Srinagar: China has strengthened bunkers and underground facilities in Aksai Chin to better protect them from aerial strikes, Hindustan Times has reported, analysing satellite imagery over time.
The report also says that a comparison of images taken on December 6, 2021, and August 18 this year, shows that the Chinese have built ramped up bunkers and done underground construction at six locations, within 15 square kilometres of Aksai Chin.
The constructions are at a location about 70km from the Line of Actual Control or LAC, the report says.
After studying satellite imagery in May that China had built new runways, ramped up jet protection shelters and built new buildings for support and military operations. All this was to expand its airbases along the LAC and to allow it to conduct a “wider range of operations,” the report said.
The personnel bunkers have been reinforced. What gives this away is that they “have earth raised around them to provide additional protection from aerial or missile attacks”. In addition, entry and exit points are designed in a forked manner, ostensibly to dissipate the impact of bombardment.
The report also notes new development activity in the same region, including new roads, tunnels, new entrances and bunkers for soldiers. Hillsides in some places are being dug up for new tunnels.
Earlier, India lodged a strong protest with China after China government’s 2023 edition of China’s standard map, released on August 28, continues to show the whole of Arunachal Pradesh and the Kashmir’s Aksai Chin region as part of China.
“We have today lodged a strong protest through diplomatic channels with the Chinese side on the so-called 2023 ‘standard map’ of China that lays claim to India’s territory,” India’s foreign ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi said in a statement on Tuesday.
“We reject these claims as they have no basis. Such steps by the Chinese side only complicate the resolution of the boundary question,” Bagchi said.
“Making absurd claims on India’s territory does not make it China’s territory,” Jaishankar told news channel NDTV.
Relations between the two Asian neighbours plummeted after army personnel from both sides clashed in the Ladakh Himalayas in June 2020, resulting in the death of 20 Indian and four Chinese personnel.
While the situation on the lengthy China-India frontier has been calm since the violence in 2020, stand-offs continue in a few pockets with tens of thousands of soldiers amassed on both sides of the frontier in the western Himalayas along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), that divides the rivals in Kashmir.
India’s protest over the map comes days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke with China’s President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg last week and highlighted concerns about the “disputed” Himalayan frontier.