Chinese President Xi Jinping, on January 18 evening, held a rare conversation via video with People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers stationed along the India-China border.

Speaking from the PLA headquarters in the Chinese capital, President Xi addressed troops at a border defence station in Khunjerab under the Xinjiang Military Command and “inspected their combat readiness“. The State media in Beijing reported that the Xinjiang Border Command was the only PLA Army Command the President was shown speaking to. He also addressed a Chinese Navy formation and an Air Force brigade, and “ordered them to remain alert and be ready for combat“.

The State media also reported that President Xi asked the border troops “about their border patrol and management work” and “hailed the soldiers as models of border defence and encouraged them to persist in their efforts and make new contributions“.

Meanwhile, new satellite imagery has revealed that China is building a new dam in Tibet on a tributary of the Ganges River, close to the border tri-junction with India and Nepal, which could be used to control the flow of water downstream. Earlier, China unveiled plans to build a super dam close to the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Tibet on the lower reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo River that flows into the north-eastern Indian Province of Arunachal Pradesh as the Siang and then to neighbouring Indian Province of Assam as the Brahmaputra.

Satellite imagery has also shown that China has developed villages, and military and dual use infrastructure in the eastern and western sectors of LAC. The satellite images, tweeted by Damien Symon, a geospatial intelligence researcher at Intel Lab, showed that the Chinese earth development and dam construction activity has been conducted on the Mabja Zangbo River in Burang County of Tibet since May 2021.

Source: The Wire (Instagram)

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das