringing in long-range artillery and rocket systems, infantry combat vehicles, light tanks, medium-lift helicopters, drones and thermal imaging, all within striking distance of Indian deployments in the region.

In a dual threat to India, Pakistan has made available its forward air force bases in Skardu and Gilgit in Gilgit-Baltistan to the PLA Air Force (PLAAF). China has extensively upgraded these airfields, which now enable its warplanes to reach India far more quickly than from the PLAAF airbases at Hotan and Kashgar in Xinjiang — officially Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR)—and at Gonggar/Kongka Dzong, Hoping and Gargunsa in Tibet.

India has tried to match Chinese deployments in this difficult terrain — at an average elevation of 10,000 feet above sea level — stationing some 120,000 troops across Ladakh, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh. Supporting these forces are the indigenously developed Light Utility Helicopters and T-90 tanks, armoured personnel carriers, M777 155mm howitzers and 130mm guns.

Ever since it annexed Tibet in 1950, thereby extending itself to India’s frontiers, China has loomed menacingly over the 3,488 km de facto Line of Actual Control (LAC), which skirts five Indian states, from Jammu and Kashmir in the north-west to Arunachal Pradesh in the north-east.

Beijing claims vast stretches of the LAC, and denounced Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s groundbreaking ceremony in September for the 1,840 km Arunachal Frontier Highway project, coming up at an estimated cost of $4.73 billion. In fact, China claims the entire 83,743 sq. km Arunachal Pradesh as its own — calling it Zangnan, or South Tibet.

In its only war with India, in 1962, China also appropriated the 37,244 sq. km high-altitude desert of Aksai Chin, which India still claims as part of Ladakh.

The border dispute is rooted in ambiguities going back to British-era boundary demarcations. Despite three agreements — in 1993, 1996 and 2013 — to maintain peace and tranquillity along the LAC, Beijing has consistently challenged the demarcations. And as per Indian intelligence estimates in 2020, China controls a cumulative 1,000 sq. km of land through multiple inroads since the 1980s, thereby unilaterally redrawing the LAC.

China’s military buildup at the border is not merely tactical; there is strategic intent to realise specific long-term objectives. The moves of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) are, after all, not being directed by exuberant ground commanders but by the topmost leadership — the Central Military Commission chaired by President Xi Jinping.

In September, Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) Gen. Anil Chauhan spoke of “the unresolved boundary dispute with China” as the “biggest national security challenge”. China’s defiant border violations and relentless construction of dual-use infrastructure have driven an economically weaker India to make heavy investments to match its adversary.

But despite cheap labour and construc-tion material, underlying corruption has rendered its infrastructure construction among the costliest in the world. A 2020 report by the Global Infrastructure Anti-Corruption Centre estimates losses from fraudulent activities at 10–30 per cent of construction costs, amounting to Rs 2–3 lakh crore ($25–45 billion).

China is reportedly building captive solar and hydroelectric projects along the new bases it has created in eastern Ladakh. Many hydel projects are being constructed on rivers that flow into India, such as the Yarlung Tsangpo (called the Brahmaputra in India), which will provide leverage to Beijing over downstream water resources and serve its geopolitical objectives.

These projects ostensibly serve the energy requirements of the large PLA encampments. Their forces are said to have a harder time acclimatising, whereas Indian soldiers reportedly cope better, due to their experience in high-altitude warfare training at and around the Siachen glacier in Ladakh.

By 2021, Beijing had spent $6.4 billion on establishing as many as 628 civilian/military border villages to help bolster positions and reinforce territorial claims. Stretching from Ladakh to Arunachal, most of these villages are on the Chinese side, but some straddle disputed territory. China recently built a new settlement, consisting of 91 independent weather-proof structures, 7 km east of the LAC at the Pangong Lake in Ladakh.

China’s cross-border adventurism climaxed with India’s completion in 2020 of the strategic all-weather Daulat Beg Oldie (DBO) road that has enhanced connectivity along the 1,147 km LAC section in Ladakh. The 255 km carriageway leads to the DBO airbase, the world’s highest airstrip and military base, located at a height of 16,730 feet and a mere 7 km south of Shenxianwan post, considered the toughest PLA posting in China.

CDS Chauhan makes no secret of the fact that dealing with threats emanating from two adversaries with nuclear weapons is a big challenge for India. New Delhi consistently denies being outmanoeuvred by Beijing, which has cleverly averted full-blown hostilities and yet drawn India into an escalatory buildup at the border.

Sarosh Bana is executive editor of Business India and regional editor, India/Asia-Pacific, of Germany’s Naval Forces journal. More of his writing can be read here