Xi Jinping's India dilemma to the fore as he begins a new term in power

The Yangtse clash is politically significant as it was the first major incident at the border after President Xi was re-elected for an unprecedented third five-year term at the once-in-a-five-year Congress of the ruling CPC in October.

This month's clash between Indian and Chinese soldiers at Yangtse in Arunachal Pradesh, weeks after President Xi Jinping began his unprecedented new five-year term, spells danger of 2023 too ending up as yet another blank year in the bilateral ties which nosedived after the PLA’s misadventures in eastern Ladakh in 2020.

The Yangtse clash in which hundreds of Chinese soldiers made a vain bid to move into the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) could cast a shadow over any thaw in the ties as both countries recently managed to work out disengagement in several points in eastern Ladakh through 16 rounds of excruciatingly arduous negotiations.

In his statement in the Parliament on the December 9 incident at the Yangtse area of Arunachal Pradesh's Tawang sector, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said, "the Indian Army bravely prevented the PLA from encroaching on our territory and forced them to withdraw to their posts. Some soldiers from both sides were injured in the skirmish."

While the Chinese Foreign Ministry said the situation along the border with India was "generally stable", Senior Colonel Long Shaohua, spokesman of the Western Theatre Command of PLA, in a statement claimed that the clash took place when its troops on regular patrol on the Chinese side of the LAC were blocked by Indian soldiers.

"Our troops' response is professional, firm and standard, which has helped to stabilise the situation. Both sides have been under disengagement since then," Senior Colonel Long said.

Observers say that the PLA statement highlights that the Chinese military may continue its Ladakh tactics of trying to send patrols with hundreds of soldiers to take key positions along the 3,488 km-long un-demarcated LAC.

It is the first major clash between the Indian and Chinese armies since the fierce face-off in the Galwan Valley in June 2020 that marked the most serious military conflict between the two sides in decades.