Staff Reporter
Want China Times
August 10, 2014
Beijing has sent the highest-ranking official ever to inspect the country’s western border with India recently, which has been interpreted as a response to rumors of a Chinese “invasion” into Indian territory in June at Pangong Lake, which spans the border, reports Reference News, a newspaper run by state-run Xinhua News Agency.
Four PLA speedboats crossed the border and entered Indian waters in the Pangong Lake on June 24, according to India’s Ministry of Defence. The Indian military found them within 20 minutes and gave chase for two hours, according to Indian media.
Xu Qiliang, vice chairperson of the Central Military Commission, visited troops stationed at a mountain pass in the Karakoram Range and at the lake where the incident took place.
Chennai-based newspaper the Hindu reported that Xu inspected troops stationed near the border in the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region and Tibet including Aksai Chin, a region over which China and India both claim sovereignty, in July. Xu was accompanied by Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of the People’s Liberation Army general staff, and Miao Hua, deputy political commissar of the Lanzhou military region, according to army-run paper PLA Daily.
The incident heightened tensions between the two countries but helped strengthen cooperation across the border, as Chinese premier Li Keqiang met Manmohan Singh, then India’s Prime Minister, after the Pangong Lake incident to talk about it and the Line of Actual Control at the Sino-India border.
Official military mouthpiece PLA Daily reported that Xu talked with troop leaders in the Hotan, Ngari and Lhasa prefectures. He also visited a troop responsible for guarding the western border of Ladakh near a mountain pass in Karakoram and two others stationed in Aksai Chin. One of the two troops is reportedly an amphibious troop guarding the disputed Pangong Lake.
The newspaper said Xu also visited a company that was involved in a three-week confrontation with the Indian military in the eastern Ladakh in the border state of Jammu and Kashmir. In April last year, around 50 Chinese soldiers crossed 10 km over the border with India and set up tents in the region, prompting India to send border police to rush to the area and set up their own tents 300 meters away from the Chinese troops. The confrontation ended when both troops left on May 5, according to Hong Kong-based Ta Kung Pao. Officials in China deny that it was an invasion as they consider the region part of their own territory.
