Name: How Geography is Pushing India & China to War
Uploaded: 2026-03-15T17:11:52.000Z
Duration: 46 min 40 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

At the end Of August in 2023, the People's Republic of China unveiled their new standard map, the map of China's territory from Beijing's perspective.

Transition words & phrases

The thing about this new standard map of China, though, is that it contains numerous territories on it that are not in fact actually controlled by China, but

The map shows huge territories that are currently administered by India, Bhutan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan and even Russia as all belonging to China, giving China the largest number of open territorial disputes with countries in the world.

Many of the disputes shown in the map are more well known, such as China's claims to the entirety of Taiwan and China's maritime claims projecting out across the entire South China Sea and all of the islands within it, which clashes directly with the competing maritime claims of states like Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei.

Other Chinese territorial claims on the map are lesser known and less publicized, such as China's claims to the Senkaku Islands that are currently administered by Japan, while other Chinese claims on the map have appeared as brand new and are kind of open to interpretation, such as China's surprise renewal of their claim to the entire Bolshoi Yusurisky island in Russia, though it's thought to have been settled by a treaty between Moscow and Beijing in 2008, but

But by far the biggest series of territorial disputes shown on China's new standard map, besides Taiwan and the South China Sea, are across the vast frontier separating China from India, across the Himalayan mountains.

The border here between the world's two most populous nations stretches and winds for 3,400 kilometers across the Earth's most rugged and harsh geography, through the world's highest mountains and some of its largest glaciers.

And as a consequence, it has always been difficult to accurately mark on the ground where one country's territory ends and where another's begins.

Consequently, the India China border to this date has never actually been properly demarcated, and

as a result, it is the longest openly disputed border remaining anywhere in the world today, with no legal recognition of what the actual border between them should look like.

The de facto border between India and China is known as the Line of Actual Control.

Instead, the frontier between Indian controlled territory on one side and Chinese controlled territory on the other, where tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides stand off against each other.

And on either side of the line of actual control, the rightful final borders claimed by both India and China are significantly different and vastly opposed to one another across three separate sections of the Line of Actual control.

China and India dispute an amount of territory between them that's roughly the same size as Portugal and home to nearly 2 million people.

In the northwest are two larger areas known as Aksai Chin and the Transcaracorum tract, territories currently controlled and administered by China but also claimed by India.

In the center are some much smaller disputed territories, while in the east are the largest and arguably most controversial series of disputes.

Here, south of the line of actual control is the Indian administered and controlled state of Arunachal Pradesh, an area that is roughly the same size as Austria and home to about one and a half million Indian citizens.

That is also fully claimed in its entirety on China's new standard 2023 map as belonging to Beijing.

China insists on referring to this territory as South Tibet instead, and

they are so insistent on their claims to it that Beijing currently refuses to even stamp the Indian passports of Arunachal Pradesh residents whenever they travel to, opting instead to provide them with stapled visas as a direct legal challenge to India's sovereignty and control over the territory.

And right next door to Arunachal Pradesh or South Tibet is the independent mountain Kingdom of Bhutan, a small nation home to only a little more than 700,000 people that is currently suffering a quiet and underreported on creeping invasion from China.

China quietly pressed Bhutan into ceding away this northern area known as Kulikari to Beijing in the 1980s.

But since then China has quietly claimed, invaded, occupied and even settled three other significant territorial claims in Bhutan in the west, the north and the east of the country, representing roughly 12% of Bhutan's internationally recognized territory that is currently claimed by China.

And China isn't just claiming these territories.

In the western and northern sections of Bhutan, they claim their army has quietly occupied them and begun building military infrastructure in them, while in the northern sector they've even begun constructing full blown settlements and villages that have exploded in s just since 2020, with satellite images showing a rapid development of hundreds of Chinese homes and buildings in the territory over just the past four years.

China is therefore constructing entire villages within Bhutan's internationally recognized territory, changing the demographic facts on the ground and reinforcing their claims with settlers and soldiers while they're continuing to add on new territorial claims as well.

It was only in 2020 when China suddenly also began claiming the Saktang Wildlife sanctuary in the far east of Bhutan as well as a territory that they don't yet control on the ground like the other two, but

which they might also attempt to quietly invade and seize soon as well.

In the future, these numerous Territorial disputes between India and China are extremely controversial.

In 1962, they led to a war between them that killed thousands.

And since the 2010s, they've nearly led to the outbreak of another war between them on multiple occasions as the geopolitical rivalry between Beijing and New Delhi has intensified, including extremely tense military standoffs across the line of actual control in 2017 and again in 2020 that left dozens of soldiers killed and wounded and involved brutal hand to hand medieval style combat between the two rival armies.

And in order to understand why India and China have all of these territorial disputes today that add up to an area the same size as Portugal, why the intensity of the dispute has been growing increasingly higher in the 2020s, why China has quietly invaded, occupied and Even colonized around 12% of Bhutan's territor, and

how this entire situation could push the world's two biggest countries, with more than one third of the global human population between them, each armed with nuclear weapons, into a cataclysmic confrontation in the future.

It helps to understand the historical and geographic origins of the dispute and what's truly at stake from both China and India's perspectives.

The modern states of India and the People's Republic of China were born around the same historical era.

Modern India was born after it received its independence from the British following the conclusion of the Second World War in 1914 1947, while the People's Republic of China was established only two years later in 1949.

After the Communists finally emerged victorious in the long running Chinese civil war against the Chinese nationalists, and

upon each of their geopolitical appearances, they each inherited the outstanding baggage and decisions of their legal the colonial British authorities in India's case and the Qing Empire and the independent state of Tibet in China's case.

The area of Aksai Chin in the Western sector almost immediately became controversial over differing interpretations between Beijing and New Delhi over border treaties signed between both of their predecessors, the region itself has almost always been a remote, difficult to access and largely unpopulated high altitude desert that historically didn't matter very much.

In the 19th century, it was understood between the colonial authorities in British India and the Qing Empire that the border between their realms ran somewhere through this area.

But because of the region's difficult to access geography, the exact boundary remained largely undefined.

Eventually, in 1897, the British authorities in India proposed the Johnson Ardugh Line to be the boundary between them along the crest of the Kunlun Mountains, which placed Aksai Chin fully within the territory of the princely state of Jammu in Kashmir, which was effectively a British protectorate at the time.

This line was, however, seemingly never actually presented to the Chinese government for approval.

And then, just two years later, in 1899, British authorities in India proposed and presented a completely different boundary line here to the Qing Chinese called the Macartney MacDonald line, which placed the boundary further to the southwest along the crest of the Karakoram mountain range instead, and

effectively put Aksai Chin within China instead.

The British authorities presented the McCartney Macdonald line to the Qing government in 1899 through a note, but

the Qing never actually officially acknowledged or responded to it, which has led to more than a century of differing interpretations ever since.

The Indian government has insisted that the Qing's lack of a response to the McCartney MacDonald line indicated their rejection of it, while the modern Chinese government has insisted that the lack of a response only indicates stated that the Qing already believed it to be the accepted boundary and that a response wasn't necessary.

Confusingly, official British maps from 1899 up until India's independence in 1947 use both the Johnson Ardugh Line and the McCartney Macdonald Line almost interchangeably, while no attempts were made by either the British or the Chinese to actually establish any authority between the lines on the ground.

So when India achieved its independence in 1947, it claimed the entirety of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir as its own territory, and

they selected the Johnson Ardugh Line as their official eastern border order that placed Aksai Chin within their territory.

Well, naturally, after the Communists took over control of China after 1949, they selected the McCartney MacDonald line as the official boundary that placed Aksai Chin as an extension of their own Xinjiang province.

But despite this disputed boundary, relations between China and India were initially relatively warm.

India became the very first non communist country to recognize the People's Republic of China's government in April of nineteen nineteen fifty.

But merely months after they did that, In October of 1950, China tested the relationship when they invaded and then annexed the de facto independent state of Tibet after the Qing Empire had collapsed in 1912, Tibet managed to emerge out of the chaos as a de facto independent Buddhist theocracy that survived for decades.

Although the Republic of China that initially succeeded the Qing never recognized Tibet's independence, and

Tibet remained a largely unrecognized state by the rest of the outside international community for its entire existence, except by Mongolia, who had similarly declared their independence following the Qing's collapse.

During the roughly four decades of the early 20th century that Tibet remained de facto independent, it unilaterally entered into a series of border negotiations with the colonial British authorities in neighboring India.

Between 1913 and 1914, Tibetan authorities met with representatives of Britain and the Republic of China at the Simla Convention to discuss the status of Tibet and Tibet's borders with British India.

The British proposed that Tibet would remain under the control of the Tibetan government as effectively an autonomous Chinese tributary or vassal state, while the British further proposed that the previously undefined border between British India and Tibet would follow a line drawn up by then British India Foreign Secretary Henry McMahan that became known as the McMahan line.

The McMahan line placed a vast area that had previously been under Tibetan and Qing influence within British India and incensed the Chinese.

Negotiators present at the Simla Convention refused to sign the agreement and left, which left the British and Tibetan representatives to sign the final agreement anyway without Chinese approval that solidified the McMahan line as the border.

From each of their perspectives, the nature in which this agreement was signed without Chinese approval has remained controversial for more than a century, ever since.

By signing the agreement and effectively annexing the territory south of the McMahan line, the British violated numerous previous treaties they had signed, such as the Anglo Russian Convention of 1907 that bound Britain into not negotiating with Tibet except through the intermediary of the Chinese government, and

the Anglo Chinese Convention of 1906, which further bound Britain to not annex any Tibetan territory, since there were significant legal doubts to the McMahan line's validity even during the time period.

The British never even showed the McMahon Line on any of their maps of India until 23 years later after it was signed in 1930, while the British never even published that the Simla Convention had even happened at all in their treaty record all the way until 1938.

China has therefore argued ever since, as both the Republic of China and later as the People's Republic of China, that the Tibetan government never had the legal authority to unilaterally agree with the British on the borders of Tibet because they argue that China never recognized Tibet's independence.

China has thus maintained that the 1914 Simla Convention the assign the territory south of the MacMahon Line to British India was an unequal treaty forced upon them during the century of humiliation and that India's continued control of what they refer to as South Tibet is a lasting legacy of British imperialism, while conversely, as the legal successor to British India, India recognizes the legitimacy of the McMahan line and argues that it follows the natural geographic border of the Indian subcontinent across the crest of the Himalayan mountains and that China's claims to what they call Arunachal Pradesh south of the Himalayas is a legacy of Chinese imperialism to a territory that has been Indian for nearly a century now.

Either way, after China invaded Tibet in 1950 and annexed it in 1951, they immediately inherited the territorial disputes south of the McMahan line, controlled by India, in addition to the disputes over Aksai Chin between the Johnson r.

Dog and McCartney MacDonald lines, as well as several other smaller disputes in between.

And the whole reason why the Chinese Communist Party decided to invade and annex Tibet in the first place was rooted in paranoia over the risk of India gaining influence or control over Tibet.

Instead, you see, Tibet is often referred to as the Water Tower of Asia or as the world's Third Pole because it contains the highest and largest reserve of freshwater that can be found anywhere in the world outside of the polar regions.

The Tibetan Plateau has tens of thousands of glaciers scattered all across it, and

it contains the headwaters that give rise to many of Asia's mightiest rivers, including both the Yellow and Yangtze rivers that flow through China, the Mekong river that flows through Southeast Asia, the Indus river that flows through Pakistan, and

the Brahmaputra river that eventually flows through northeast India and Bangladesh.

The waters that originate in the Tibetan Plateau are estimated to provide the lion's share of freshwater supplies to approximately 2 billion people across Asia, while the Yangtze and Yellow rivers through China provide the primary drinking water supply for about 600 million Chinese citizens, not to mention all of the electricity they provide through modern megaprojects like the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze river, which, all on its own, produces roughly the same amount of electricity as the entire country of Bangladesh does.

The security of the water supplies in these two rivers is a core strategic concern of China's.

And so, immediately after the People's Republic was proclaimed in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party opted to permanently secure the river sources by securing their control over Tibet, so that a hypothetical region, regional rival in the future, like India, would never be able to do that.

Instead, initially, the Chinese granted Tibet significant autonomy after they seized control over it.

And in 1952, the Indian government chose to even recognize China's newly established sovereignty over Tibet, hoping to allay China's senses of insecurity in the region.

But then, only a few Years later, by 1959, significant tensions had built up between the Tibetans, who had been used to an absolute Tibetan Buddhist theocracy that revered the Dalai Lama, and

the new Communist Chinese authorities that espoused the eradication of feudalism and the destruction of religion.

Religious Tibetans began worrying that the Chinese authorities were preparing to arrest the 14th Dalai Lama.

And the tensions eventually exploded into a full blown Tibetan revolt against Chinese authority.

In 1959, the People's Liberation army cracked down on the revolt, harshly killing thousands of Tibetans in the process and sending the 14th Dalai Lama and some of his loyal entourage to flee across the border for safety in India, where he, along with thousands of Tibetan refugees, were all granted asylum.

Afterwards, the 14th Dalai Lama established the Tibetan government in exile in India right across the border, and

he continues to survive there in India to this very day.

In 2024, at the age of 88, much to the unease of China, China miscalculated at the time in 1959 that India had fomented the rebellion in Tibet and that New Delhi ultimately intended to transform Tibet into a protectorate of theirs, which would have established Indian control over the sources of the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers.

And India's subsequent welcoming and hosting of the Dalai Lama and his government only fueled China's paranoia about this even further.

In the aftermath, China clamped down on Tibet more harshly and revoked the province's formerly high levels of autonomy, while Chinese control of Tibet established Beijing's comparatively more easy access to the disputed territory of Aksai Chin, relative to India.

Since Aksai Chin was located on the opposite side of the Karakoram Mountains from India and accessible to the rest of the flatter Tibetan plateau from China.

This then led the Chinese across the 1950s to construct a strategic highway across Aksai Chen that could connected their provinces of Tibet and Xinjiang, which transformed Aksai Chin into a strategically valuable territory for China as an infrastructure linkage point between two of the country's most politically unstable regions.

And that led the Chinese authorities to present a deal to India the year after the Tibetan revolt in 1960 on settling the border dispute between them.

China proposed creating a demilitarized zone between them across the length of the border and offer to recognize India's control over Arunachal Pradesh south of the McMahan line in exchange for India recognizing China's control over the newly strategic, strategically valuable Axai Chin, with an updated border region several miles west of the old McCartney MacDonald line in order to give China a large buffer away from their strategically valuable highway.

India, however, categorically refused the Chinese offer on all counts, insisted that both Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin were Indian territories, and

began moving troops to advance towards India's claimed borders.

If India advanced all the way towards their claimed boundary in Aksai Chin towards the old Johnson Ardug Line, then the Indians would have severed the highway connecting Tibet and Xinjiang, and