Aksai Chin
Coordinates: 35 ° 7 ' N , 79 ° 8' E
Aksai Chin ( Chinese 阿克赛钦 , Pinyin Ākèsài Qīn ) is a highland region on the western edge of Tibet , northeast of Kashmir . The approximately 38,000 km² area is under Chinese control, but is claimed by India . Along with Arunachal Pradesh, it is the main point in the border dispute between the two states. Most of Aksai Chin is located in Hotan Governorate of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region . From India the whole area is administratively regarded as part of the Union territory of Ladakh .
geography
The highlands of Aksai Chin are located on the western edge of the highlands of Tibet and northeast of the Indian region of Ladakh. In the border region to Ladakh in the west it is part of the Karakoram , the second highest mountain range on earth. In the north it borders on the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China, in the east and south on the Tibet Autonomous Region, which also belongs to China.
Aksai Chin also includes a high valley further south, separated from the main area (area around Dêmqog ).
Aksai Chin covers a total of about 38,000 km². Most of it is a salt desert on a plateau between 4500 m and 5200 m altitude . There are several salt lakes with no drainage .
Further north of this is the area of the Trans-Karakarum Tract with the Shaksgam Valley , which also belongs to the former Kashmir . This is one of the most impassable areas in the world with some of the highest peaks such as Broad Peak , Gasherbrum and Masherbrum as well as adjoining the highest battlefield on earth to the south, the Siachen Glacier , which is now Indian-ruled .
population
Few Buddhist Tibetans live in Aksai Chin . Most of them are nomads . The only permanent settlement of note is the Tianshuihai (甜水 海 兵站) military depot of the Chinese People's Liberation Army in the administrative area of Langan Municipality (兰 干 乡) of Keriya County , Hotan County .
prehistory
The historically documented history of Aksai Chin does not begin until the 9th century. Before that, however, the Tibetan kingdom of Shangshung , located to the south-east of the Tibetan plateau, which was previously only rudimentarily researched, like the kingdom of Guge later, had contacts to the west and to Xinjiang via Aksai Chin. At about the same time as the Kingdom of Ladakh was founded in 842, Tibetan monks created the principality of Aksai Chin (Chinese name Changlung La ) around the Tsaparang monastery . Tibetan Buddhism was also established in Ladakh in the 10th century by Tibetan monks .
In 1020 Tibetan kings invaded the area of Aksai Chin, subjugated Ladakh and founded a common kingdom under the name Aksai Chin Gantog . When the Mongols divided Tibet into 13 autonomous administrative districts in 1350, Aksai Chin gained its autonomy from Ladakh and Tibet.
At the beginning of the 15th century, Ladakh disintegrated into small independent principalities and in 1409 Aksai Chin and parts of Ladakh fell to Tibet. When Ladakh was reunified around 1470, it again included Aksai Chin with the area of Pangong Tso (southern Aksai Chin).
In the middle of the 16th century, Ladakh closed off to the south and oriented itself back to Tibet. Aksai Chin remained Tibetan until the beginning of the 19th century and formed the western border of Tibet. Shortly thereafter, Ladakh had to integrate itself as an autonomous principality in Kashmir, in which it remained even after the subjugation of Kashmir to the British East India Company and its subsequent takeover by Great Britain. Aksai Chin, on the other hand, remained an autonomous principality until after the Second World War , independent of Ladakh and Tibet, but culturally linked to both through religion. The last regent of Aksai Chin, Kunsang Namgyal died in 1974 in Indian exile.
Territorial dispute over Aksai Chin between India and China
Origin of the border
While there were no precise lines of borders until the arrival of the British, especially in the vast barren parts of the area, they began to be interested in this since the takeover of the protectorate over Kashmir. In particular, the aim was to promote trade, especially to Xinjiang and Tibet (as well as further into the interior of China), to militarily secure the economically interesting parts of British East India and, as in Afghanistan, to contain the ever-expanding Russian sphere of influence from the north as far as possible. This served that the own British sphere of influence was expanded further and further. However, Great Britain should not be burdened with very expensive security tasks in an impassable and economically uninteresting area.
For this purpose, easily steerable buffer states in the north of British India such as Afghanistan, Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan were left. China also served to safeguard British interests against corresponding efforts by Russia as a buffer state in the context of the so-called Great Game , the race for control of Central Asia. No unnecessary interference was made in their relations with dependent but autonomous areas such as Aksai Chin, Tibet and Mustang (the latter in the case of Nepal). For this purpose, explorers and surveyors were also sent, as little reliable information was available to the British, which were used to prepare for any military campaigns, to safeguard trade interests and to observe Russia's actions in Turkestan .
As in the east of British India with the McMahon Line, demarcations were also made in the west on the British side, but not just one. In both places, however, Great Britain - unlike the Russians in the north - was unable to agree binding border regulations with the Chinese Empire (as overlords in Tibet and Xinjiang) as desired (but such as the Sino-Russian border conflict around 1960 and the border treaties with border demarcation that have since been negotiated in the north also contained many delimitation problems). The mistrust on the Chinese side was too great, especially because of the so-called unequal treaties that had been forcibly concluded with various European powers since the British-Chinese opium war , to frivolously lose their own legitimate claims in such land treaties . On the other hand, in the course of the 19th century the interests of Great Britain shifted more towards the more accessible sea in the east, in order to develop China as a market from there, to colonize the country and thus to oppose the interests of other European powers and Japan. As a result, there was also no strong pressure on China from the British side to ultimately demand land cessions in the West, such as in Aksai Chin. Instead, the British contented themselves with staking out spheres of interest, with trade agreements, with vague formulations of boundary lines and, if specifically necessary, with agreements on special issues such as indemnity issues, market openings and the like.
The first reasonably precise description of the border was not given until 1865 by the British officer WH Johnson. He unilaterally laid the northern border of the British-Indian protectorate of Jammu and Kashmir, which had been British-Indian since 1846, along the Karakoram mountain range to the Karakoram Pass and then to Shahidulla along the northern part of Aksai Chin in the Kutlun Mountains (to the north of which was the Russian-influenced mountains Turkestan). In the area of the local soda plain, however, its delimitation was also quite vague due to the lack of natural boundaries. Johnson was thanked for this expansion of the subject area of the Maharajas of Kashmir with the post of governor of Ladakh. This line was later officially revised by the British. However, no contractual agreement from China was achieved for any of these delimitation of the spheres of interest.
In 1873 the British Foreign Office regarded the northern border of British India as running along the mountain range of the Karakoram mountain range, i.e. H. Aksai Chin as outside of British India. In 1889, Ney Elias, Joint Commissioner from Leh and expert on the area north of the Karakoram, recommended that no British claims be made to Shahidulla, as would have been the Johnson Line, as this could not be enforced militarily. On the other hand, Maj. Gen. Sir John Charles Ardagh the areas up to the Kuen-Lun area, d. H. all of Aksai Chin to formally claim. Before a final British decision on this, the Chinese occupied Shahidulla in 1890. The British accepted this, as it put a stop to Russia's advance south. The British Secretary of State for India declared: “ We are inclined to think that the wisest course would be to leave them in possession as it is evidently to our advantage that the tract of territory between the Karakoram and Kuen Lun mountains be held by a friendly power like China. "
Rather, in 1896, Russia - aware of international law practices and to the detriment of the British - moved Chinese officials in Xinjiang to protest against British maps showing Aksai Chin as British territory.
Accordingly, the so-called MacCartney-MacDonald Line was provided on the British side in 1899 instead of the unenforceable Johnson Line of 1865 to delimit British India from China. This line left most of Aksai Chin to China, with only a British area north of the Karakoram mountain range in the southeast. The British sought a border treaty with China on this matter, and when they did not respond, Lord Curzon, in a strange interpretation of international law, declared their silence as consent. H. the MacCartney-MacDonald line as a common border. After that, British interests went mainly to the east, to demarcate Tibet and the Sikkim, which was claimed on the British side, and between the British-Indian Assam and Tibet with the Mac Mahon line, which was soon equally controversial.
In 1904, the Treaty of Lhasa between Great Britain, Tibet, China and Russia established the autonomy of Aksai Chin. Aksai Chin was also confirmed as autonomous in the Treaty of Simla, which placed Tibet under the administration of China. By 1911 at the latest, with the outbreak of the Chinese Revolution and the turmoil of civil war that followed, China no longer bothered about the exact course of the border because of other urgent questions. In the meantime, Great Britain regarded the boundaries it had drawn itself unilaterally as self-evident international borders and left it to the local princes of British India, in particular the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, to actually control the claimed area.
This limbo at the demarcation did not change again until World War II, before British India became independent in 1947 with the two states Pakistan and India.
1940-41 the British discovered that Russian experts were exploring the area of Aksai Chin for the autonomous pro-Soviet government of warlord Sheng Shicai in Xinjiang. Again, as 100 years before, the British feared a dangerous expansion of the Russian sphere of influence. Accordingly, the Johnson Line, which extends further north, was again proclaimed as the northern border of the British Empire, but again it remained with a claim without effective exercise of sovereignty, such as through exploratory missions, occupation, administrative exercise or demarcation of the now reclaimed area by the British themselves or the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir.
Occupation by China
Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since the First Indo-Pakistani War from 1947 to 1949, without a territorial solution to the dispute having been achieved since then. Since then, the armistice line at that time (with a subsequent change in favor of India at the Siachen Glacier) has formed the limits of effectively exercised sovereignty. However, an effective exercise of state sovereignty in the areas of Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakarum Tract to the north of it did not take place on the part of Pakistan and India due to the remoteness and extremely poor accessibility from the south. In 1950, the Chinese People's Liberation Army crossed the area unnoticed by both states during the occupation of Western Tibet on the train to Xinjiang and has since been under military control.
In 1950/51 China announced the construction of a connection road between Tibet and Xinjiang in the north through Aksai Chin. The Chinese began building it in 1957 and completed today's G219 national road in the following year. India initially did not notice the construction work due to the remote and inhospitable nature of the almost deserted area. Only after the Ladakhi Lama Kushak Bakula, who had visited Tibet in the summer of 1957, had pointed out China's plan, did India send a delegation, later arrested by the Chinese, to Aksai Chin in the spring of 1958 to investigate the situation on the spot, and discovered it chinese street. On November 3, 1958, the People's Republic of China responded to a protest note from the Indian government on October 18, 1958, by officially raising a sovereign claim to Aksai Chin for the first time as the heir to the Chinese Empire. The Republic of China (Taiwan) has never waived these claims either.
In the course of the Indo-Chinese border war of 1962, Aksai Chin was definitely occupied by Chinese troops - as was the Shaksgam valley and a small area in the south around Dêmqog .
In 1963, Pakistan ceded its Kashmiri claims to the Trans-Karakarum Tract with the Shaksa Valley (and also to Aksai Chin) to China with reservations and definitely by contract in the 1980s.
Aksai Chin has since been administered by the People's Republic of China, but still claimed by India. There have been no more border incidents since then. The two states also agreed in a declaration in 2005 on the mutual recognition of the current Line of Actual Control (armistice line) along the entire common border (Kashmir, Sikkim, McMahon line in Arunachal Pradesh ). However, this agreement has not yet been legally anchored in a border treaty with the demarcation of the common border. On the other hand, on the border between Sikkim and Tibet, mutual trade has already been resumed and access roads to the border pass have been built. An extension of the railway to Lhasa in a southerly direction to Nepal and India is already being planned.
In conclusion, it can be said that there is definitely no border conflict between China and Pakistan in the Karakoram area today. There is a de facto border between China and India, but this has not yet been marketed, which could still result in minor conflicts over the exact course of the border between the two countries. Today, however, India has de facto resigned itself to Chinese sovereignty over Aksai Chin, while in the east China has accepted the unilateral British-drawn McMahon line as a common border. In addition, due to mutual common economic interests, both states have no interest in the flare-up of a border conflict in this inhospitable but strategically extremely important area - especially since the mutual ceasefire line in the west and east meets the essential security needs of both states. Territorial claims of both states that go beyond these lines are also based on shaky legal claims. In the case of Aksai Chin, India's claim was justified cartographically on the basis of the Johnson Line, which the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, the British, Pakistan or India never enforced on site as required under international law, with clear acts of sovereignty or by the opposing side as an international border was contractually confirmed.
See also
literature
- Margaret W. Fisher, Leo E. Rose, Robert A. Huttenback: Himalayan Battleground: Sino-Indian Rivalry in Ladakh. Pall Mall Press, London 1963.
- John Rowland: A History of Sino-Indian Relations. Hostile Co-Existence. , D. Van Nostrand, Princeton 1967.
Web links
- Sino-India Relations ( Memento from September 6, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Controversial border region - China and India begin withdrawing troops. Retrieved May 7, 2013 .