China holds live-fire military drills near India border

The Chinese army test-fired a barrage of long-range rocket artillery near India’s eastern territory just days after it was reported that soldiers from both countries came to blows along their disputed border.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) carried out high-altitude plateau region tactical drills at a height of 15,000ft and in temperatures as low as -20C.

China’s state-run Global Times newspaper claimed the drills took place on Sunday in the Zangnan area, located in the southern part of southwest China’s Xizang Autonomous Region, also known as Tibet.

China calls Arunachal Pradesh, a northeastern Indian state, “Zangnan” or “South Tibet” and has long laid claim to the territory. In December 2021, China’s ministry of civil affairs issued “standardised” names for 15 places in the Arunachal Pradesh state to be used as official names on Chinese maps, a move denounced and rejected by India.

The drills come a week after reports emerged that more than 250 Chinese and Indian soldiers had a major clash at the Yangtse area in Arunachal Pradesh’s Tawang sector. The soldiers attacked each other with spiked clubs, monkey fists and stun guns, causing injuries on both sides.

Following the clashes, the Indian Air Force (IAF) conducted a two-day exercise on the border using Rafale and Su-30MKI jets, Chinook helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The IAF later said that the exercise was “pre-planned and routine” and should not be linked to the latest skirmish.

According to China Central Television (CCTV), PLA’s Xizang military command was camping deep in the Zangnan area for several months to prepare for the drills.

High-resolution video of the drills released by the Chinese state showed a weapon system discharging multiple long-range rockets and a PLA PHL-03 multiple rocket launcher shooting down an enemy drone.

“After switching to use new equipment and upgrades to munitions, fire coverage between dozens [of km] to more than 100km can be done with a single system, and it can also realise multi-point precision strikes instead of suppressive fire in a large area,” said a commander of the Xizang military command.

“We can launch attacks as we go, which significantly enhances our fire strike efficiency and survivability.”

The exercises come after Beijing objected to India’s high-altitude drills with the US military in November, less than 100km away from the border with China.

The country said India-US joint military drills close to the Chinese border violated “the spirit of the agreement between China and India in 1993 and 1996” and does not serve the mutual trust between the two countries.

India and the US conducted the drills at an altitude of 9,500ft in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand from 16-30 November.

India and China have been locked in a bitter border standoff for more than two years on the loosely demarcated border area known as the Line of Actual Control. Tensions over the dispute reached a peak in June 2020 when 20 Indian soldiers and an unspecified number of Chinese forces were killed in a high-altitude battle.

Since that stand-off and amid several other sporadic clashes, the armies of the two countries have held 16 rounds of talks to disengage and de-escalate tensions at several friction points in the Ladakh border region.