NEW DELHI – Indian and Chinese troops clashed along the disputed Himalayan border, according to media and military reports on Monday, while Beijing silently intensifies pressure on its southern neighbor with new forays into territory claimed by both sides.
Details on the latest conflict remain hazy and Indian officials have minimized events. Indian media and independent military analysts said the clash took place several days ago and that soldiers on both sides were injured, although no deaths were reported.
The Indian Army said only that a “minor confrontation” occurred last week in northern Sikkim, a mountainous Indian state bordering China.
The confrontation was “resolved by local commanders according to established protocols,” said a statement from the Indian Army, without explaining how the confrontation occurred or whether anyone was injured.
Chinese authorities were even more silent. At a regularly scheduled news conference on Monday, Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, emphasized that the two sides are holding military talks. Hu Xijin, the editor of the Global Times, a nationalist tabloid controlled by the Communist Party, called the reports “fake news” and said that small frictions often occur.
Although details are scarce, reports of a confrontation show that tensions are still simmering between the two Asian giants, who waged war in 1962 and have been looking cautiously across their unresolved border since. Tension exploded in June, when troops from both countries became involved in a deadly fight along the border in northern India’s Ladakh region.
No shots were fired in that battle, stemming from the tacit understanding that neither side along the tense Himalayan border should use firearms. Still, the deaths of more than 20 Indian soldiers and an unknown number of Chinese soldiers exposed the growing aggressiveness of both countries, which are governed by nationalist leaders with little political incentive to retreat.
About 100,000 soldiers from the Indian and Chinese armies are now facing inhospitable mountain passes in sub-zero temperatures in the Ladakh region alone, military experts estimate.
Since the summer, the two sides have tried to ease tensions. But in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is facing reports that China is far from invading disputed lands.
The NDTV report of new structures built in the arid mountainous area is difficult to verify independently. Two Indian government officials in Arunachal said the Chinese recently built villages in disputed areas along the border, in places that used to have only a few remote military posts.
“Where the army lived, some civilians also started to live there,” said DJ Borah, a senior district official based in the area.
When asked about the new village, officials from India’s Foreign Ministry referred to a statement given to NDTV in which the ministry said it was aware of the recent report and that “China has undertaken this infrastructure-building activity in recent years . “
Leaders of India’s main opposition party criticized Modi for remaining silent on the issue. “China is expanding its occupation in Indian territory,” Rahul Gandhi, the party’s leader, the Indian National Congress, said on Twitter.
Chinese authorities do not deny that there are new villages in the area. But they say that area is in China.
“China’s normal construction on its own territory is entirely a matter of sovereignty,” said Hua Chunying, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign minister, this month.
Local leaders in Arunachal Pradesh interviewed by The New York Times said that Chinese forces have slowly but steadily eliminated small pieces of Indian territory, much like the strategy that China has shown in the South China Sea and along its border with Bhutan. Military analysts call this cutting salami.
“Longju used to be our land,” said Chatung Mra, bank manager, using the local name for the general area where the Chinese village is today. “Our ancestors lived there.”
“We feel really bad, but what can we do?” Mr. Mra asked. “We cannot fight them.”
The area in question is at the foot of the Himalayas and more than 2,400 kilometers from New Delhi, the capital. Official Indian maps have shown that the Longju area is several kilometers inside India, said local leaders who visited near the disputed area. But China, they said, has effectively controlled it since 1959.
In recent years, they said, China has been involved in a flood of construction projects along the border and has made areas that were previously accessible to people on the Indian side inaccessible.
The Chinese infrastructure campaign, local leaders said, has far exceeded what India has done and has been effective in absorbing disputed areas in China.
“Our place was five or six kilometers from Longju,” said Tungpo Mra, leader of Mra, a local ethnic group. “Now all of this is under China’s control.”
Taro Bamina, the secretary general of a group of young people from Arunachal, was especially frustrated and helped organize a protest last week that included hundreds of protesters in Daporijo, a market town in Arunachal.
“This is our motherland,” said Bamina. “We wanted to tell the government of India. ‘Why didn’t you take care of that?’ ”
What local leaders are reporting in Arunachal is similar to what local leaders in Ladakh reported from more than 2,000 miles away. In recent years, according to Ladakh leaders, China has stepped up construction projects along the border with India, which zigzagged through high mountain passages and has never been marked. The result is that China can move troops – and civilians – to the borders much faster than India.
Chinese and Indian military commanders continue to hold talks along the disputed border in the Ladakh region. In the meantime, Ladakhi pastors complained that they had to chase Chinese vehicles that brazenly crossed over to India.
Sushant Singh, a senior researcher at the Political Research Center in New Delhi and an Indian Army veteran, said the latest clash in Sikkim, an area where India hoped to have a strategic advantage by having more troops, suggested that tensions would increase while the ground thaws.
“If you see in the light of everything that is happening,” said Singh, “it means that, next summer, we will be facing a very tense situation.”
Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting from Seoul, South Korea.