In January, the Chinese army deployed its new mountain tanks and howitzers to Tibet. It was an obvious show of force. India was the intended audience.

China’s New Mountain Tanks Crawl Into The Himalayas To Confront India

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2020-06-17 14:31:43

In January, the Chinese army deployed its new mountain tanks and howitzers to Tibet. It was an obvious show of force. India was the intended audience.

Five months later on Monday, Chinese forces killed 20 Indian soldiers in skirmish along the disputed India-China border running through the Himalayas mountain range. Chinese troops reportedly used rocks and clubs.

The Indian and Chinese governments for decades have clashed over the rugged, remote mountain region near Tibet. Previous disputes, including a two-month standoff in mid-2017, resolved peacefully.

In late 1962 India and China fought a brief, bloody war over their shared Himalayan border. Two thousand people died. After a month of fighting, Beijing and New Delhi agreed to a truce. Chinese troops withdrew to what is now known as the Line of Actual Control, a 2,000-mile hash-mark on a map that separates the rival states.

The decades-long standoff tends to flare into violence when one side or the other tries to upgrade its defensive positions. The current crisis reportedly began when the Indian Army started building a road through mountain passes in the Galwan Valley in order to access a remote airfield.