Strategic competition between China and India has intensified sincecame to power in late 2012. For more than a decade, Beijing has used its economic and military heft to try to influence India’s behaviour and limit its choices, including along the disputed frontier between the two countries.
These tensions spilled over in mid-June 2020, during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, as Indian troops confronted Chinese soldiers who had earlier seized control of territory New Delhi considers its own. Aleft an unknown number dead, prompting both countries to deploy sizeable forces into the area and to upgrade strategic infrastructure on both sides of the so-called Line of Actual Control.
Since then, New Delhi has also worked hard to stymie Chinese initiatives in both multilateral and minilateral settings.