How Doklam Issue Compelled Chinese Leadership To Focus On Sino-Indian Border
In the wake of the Doklam crisis in January 2018, Senior Colonel Zhu Bo, a well-connected People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officer, wrote a commentary in the South China Morning Post. Zhu, a familiar sight in international conferences like the Shangri-La Dialogue, warned that India would have to pay a heavy price for its stand in Doklam. “For years, the disputed border has not really been on China’s strategic radar,” he wrote, “in part because of its emphatic victory against India in the 1962 border war, and in part because of China’s major strategic concerns lie elsewhere.”
“As a result, China will most probably enhance infrastructure construction along the border. India may follow suit, but it will in no way be comparable in either speed or scale.”
The words have turned out to be prophetic. In…