India recently raised its concerns with the Chinese over infrastructure development in occupied Shaksgam Valley, a part of the Union Territory (UT) of Ladakh. The Ministry of External Affairs called the construction activity ‘an illegal attempt to alter facts on the ground’, making it very clear that the valley in the trans-Karakoram tract of the high Himalayas belongs to India.
Shaksgam Valley was illegally ceded to China by Pakistan on 2nd March 1963. The proximity of the road to the critical Siachen Glacier area has rung alarm bells in New Delhi.
This is not the first time India has raised a protest over China building infrastructure in the occupied regions of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, which encompasses the region of Ladakh. The construction of a road through Aksai Chin in the late 1950s led to skirmishes leading to the 1962 war. India and China also had a stand-off in Doklam, Bhutan in 2017 over road construction. Again in 2020, both India and China had clashes on the North Bank of the Pangong Tso over Chinese road construction.
China and Pakistan on the other hand have been developing infrastructure in the Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) also known as Northern Areas and in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK). Most of these projects are being made under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The infrastructure being developed in the area is primarily to build a road network linking Gwadar Port in the southwestern corner of Pakistan on the Arabian Sea coast to China. Other major infrastructure projects, such as dams are also being built with Chinese help. India has raised concerns over the projects built over occupied territories.
The most strategic infrastructure development project by the Chinese in the occupied areas is Pakistan’s National Highway 35 which connects Abbottabad to Kashgar, 887 km of this nearly 1,300 km long highway is in Pakistan while the rest of the remaining portion is in Xinjiang region of Western China.
The Pakistanis and the Chinese are also planning to build a 682 km long rail line from Havelian in Abbottabad district to the Khunjareb Pass. China will connect the Khunjareb Pass to its rail network via Kashgar.
China has also executed or is executing hydro-electric projects such as the Dasu Dam, Neelum–Jhelum project, Karot Hydropower Project and Kahola hydel-power project.
Dhruv Yadav
