Chinese Military Posing New Security Challenges across LAC

Union Minister for External Affairs, S Jaishankar, said that the massive Chinese military deployment of troops and weapons on the Line of Actual Control is a ‘critical security challenge’ that has left the relationship with Beijing profoundly disturbed.

Jaishankar, who dealt with China as an envoy and then as foreign secretary earlier, told the New York-based Asia Society that for 30 years peace and tranquility on the Himalayan border had governed relations between the two Asian powers. But the Chinese build-up and the June clash is a shift away, a sharp departure from that state of affairs. This has left a deep public impact, a very major political impact. And it has left the relationship profoundly disturbed," he said in a conversation with Kevin Rudd, former Australian prime minister, at an event on Friday that was webcast. On the Quadrilateral security dialogue he had with his counterparts from the US, Japan and Australia early this month in Tokyo, Jaishankar said the Quad will be at the centre of the geopolitical landscape in the days ahead.

The four countries there agreed to hold regular meetings and increase coordination between them. He said that this was a shift towards a multi-polar world, away from US-led uni-polar one. The world would evolve as nations now faced common challenges, but there is no single structure, no single institution to deal with these problems. It would evolve, and a few countries would get together on certain issues and do something. The EAM termed it as ‘pluralateralism’.  He added that he thought that the future of Quad was and any other arrangements, you know and this reflected he shift towards multi-polarity, he said.