The Chinese state media reported that China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is carrying out tank drills on the Indian border. The PLA launched the maneuver after Sunday’s top-level talks between the Chinese and Indian military officials ended in a stalemate.
In May 2020, Chinese troops invaded India’s Kashmir region, killing 20 Indian troops. This was the first deadly clash between the two nuclear powers since the Sino-India war of 1962.
In recent months, Beijing has intensified military activities along the 2100-mile border with India. “The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China has been ramping up military exercises including night drills in the high-altitude areas in the Xinjiang Military District, which faces India,” the newspaper Indian Express reported on September 21.
The PLA is testing new weaponry designed for high-altitude warfare in the Himalayan region. “China has stepped up night drills near the Himalayan border with India to familiarise troops with its new equipment,” the Indian news network WION revealed last month.
The massive PLA build has forced New Delhi to deploy a quarter of a million troops to match the Chinese strength.
The South China Morning Post reported the Chinese military maneuver along the Indian border:
The Chinese army put tank regiments through their paces near the Indian border, state media reported, as territorial talks between the two sides failed at the weekend.
The Xinjiang military district of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which faces Indian troops at an elevation of 5,000 metres (16,400 feet) in the Karakoram Mountains, had been actively improving its high-altitude tank battle capabilities, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
The report came as the 13th round of negotiations between Indian and Chinese military commanders broke down on Sunday, with both sides blaming the other for the flashpoints along their disputed mountainous border.
The PLA drills are taking place near India’s Muslim-majority Kashmir province.
The region has witnessed a surge in jihadi activity since the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. On Monday, an Islamist terror strike killed five Indian servicemen.
With the Chinese build-up on the East and the Islamist terrorism from the West, India is fighting a war on two fronts in the region.
Encouraged by the Islamist power-grab in Afghanistan, the Taliban-allied Muslim terrorist groups have carried out a series of killings of the minority Hindu and Sikh population in Kashmir. The Islamist massacre has triggered an exodus of non-Muslims out of the region, the media reports say. “Many Hindu families are now leaving the tense region, leading to comparisons with the situation in the 1990s” (when half a million Hindus were forced to flee Kashmir), the BBC reported on Tuesday.
The Chinese troop maneuvers are not limited to the Indian border. The PLA is also simulating an armed invasion of neighboring Taiwan, an independent island nation Chinese President Xi Jinping has vowed to annex in the near future.
“China’s military said on Monday it had carried out beach landing and assault drills in the province directly across the sea from Taiwan,” the Japanese business newspaper Nikkei reported. “The action had involved ‘shock’ troops, sappers and boat specialists, the Chinese military newspaper added. The troops were ‘divided into multiple waves to grab the beach and perform combat tasks at different stages,’ it added, without providing further details,” the newspaper added.
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