Highway G-216 – Changing the security paradigms in Sino-Indian standoff
By Col. Satish Singh Lalotra
‘There is no security on this earth, there is only opportunity’ – Gen Douglas Mac Arthur.
World over national interests of various countries often pitch them up against rival countries with similar interests jockeying in a narrow time and space of the fast changing geopolitical situation affecting them in totality. In the last few years or so these rival interests have been more or less concentrated in Asia-Pacific region threatening world peace and order.
It stands to logic therefore that all these countries coming in the area of influence of such rival interests modify or realign their own interests to keep themselves abreast as also on top of the fast evolving situation. China is one such country which has been pushing its exclusivist agenda to the discomfiture of the world at large and affecting all the littoral states as well as others sharing a common boundary with this giant.
With the Ukrainian war entering its fifth week of combat with Russia and no end to sight of the hostilities, the world has suddenly started climbing the escalation ladder of uncertainty and destruction if something fast is not done to disengage the two warring factions.
This war though seen by many security experts coming months and years in advance due to entrenched Russian and Ukrainian geopolitical compulsions has shaken out of stupor world complacency in this regard. China strictly following ‘Sun Tzu’ and his principles of strategic leveraging of such occurrences is waiting in the wings to do its bidding in this far away war too.
But what took most of the security experts by surprise were the Sino-Indian skirmishes on the icy heights of Himalayas in May/June 2020. In fact Beijing has always coveted this area of Galwan valley from decades, seizing its Geo-political importance for furthering its agenda in Himalayan region. China in fact on its part had immediately after the infamous ‘Cultural revolution’ laid out an elaborate plan to road map the entire TAR/Tibetan Autonomous region. With the annexation of Uighurs county i.e the ‘Chinese Turkestan’ or ‘Eastern Turkestan’ in 1949 and immediately thereafter invasion of Eastern Tibet in late 1950, the top echelon of the politburo of China was seized of the matter of interconnecting of these two diverse parts of Mainland China.
Hence the need to discover a route between Xinjiang and Tibet. Just to give a gist of numbering system in this write up to the readers, the road numbering system in China has 5 broad classifications of roads under its geographical area.. Starting from Asian highways, national highways, provincial roads, district roads and further local roads this Asian giant has been very methodical in its road upkeep. These are classified as A, G, S, X and Y respectively.
G numbers are the main national highways. 3- digit numbers are old ordinary roads while 1-and 2- digit numbers are (expressways).4- digit numbers are also motorways, but short spurs and bypasses or alternative routes. The first digit of the 3- digit numbers determine the type of the route, the number 2- denotes north -south routes increasing in westbound direction.
In 1951 when the PLA (People’s liberation army of China) decided to cross the massive ‘Kunlun’ mountain ranges along the Keriya ancient road in Hotan county, it encountered the massive volcano of Ashi Tan where many road workers were killed in the mishap and hence the plan to build an alternative route through the Keriya route was shelved. Well this is how the G-219 national highway came into existence. This China national highway G-219 runs all along the western and the southern border of the PRC from Kam-Kanas Mangolian Ethnic Township in Xinjiang to Dongxing in Guangzhou.
At over 10,000 kilometers (6214 miles) long, it is part of the Chinese national highway planning (2013-2030) and once completed it will be the longest national highway in PRC. Before 2013, G-219 ran from Yecheng to Lohatse in the Tibetan autonomous region. This section was completed in the year 1957. India disagrees with China over its 180 kilometers territorial footprint in Aksai Chin. During the 1962 Sino-Indian war, China defended this road as also pushed its westward frontier.
Notwithstanding the above mentioned G-219 national highway, the ultimate game changer which will shift the security paradigms for India would be the G-216 national highway. As per ‘National highway network planning’ (2013-2030) the G-216 runs from Hongshanzui port ( Altai county, north of Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region or XUAR) in the direction of Baluntai in Hejing county, where it joins China national highway G-218,then moves on to Luntai county entering the Taklimakan desert till Menfeng county. It then proceeds to Garze County in Tibet to finally join Kyirong near Nepal border.
Actually China has speeded up the construction activity on this G-216 national highway after May 2020 Galwan valley clashes with Indian army. For containment of India and speeding up its force levels all along the Ladakh frontier as well as the middle sector, China doesn’t have to depend solely upon G-219 national highway to switch forces inter sector or intra sector, since it will now use the under construction G-216 National highway to bring to bear its max number of forces for a decisive action.
Originally this G-216 national highway was designed for 857 kilometers length but after landslides blocked Zhangmu port of entry, for a while G-216 was the only link between Nepal and Tibet. With G-216 national highway ending up near the Nepalese border it brings Chinese presence next door to India’s only buffer zone from a hitherto different direction. With Nepal displaying a marked propensity for allowing its Maoist cadres go unchecked in the last few years, this Hindu majority country is in imminent danger of slipping into the whirlpool of Chinese influence mastered by the their centuries old thinking of getting their so called ‘lost territories’ back into their fold.
As per the Chinese, all those territories which were lost during the ‘Quing dynasty’ in 1860 to include the Manchurian territory and the five (5) fingers i.e Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, Tibet, and Arunachal Pradesh belonging to the ‘Great Chinese civilisation’ ought to be amalgamated in their area once again.
The matters are further complicated by the simple factor that India’s foreign relations with Nepal are governed by ‘A big brother attitude’ with the latest thorn of ‘Lipulekh -Kalapani area comprising 35 square kilometers adding grist to the mill.
The threat of annulling the Indo- Nepal treaty of 1950 by some powerful voices inside that country doesn’t inspire much confidence too. The near porous border of India and Nepal requiring little or no effort to cross over either side is another nightmare waiting to happen.
As for the historical blunders committed by our foreign relations experts in the early 1950s regarding failing to read the evil Chinese designs and the frenetic pace with which the yellow race was going about in road construction network in TAR (Tibetan autonomous region), Nirupama Rao our former foreign secretary and ambassador to China in her seminal book-‘The fractured Himalayas’ has very succinctly put across the following-quote ‘ The building of road should not have come as a surprise.
From 1952 there had been reports of such actions by the Chinese in Tibet and Xinjiang region. The ‘London times’ newspaper reported at that time that there were reports of such an activity from western Tibet suggesting that Chinese were developing communications at a feverish pace.Specifically the newspaper reported that a great highway will run through the country south of Kasghar and then cross through western Tibet on way to Lhasa’—unquote.
In fact the official report of 1962 Sino-Indian war prepared by the Ministry of defence (MOD ) admitted long before it was made public, the construction of the road cutting across Indian soil on the ‘Aksai chin ‘plateau of Ladakh. That was G-219 in all its glory. As per Nirupama Rao’s book, in early 1958 five months after the official opening of the G-219 national highway, Subimal Dutt the then foreign secretary wrote to the prime minister -‘There seems little doubt that the newly constructed 1200 kilometers road connecting ‘Gartok’ in western Tibet with ‘Yeh’ (Yechen) in Sinkiang passes through ‘Aksai chin’.
But then the under construction G-216 highway is much more lethal in its making since it is a bridge between ‘Xinjiang’ and ‘Tibet”. One of the Chinese websites mentioned last year that the difficult passages between Tibet were used as a bridge for warfare and trade communication between the two major geographical regions (Xinjiang &Tibet) in ancient times. In modern times they have become an important network for China to maintain the peaceful reunification of the western frontier.
Though as of now there is little information which is trickling out to know the exact details of G-216,but as mentioned above in this write up 2 new corridors will be built to connect Xinjiang with Tibet. The G-216 national highway is one of them. An automatic route to help build up forces on the main highway G -219 which has a direct bearing on China’s operations against Indian forces deployed all along Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh and Uttrakhand calls for focusing all our attention on this new Chinese highway. With limited Indian access to its frontier areas all along the LAC and also dependent upon the age old roads built during the ‘Great Game’ days of the 19 th century,it stands to logic that our country will have to factor in this latest development in the TAR(Tibetan autonomous region) with all the sincerity it deserves.
