Galwan Valley Clash

Background: The Standoff in Eastern Ladakh

The China–India boundary has never been settled. In the western sector the disputed area lies around Ladakh and Aksai Chin, with the two sides separated by the Line of Actual Control (LAC); the two countries fought a border war there in 1962. From April 2020 the two militaries faced off at several points along the LAC in eastern Ladakh. China said India had, since April 2020, been building roads, bridges and other facilities across the line in the Galwan Valley in an attempt to unilaterally change the status quo of border management; India said it was China that had departed from the consensus to respect the LAC in the Galwan Valley and was attempting to change the status quo unilaterally. In early May, personnel from the two sides clashed physically along the border. On 6 June the two militaries held their first corps commander-level talks and agreed on steps to de-escalate.

The Clash on the Night of 15 June

On the night of 15 June 2020, soldiers from the two sides fought a violent hand-to-hand clash in the Galwan Valley. No firearms were used; the troops reportedly attacked each other with stones and clubs. According to research by Carnegie India, these were the first fatalities on the China–India border since 1975.

The two sides gave sharply different accounts of how the clash began. Zhang Shuili, spokesperson of China's Western Theater Command, said on 16 June that Indian troops had "gone back on their commitments, again crossed the Line of Actual Control for illegal activities and deliberately launched provocative attacks", and asserted that "sovereignty over the Galwan Valley area has always belonged to China". India's Ministry of External Affairs said the same day that the clash resulted from a Chinese attempt to change the status quo unilaterally, and that the casualties could have been avoided had China scrupulously followed the agreement reached at a higher level.

On casualties, the Indian Army first reported three deaths on 16 June, then announced that evening that 17 more critically injured soldiers had succumbed in sub-zero, high-altitude conditions, bringing the toll to 20, among them Colonel B. Santosh Babu, commanding officer of 16 Bihar, on whom President Ram Nath Kovind posthumously conferred the Maha Vir Chakra on 23 November 2021. China gave no casualty figures at the time. On 19 February 2021 the PLA Daily published its first account of the clash: regimental commander Qi Fabao, who had waded across the river with a few soldiers to negotiate, was attacked with steel pipes, clubs and stones and suffered severe head injuries; battalion commander Chen Hongjun and soldiers Chen Xiangrong and Xiao Siyuan were killed in the fighting, and Wang Zhuoran died while crossing the river to reinforce, in the course of rescuing comrades. The Central Military Commission named Qi Fabao a "Hero Regimental Commander for Defending the Border", posthumously named Chen Hongjun a "Hero for Defending the Border", and posthumously awarded first-class merit to the other three. China's official death toll is four; several higher outside estimates have circulated, none of them officially confirmed.

Reactions and Diplomacy

The clash provoked a strong reaction in India. On 29 June India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, invoking Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, banned 59 Chinese apps including TikTok and WeChat on the grounds that they were "prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order", and later extended the bans to further apps.

Diplomatic and military contacts continued in parallel. On 10 September, Chinese State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar met in Moscow on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation foreign ministers' meeting and issued a joint press statement setting out a five-point consensus: the current situation in the border areas was not in the interest of either side; border troops should continue their dialogue and quickly disengage; both sides would abide by existing border agreements; they would keep communicating through the Special Representatives mechanism; and they would expedite new confidence-building measures as the situation eased.

Disengagement and the 2024 Agreement

Through successive rounds of corps commander-level talks, the two sides gradually disengaged at friction points in eastern Ladakh. On 10 February 2021 China's Ministry of National Defense announced that frontline troops on the southern and northern banks of Pangong Tso had begun synchronized, organized disengagement. By September 2022 disengagement had been completed and buffer zones set up in the Galwan Valley, the Gogra–Hot Springs area and at Pangong Tso, while differences over Depsang and Demchok remained unresolved.

On 21 October 2024 India announced that the two sides had reached an agreement on patrolling arrangements, which China confirmed the next day; its terms were not made public. On 23 October Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met in Kazan, Russia, during the BRICS summit — their first formal bilateral meeting since the 2020 clash. According to the Chinese readout, the two leaders positively assessed recent progress in resolving issues in the border areas and agreed to make use of the Special Representatives mechanism on the boundary question. According to Carnegie India research published in December 2024, each side still kept more than 100,000 troops deployed along the border, and rebuilding political trust would take time.