Foreign policy or diplomacy needn’t necessarily be a zero-sum game. Not always, that is.

Looking at the trajectory of the recent skirmishes between Indian and Chinese infantry troops stationed along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the Ladakh region, the truth behind this adage becomes all the more obvious. When it comes to a game of one-upmanship involving two neighbouring states with such massive economic and military resources and accounting for the combined fortunes of as much as 38 per cent of the global population, then the contours of Indo-China relations since the early 1960s present a case study that’s truly unique.

To put things in perspective, China, the world’s second-largest economy, and India, the fifth-largest economy in the world, share a border that stretches over 4,056 kilometres. And yet, the last time these two Asian powerhouses were involved in a military conflict was way back in 1967. Since then, while border skirmishes over disputed land territories primarily along the Line of Actual Control have often been recorded, not a single bullet has been fired from either side, leave alone fighting a war. In 2017, the armies with the world’s second and third-largest infantries faced off for a 73-day border pow-wow at Doklam in Bhutan, which was settled through diplomatic channels – again, without even the slightest trace of a smoking gun anywhere on either side of the border.

The latest skirmishes between the armies of the two countries in Galwan, Ladakh, which started earlier this month, need to be seen in the light of this unique position that both Beijing and New Delhi share with each other.

According to Indian media sources, thousands of Chinese troops forcibly entered the Galwan valley in Ladakh and erected tents and dug up trenches on what was primarily regarded as Indian territory. The move came largely as a retaliatory measure from the Chinese side after India built a road stretching over hundreds of kilometres to connect one of its high-altitude air bases to the mainland. The reason why this started ringing alarm bells on the Indian side in particular is that the Chinese incursions took place at points along the LAC that were mutually accepted and acknowledged as Indian territory since long. According to Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s own admission, the nature of the current conflict is “a bit different” compared to past skirmishes. The poorly-demarcated LAC, with its overlapping zones of rival territorial claims, has often added a military dimension to already existing political tensions between New Delhi and Beijing. What probably prompted Singh to say that the nature of the current conflict was “a bit different” from the past was the sheer size of the troop build-up on the Chinese side. Beijing reportedly deployed as many as 5,000 soldiers along the LAC in the Galwan hotspot during this month’s showdown, prompting many a defence observer to say that such a massive buildup along the LAC was unprecedented.