

Indians consider Johnson Line of 1865 as the boundary, whereas PRC government claims Macartney-MacDonald Line of 1899 as the accepted boundary. This border is not a legally recognized international boundary, but rather it is the practical boundary. It touches Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Himanchal and Sikkim of Indian states. It is the effective border between People’s Republic of china and India. Line of Actual Control is the effective military border which separates Indian controlled areas of Jammu and Kashmir from Aksai Chin. But still, this issue remains a sensitive one and many times have been an issue of war between India and Pakistan. In 1972, after the Simla Agreement, the two ends agreed for Line of Control. Later in 1949, a mutual agreed ceasefire line was drawn in order to resolve the dispute of India and Pakistan over Kashmir. India and Pakistan gained Independence from Britain in 1947, and Kashmir became a part of India. It lies in the northeastern part of the region. Rest 20 percent of the area is controlled by China. These regions lie in the northern and western portions of Kashmir. It basically covers about 45 percent of Kashmir.Īreas controlled by Pakistan comprises of three parts known as Azad Kashmir, Gilgit and Balistan. It is a state which constitutes the southern and eastern parts of the region. The part controlled by India is known as Jammu and Kashmir. LOC or Line of Control denotes a kind of boundary separating parts of Kashmir controlled by India and Pakistan. On the other hand, LAC is not demarcated and consists of a vast empty space. LOC is a demarcated border marked by the militaries. It is also a boundary between India and China. It defines the boundary separating parts of Kashmir controlled by India and Pakistan. Taylor Fravel, director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “and it goes back to the reasons why it decided to fight in 1962 - to defend that road that connected Xinjiang to Tibet.Key Difference: LOC stands for Line of Control.

"China is very sensitive to Indian activity in the western sector,” said M. In the last two decades, India has constructed nearly 5,000 kilometers of roads, allowing it to move military forces more easily along the mountainous border region.Ĭhina appeared alarmed by that and by India’s decision last year to impose direct national rule over the Ladakh region. Last year, India completed an all-weather road connecting Leh, the capital of Ladakh, to its northernmost outpost at Daulat Beg Oldi. The clashes this spring and summer stemmed from India’s recent efforts to build up the road network on its side of the frontier, catching up - belatedly, critics say - to China’s buildup on its side. In 1962, the two countries went to war over the same terrain, but despite an overwhelming Chinese victory, the de facto frontier - known as the Line of Actual Control - remained roughly the same. It was divided in the years after India gained independence from Britain in 1947 and the Communist Party established the People’s Republic of China two years later.ĭuring its invasion of Tibet in 1950, Mao Zedong’s China seized the northern part of Ladakh, called Aksai Chin, and has held it ever since - in no small part because a crucial road connecting Tibet with another restive province, Xinjiang, runs through it. It involves a region called Ladakh, a sparsely populated area, high in the Himalayas, with close historical and cultural ties to Tibet. By late last week, satellite photographs indicated that Chinese troops had pulled out of one disputed area where a brawl sparked the latest tensions.Įven so, the broader dispute between the world’s two most populous nations, both armed with nuclear weapons, remains unresolved and dangerous. In the weeks since, the two sides have tried to walk back from the brink, with military commanders and senior diplomats negotiating quietly to disengage. It has inflamed tensions at a time when the world is consumed by the coronavirus pandemic, and it has scuttled recent efforts by the two Asian powers to set aside their historical differences.

China and India have stumbled once again into a bloody clash over some of the most inhospitable terrain on Earth.Ī deadly brawl last month killed 20 Indian border troops and an unknown number of Chinese soldiers, punctuating a decades-old border dispute that has become one of the world’s most intractable geopolitical conflicts.
