Source: http://www.economist.com/node/16843717
The eastern sector covers about 90,000 square kilometers south of the McMahon Line and north of what China claims as Tibet’s customary boundary. This area was named by the independent India as the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA) before 1972
and is currently ruled by India as the Arunachal Pradesh state.225 It is called South Tibet
by China. The middle sector contains disputed pockets between Aksai Chin in the west and the junction of the Tibet, India, and Nepal borders in the east. They are about 2,000
224 India claims that the Sino-Indian border is approximately 4,056 kilometer in length and composed by
five sectors – the eastern, the middle, the western, the boundary between Sikkim and China, and the boundary between Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and China. Pakistan and China delimited their boundary in 1963 by signing a boundary treaty, which India claims illegally gave part of Kashmir to China. Sikkim officially became an Indian state in 1975, following a people’s referendum. Prior to 1975, Sikkim had been a monarchy, enjoying protectorate status from India. Chinese maps portrayed Sikkim as an independent country till 2003, when China eventually recognized Sikkim as an Indian state, on the condition that India accepted the Tibet Autonomous Region as a part of China.
225 The independent Indian government called the eastern disputed area as the North East Frontier Agency
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square kilometers in total and all under India’s administration. The western sector includes 33,000 square kilometers adjacent to Xinjiang and the Ali District of Tibet. Most of this area is now administered by China as a part of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region and is called Aksai Chin by China. India has claimed this area as part of India’s Ladakh. Among the three sectors, the middle sector is the least politically complicated, and settling the dispute here is expected to be done relatively simply—the amount of land involved is relatively small, and the military, economic, and symbolic values are all relatively low. These territories are typically used as leverage in negotiations for other disputed territories, and this is why they are not resolved singularly. The eastern and western sectors are much larger and more complicated, and therefore have become the major targets of the contest between the two sides in the past few decades. Therefore I focus below on the eastern and western sectors.
Different geography and culture of the different disputed borderlands give them different salience in terms of their value. Among the three disputed sectors, the eastern sector in general is the most economically valuable, while Tawang in the eastern sector carries the most symbolic significance for China, and the western sector the most military importance. The middle sector is mainly composed of small sloping pastures and high passes. There are no permanent inhabitants in these areas and the Indian shepherds from the border villages come and tend their sheep here every summer. Comparatively, the middle sector is the least economically valuable.
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4.2.1 The Eastern Sector–The Most Economically Valuable
The eastern disputed borderland, i.e. Arunachal Pradesh or South Tibet, is the most economically valuable among the three frontier sectors. It has the highest per capita income in the north-eastern region of India and significant, though largely unutilized
resource potential.226 The kinds of resources this area offers are numerous. First, thanks
to suitable climate and geography, Arunachal Pradesh is one of the most fertile regions in the greater Tibetan area. Agriculture is the most significant sector of its economy, with rice, maize, millet, wheat, pulses, sugarcane, ginger and oil seeds all grown and processed in the region. Second, over 80 percent of Arunachal Pradesh is covered by evergreen forest, and forest products and industry are considered another lifeline in this area. Third, the Brahmaputra River (called as Yaluzangbu River by China) that runs from Tibet through Arunachal Pradesh and into India not only serves as a major source of irrigation for the region, but also has remarkable potential for hydroelectricity (enough to supply 41.5 percent of all hydroelectricity generated in India). The Great Bend of the Yaluzangbu River creates a drop as high as 2,300 meters, and a hydroelectric dam on the bend (yet to be built) would be very productive. It is reported that China has planned to build the world’s largest hydroelectric power plant on the Great Bend, whose capacity
would be twice that of the Three Gorges Dam.227 Fourth, Arunachal Pradesh has rich
mineral resources, including hydrocarbons, dolomite, quartzite, limestone, and marble. Large deposits of antimony have also been discovered in the region. Antimony is used in a wide range of products, such as flame retardants, batteries, bullets and
226 Mohan Guruswamy and Zorawar Daulet Singh, India China Relations: The Border Issue and Beyond
(New Delhi: Viva Books, 2011), 58.
227
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microelectronics.228 Fifth and last, Arunachal Pradesh is the richest bio-geographical
province of the Himalayan zone. It stretches from snow-capped mountains in the north to the plains of Brahmaputra valley in the south, and is full of beautiful scenes. Therefore,
Arunachal Pradesh has a great potential for tourism as well.229
From a military perspective, however, if China had sovereign control of Arunachal Pradesh, it would be very costly to shield Arunachal Pradesh from Indian invasion. First, Arunachal Pradesh is a low-lying area that is rimmed by the Himalayas on its north and adjacent to the Indian plains on its south. Thus, China would have to send
the troops over the Himalayas to secure this piece of land. Moreover, Arunachal Pradesh
is far from China proper and not well connected to the Tibetan hinterland, so it would be extremely difficult for the Chinese government to mobilize a large number of troops to this area in a short span of time. As has been argued, if China had not withdrawn from but retained Arunachal Pradesh in the wake of 1962 border war victory, it would have
ironically rendered itself in a passive and costly situation.230
228 Xuexiang Qi, “Rare Earth Element and Trace Element Geochemistry of Shalagang Antimony Deposit in
the Southern Tibet and Its Tracing Significance for the Origin of Metallogenic Elements,” Geoscience 22 no.2 (April 2008).
229 About 81.22% of Arunachal Pradesh geographic area was covered by forests in 2001. More information
about the forest cover data is available at http://www.fsi.nic.in/sfr2003/arunachal.pdf. The entire territory forms a complex hill system with varying elevations ranging from 50m in the foot-hills and gradually ascending to about 7000m, traversed throughout by a number of rivers and rivulets. The vegetation of Arunachal Pradesh falls under four broad climatic categories and can be classified in five broad forest types with a sixth type of secondary forests. These are tropical forests, sub-tropical forests, pine forests, temperate forests and alpine forests. In the degraded forests bamboos and other grasses are of common occurrence. More information is available at the official website of Government of Arunachal Pradesh http://www.arunachalpradesh.nic.in/index.htm.
230 B.R. Deepak, “Why China Retained Aksai Chin and Gave Up Southern Tibet?,”C3S Paper No.739
124 4.2.2 Tawang – The Most Symbolically Valuable