Talk:Line of Actual Control

Proposed merge of Patrol Point into Line of Actual Control

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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The LAC and PPs are closely linked. DTM (talk) 07:18, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Sino-Indian border dispute << this article is also to be considered for inclusion of a sub section related to patrolling points. DTM (talk) 13:13, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Bhai DTM, Many years ago I had also added details of major passes, all Border Personnel Meeting points, and sector by sector details of disputed areas, etc. It use to be a grand article. Seems later it was partitioned out into many articles such as Line of Actual Control, Sino-Indian border dispute, Border Personnel Meeting point and Patrol Point. Ask Kautilya3, he has been watching, he may know the reasons of partitioning. I am okay if you guys decide to merge or leave it separate. However, I agree at least Patrol Point and Border Personnel Meeting point should be merged into Sino-Indian BPM and PP points or whatever name you like. Please note that five BPM are spread across the entire LAC/IB with China from DBO/Karakoram near Siachin to Kibithu in southeast Arunachal, whereas Patrol Points in the article as of now are spread across only Aksai Chin sector, perhaps there are PP for other sectors too. Thanks. 58.182.176.169 (talk) 12:44, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Let's add one more article to this — Differing perceptions DTM (talk) 14:59, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

• "Patrol Points" should definitely go here, as do "Differing perceptions". They are an integral part of the LAC discussion. Border Personnel Meeting Points are not. They are either some goodwill exercise or negotiation venues. They are not about border. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 02:25, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

I have added a glossary section to the article. That section has no direct relation to this discussion and merging. DTM (talk) 10:34, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

LAC of Nov 7, 1959

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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From 19 June 2020

1956 and 1960 claim lines

A lady called Yun Sun, the Director of the China Program at the Stimson Center wrote this article:

• Yun Sun, China’s Strategic Assessment of the Ladakh Clash, War on the Rocks, 19 June 2020.

Historically, the Chinese consistently stick to the LAC of Nov. 7, 1959 and the Indians stick to the LAC of Sept. 8, 1962. China argues the territory between the two LACs was “unjustly occupied by India” during those three years and was precisely the cause of the 1962 Sino-India War. To date, both sides insist they have been operating within their side of the LAC per these competing definitions.

My observations:

• The so-called "LAC of Nov. 7, 1959" seems to be a mythical entity. It is not documented anywhere, not even in Neville Maxwell's book.
• What exists is a "1956 claim line" which appears to be some random map that the Chinese had printed, among many such maps. But this particular map was certified by Premier Zhou in Dec. 1959 as showing the "correct boundary". So it is documented by historians as a claim line.
• If there was an "LAC of Nov. 7, 1959", it could not have been beyond this claim line. And, I can guarantee that the Chinese are not "sticking to it". They did not stick to it even in 1959, because the Kongka Pass incident, Chip Chap standoff and Galwan standoff are all to the west of this line.
• The "LAC of Sept. 8, 1962" was marked by somebody on the OpenStreetMap recently. It is quite close to the 1956 claim line mentioned above.
• Whether India is "sticking" to it or not, I can't say. The LAC marked on Bhuvan 3D is quite a way beyond it (to the Chinese side).
• In 1960, during the border talks, the Chinese presented a new claim line, which they called their "traditional customary boundary". They are marked on the maps of this page, as far as coordinates are available. The 1960 claim line claimed quite a bit of extra territory beyond the 1956 line. All this area was occupied by China in the 1962 war. As far as official claims are concerned, they are all finished. There is nothing more to claim.
• The present standoffs are happening beyond the 1960 claim line (1962 occupation line) on the Indian side. For example, at Galwan, the claim line left about 5km of the valley in Indian territory. Now the Chinese are claiming that it is theirs. At the Pangong Lake, the claim line was to Finger 8. Now the Chinese are claiming that everything up to Finger 4 is theirs. Some similar claims are also being made at the Kongka Pass and Depsang Plains, about which we don't have clarity yet.
• On the whole, the Chinese are trying to extend their claims beyond 1960/1962, asking for new territory. So it is entirely pointless to talk about the 1960/1962 now. It is all dissimulation. And it seems disgraceful for a Stimson Centre scholar to accept it all uncritically. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 13:20, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Quite funnily, the lady wrote just a few months ago that "China’s policy toward India in the past two to three years has shifted. It now actively promotes closer ties." [1]. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 14:26, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Well, beating opposing soldiers with nail studded sticks is pretty up close and personal. Vici Vidi (talk) 08:47, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Vici Vidi, you don't say? On a more serious note (sorry if I offended anyone), it's also weakly there (as a letter) at here. Thanks, Thanoscar21_{talk, contribs} 20:34, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

The letter doesn't have a line. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 23:09, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

References

Another paragraph

Another interesting paragraph:

The Chinese have attributed the incursions and standoff to Indian construction of roads and air strips in the Galwan Valley, while in reality, China has also been building roads in the nearby region. Such construction not only boosts sovereignty claims, but also strengthens strategic positions and tactical advantages. India has insisted that China’s construction has taken place on Indian territory, or at least on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), or de facto border. But that’s precisely the problem — there is no consensus between the two over a mutually accepted LAC.

My observations:

• The Indian road construction in Galwan Valley is brought out, but it is not clear why the Chinese construction is supposedly in the "nearby region". The "Galwan Highway" running through the Galwan Valley appeared on OpenStreetMap about a year ago, and recent satellite maps showed a convoy of vehicles at the junction with the last tributary. Bull dozers have reached all the way till the LAC. The Chinese had to dredge the valley and channel the river in order to make this valley suitable for vehicular operations, a stupendous amount of effort! "Nearby region"?
• "Air strips" in the Galwan Valley? A laughable proposition. It would only be possible if aircraft can fly without wings and takeoff vertically.
• "India has insisted that China's construction has taken place on Indian territory". We are not aware of any such insistence on this page. No objections were raised for the Galwan Highway (even though it is technically Indian territory even going by Zhou En-lai's 1956 claim line) or Highway 520 which comes right up to the LAC near Kongka Pass (passing through the Khurnak Fort area, labelled Indian territory in Zhou En-lai's 1956 claim line).
• The claim of "Indian territory" is made for the Finger area of the Pangong Lake, for the road between Finger 4 and Finger 8. This road appeared on OpenStreetMap in 2016. But news reports claim that it was laid for the first time in 1999. All the published maps (including the CIA map above) show it to be beyond all the Chinese claim lines, as do the coordinates given by China in 1960.
• there is no consensus between the two over a mutually accepted LAC. Indeed the first bit of truth coming out here. But the LAC has always been a Chinese idea. Remember 7 November 1959? India acquiesced to it in 1993 because China agreed to respect it. Now that seems to be gone. Analysts say that all the agreements reached between 1993 and 2008 have been violated now. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:51, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

I am not saying that India did build airstrips in the Galwan Valley, but it is not impossible. India had VTOL capabilities for 40 years! The Indian Air Force also has STOL utility aircraft that only need very short runways like the Dornier Do 228. Even the Antonov An-32 and Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules can use relatively short runways. < Atom (Anomalies) 10:28, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

The BBC has "The road which is several hundred kilometres long, was built in 2019 and connects to a high-altitude forward air base that India has reactivated at Daulat Beg Oldi, reputed to be the world's highest landing ground.", referring to Daulat Beg Oldi. Vici Vidi (talk) 06:17, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

From 6 September 2020

Various lines in Aksai Chin

In a previous discussion, I criticised the idea of "LAC of Nov 7, 1959" as a mythical entity. After some searching, I did find a reference to this. The Chinese apparently documented it in their own documents, which made it to the public sphere through Allen Whiting's book and later reproduced in Hoffmann's book.

Guess what? The Indians too documented the LAC of that time, and it is the red line shown in the map on the right.

How can two lines of the same time period differ so much? Well, the Colombo map that was drawn after the war, painstakingly documented all the posts that were present before 1959, and those set up after 1959. If we look at only the post set up before 1959, there is indeed a very wide gap, and thousands of lines can be drawn within it. So the Indians and the Chinese pick the ones most convenient to them.

The Stimson lady is still trying to sell us snake oil by claiming that there was a precise line on Nov 7, 1959. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:54, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

I think the only two lines which can broadly be taken for granted are the extreme most lines on the east (red dashed) and west (grey dashed). The red dotted line, China's claim line of 1960 which it reached in 1962, from where they retreated/fell back on 21 November 1962, is what China has been trying to roughly restore in 2020. So whatever the current actual ground positions, China's aim is the eastern most red dotted line while India is just trying to hold fort (yellow area) without giving up claim to where its patrols originally use to go up to in Aksai Chin (which should actually be marked in more detail on this map, the references attached to this map already have at least one more patrol point marked)

This diagram has so much information for the historically and geographically handicapped but I think a bit more of information could be added to it, such as a few more historic Indian patrol locations. And after the end of this ~2020 event, a new ~2020 line will be added of course. There are a couple of broken references too which need fixing. As a sidenote, the Colombo map is quite a historical gem! DTM (talk) 08:12, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

In Allen Whiting's book, the mention of "line of control" occurs for the first time in the letters between prime ministers starting 24 October 1962, in the midst of war.

The Chinese premier noted that his offering "the 1959 line of actual control and not the present line of actual contact between the armed forces of the two sides is full proof that the Chinese side has not tried to force any unilateral demand on the Indian side on account of the advances gained in the recent counter-attack in self-defense."[6: White Paper VIII, pp. 7-11] Lest the point be missed, he added, "As Your Excellency is surely aware, in concretely implementing this proposal the Chinese armed forces Will have to withdraw much more than twenty kilometres from their present position in the eastern sector." Chou castigated the Indian proposal as containing "humiliating conditions such as forced on a vanquished party." After this dismissal of Nehru's demand that the September 8, 1962 line be restored, he moved to the real purpose of his letter...

So both the lines mentioned by the Stimson lady occur here. It is possible that they also figured in subsequent negotiations between the two countries. The full letters can be found in the White Paper. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 00:34, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

References

References

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

More baloney flying around

China's 1956 and 1960 claim lines (map by CIA)

“Firstly, China-India border LAC is very clear, that is the LAC on November 7, 1959. China announced it in the 1950s, and the international community including India are also clear about it,” the ministry said on Friday.

China announced a line that ran east of the Spanggur Lake, and the international community has finely documented it. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:11, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

DiplomatTesterMan, WP:NEWSORGs are not reliable sources for history. So please discuss before adding any of these nonsensical statements that the Indian media are putting out. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:17, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Whenever proposed boundary lines of Aksai Chin such as the Johnson line or MacDonald are mentioned in Wikipedia articles, they are usually followed by a statement that these lines were not formally accepted by China. Similarly, when we speak of China's 1959 or 1960 claim line, I think it makes sense to mention that these have been categorically rejected by India. In this article, as well as on other articles on the border dispute. The Discoverer (talk) 13:12, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

HISTRS don't say that there was any line proposed in 1959. So saying that India "rejected" this non-existent line doesn't make any sense. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 14:22, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

References

A Chinese proposal; line to zone

Qian Feng of the Taihe Institute, Beijing; writes (i am guessing this piece is from September 2020):

... the concept of a ‘zone of actual control’ can replace the concept of ‘line of actual control’ in some areas without human population or obvious natural geomorphological features.source

But I am not quite too sure whether "notable proposals" fits into this article. DTM (talk) 08:17, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

"Zone of actual control" is wrong English but the meaning "border zones" or "frontier zones" is sort of implied by the foreign ministers' joint statement already. It can go in the Chinese reactions section for now. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:07, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Notional demarcation line

Neil Shah-Quinn, can you explain why you removed the term "notional" in the lead sentence? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:48, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

• Kautilya3: thanks for asking! I think "notional demarcation line" is accurate but very complex language. I tried to explain it more gently by starting with the fact that it's a demarcation line (which I think is true, even if's a very fuzzy and debated one) and then in the next sentence explaining the important fact that its position is disputed. Perhaps we could change that second sentence to make it stronger? I am not super familiar with the sources here.—Neil Shah-Quinn (talk) 12:05, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
• As I think about it more, I see your point more strongly. I'm working on another edit now.—Neil Shah-Quinn (talk) 12:21, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
• Okay, done. I ended up changing a bunch of other things, but the main thing for this discussion is that I changed the first sentence to call the LAC a "boundary" rather than a "demarcation line". To me, "boundary" conveys a sence of fuzziness that "line" does not, and the link to demarcation line was not very helpful either because that article just seems like an arbitrary list of other geopolitical "lines". I also changed the next sentence to say it's "heavily disputed" rather than just that the sides "do not fully agree" because that more accurately reflects the heat involved. I hope you find this satisfactory, but if not, we can keep trying to find something better.—Neil Shah-Quinn (talk) 12:51, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the improvements. But, I am afraid "notional" is still needed, because it exists only as a notion. It has never been demarcated or agreed. In fact, China has not even told India where it believes the line is. (It thinks telling India where its line is amounts to a "concession"!) -- Kautilya3 (talk) 13:06, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Kautilya3: I certainly don't think we need to say notional. I have been reading more about this, and my takeaway is while yes, in some areas its position is not clear and in many or most areas its position has not been explicitly agreed by both sides, it is for most purposes (certainly for the purposes of a single intro sentence) more than a notion. This is in line with how most sources treat it. How would you feel about "disputed border"? Unlike "notional boundary", which I did not see in any source, that phrase is used frequently.—Neil Shah-Quinn (talk) 17:55, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Neil Shah-Quinn, I agree that the need for "notional" has reduced, once the "demarcation line" term is removed. But I believe you still do not understand the situation correctly. Your text below is still not supported by the sources:

Although in some areas it is poorly demarcated and disputed in recurring skirmishes, it serves as the de facto border between the two countries.

References

• Where is any source saying that it is "poorly demarcated"? On the contrary, the first source has said "it is not agreed upon by the two countries, neither delineated on a map or demarcated on the ground". That is a far cry from "poorly demarcated". In fact, the same journalist has tweeted this: "The best line I have heard on the LAC in Ladakh was from a recently retired former Indian ambassador to China in an off the record conversation: "There is no LAC. Period. There is no mutually agreed line. And either side can thus make any claims it wants."" [2]
• "Disputed" is clear, but it is not only disputed in skirmishes. Even without skirmishes, the patrols of the two sides often run into each other and dispute it. There are standard procedures devised for how they should dispute it!
• Skirmishes occur, not because of disputes, but because one side, generally China, decides to hammer down its idea of the LAC. (In a way, that is also how the 1962 war happened. It was "claim line" at that time, rather than the LAC, but the modalities were the same.)

You really need to come to grips with the "notional" aspect. Here is one source:

The entire length of the 4,056 km Sino-Indian border is disputed by China and exists today as a notional Line of Actual Control. This line is not marked on the ground, and the two countries do not share a common perception of where the line runs. There are several places where India and China have differing interpretations on where even this notional line runs. Both sides patrol up to the limit of their respective interpretation. India describe Chinese efforts to patrol up to their interpretation of the line as ‘transgressions’. The media, however, freely use the more dramatic ‘incursions’.

Moreover, this ambiguity is part of China's policy:

Chinese officials do not want to engage in legal and political battles on the clarification of the LAC, which had been a priority with India before 2003 (the year when New Delhi formally recognized Tibet as a part of China). Despite the historical prominence and importance of the LAC, since 2008, clarification of the LAC has been removed from official bilateral documents.

So, China does not want to agree an LAC. It will either live with the ambiguity or try to hammer it down when it pleases. Under these circumstances, it is not acceptable to pretend that there is in fact an LAC. The term "notional" is the right way of making it clear. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 00:47, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

References

A certain sanctity

DiplomatTesterMan, the phrase "a certain sanctity" is used to explain the deception in polite language. If you want to call it deception, please go ahead. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:38, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Re inline usage of M. Fisher and L. Menon

Kautilya3, I had changed M. Fisher to L. Menon because of the citation that Fisher uses. The citation directs to Menon's article in the National Herald dated 1963. Further, Fisher starts off the sentence with "For India...". Therefore writing that only Fisher writes this is partly misleading. This isn't a big point or big issue. Retaining only Fisher can be seen as plausible, but I thought best to clarify. DTM (talk) 06:46, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

India is a party in the dispute and so are any Indian officials. Fisher is a WP:THIRDPARTY. You are downgrading the claim by changing the attribution. Fisher writes:

For India, the determination of the line from which the Chinese were to withdraw was of crucial importance since in this sector Chinese maps over the years had shown steadily advancing claims, with quite different lines each identified as "the line of actual control as of 7 November 1959"

I don't see the italicised part as being attributed to India. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:19, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

In the Fisher-coauthored book, we find:

In fact, the Chinese claim that their 1956 and 1960 maps were "equally valid" was soon used to define the 1959 "line of actual control" as essentially the border shown on the 1960 map-thus incorporating several thousand additional square miles, some of which had not been seized until after the hostilities had broken out in October, 1962.

So, it is not as if Fisher didn't know and needed and Indian minister to tutor her!

And, Hoffman says:

In some places the line still went beyond the territory that the invading Chinese army had reached.[3: Times of India, 27, 28 Nov 1962, statement by Law Minister Asoke Sen, TOI, 28 Nov 1962]

This is the case in particular, in Depsang Bulge, where the so-called "1959 line" is beyond any posititon reached by the Chinese. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:37, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

References

Lines of Actual Control

Does Lines of Actual Control need to be created, redirected to this page? DTM (talk) 13:06, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't think so. It would be misleading to start speaking of "Lines" (in plural), since the various versions are minor variations (at least on a macro scale). But, I think there is room to mention the various controversial bits and the de facto deviations from it. There are too many perhaps! -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:22, 26 November 2021 (UTC)