Aksai Chin

A forgotten corner

Aksai Chin is a southwestern extension of the Plateau of Tibet. It is a high, isolated plain averaging about 5,180 m above sea level, between the Karakoram Range to the west and the Kunlun Mountains to the north. The climate is cold and dry, and small salt lakes collect its water in the east.^[1]

It makes up nearly all of the part of the former Kashmir region that China administers. China runs it mostly as part of Xinjiang, with a small part in Tibet; India claims it as part of Ladakh.^[1] Because it was so remote, it was long an ignored corner of the subcontinent.^[1]

The road and the war

That changed in the 1950s, when China built a military road across Aksai Chin to connect Tibet with Xinjiang. India objected to the Chinese presence in an area it counted as part of Ladakh.^[2] Its discovery of the road was one of the causes of the clashes that followed.^[1] After skirmishes from 1959, the People’s Liberation Army attacked across the disputed borders on 20 October 1962.^[2]

The war lasted a month. Britannica puts India’s losses at 7,000 men killed or captured; figures from Chinese military records put Indian deaths above 8,000 and Chinese deaths at about 2,000.^[2][3] China declared a ceasefire on 20 November and withdrew from most of the ground it had taken, but kept about 38,000 km² of Aksai Chin.^[2]

A line nobody drew

What separates the two sides is the Line of Actual Control, the line between the ground each actually holds. The two countries do not agree on many of its details, not even its length.^[3] Standoffs broke out at Daulat Beg Oldi in 2013 and Demchok in 2014, both in Ladakh.^[3]

On 15 June 2020 Indian and Chinese troops fought with stones, iron rods and other makeshift weapons in the Galwan Valley in Ladakh. At least 20 Indian soldiers died; China did not confirm its own losses at the time. They were the first deaths on the border since 1975.^[3] Troops faced each other at several points for four years. On 21 October 2024 the two governments agreed on patrolling at the last two friction points, Depsang and Demchok, and in December India’s foreign minister said disengagement had been “achieved in full”. More than 100,000 troops were still deployed along the line.^[4]

In December 2024 China created two new counties in Xinjiang’s Hotan prefecture, parts of which take in a large part of Aksai Chin. India protested, saying it “has never accepted the illegal Chinese occupation of Indian Territory in this area”.^[5]