Top US General Warns of ‘Concerning’ Chinese Activities along the Border with India

The contested border region in the high Himalayas ‘has become more concerning because of their actions,’ the top U.S. Army general for the region says of China’s Western Theater Army.

By Paul D. Shinkman

The Army’s top officer for operations in the Indo-Pacific region warned of the potential for new Chinese offensives in contested areas of its border with India – among the most consequential flashpoints for violence between world powers and a place where the U.S. is dedicating more military resources.

“The activities [of] what’s called the Western Theater Army in and along that area have been concerning for a number of months,” Gen. Charles Flynn, commander of U.S. Army Pacific, told reporters during a visit to a military base in Alaska this week.

He was referencing the Chinese military command that has overseen systematic and occasionally violent incursions into territory in the high Himalayas that India also claims as its own.

The most recent encounter in November in the Arunachal Pradesh region – in which India employed new U.S.-provided intelligence to anticipate and defeat the encroaching Chinese, as U.S. News first reported – came days after American forces completed a new training exercise with their Indian counterparts along another part of the border.

That exchange represented the fruits of a new partnership between Washington and New Delhi that has enraged the Chinese Communist Party.

Analysts and officials say China is currently in a probing and testing phase, preparing itself for future conflict by determining how well the Indian military, with its foreign backers, can respond to provocations. It has vast implications for how the U.S. and its allies can effectively offset Beijing’s ambitions for land grabs there – and elsewhere.

Flynn on Thursday declined to offer any details on what new measures China has undertaken to improve its chances for the next incursion as Beijing tests its expansionist aims, to include any new infrastructure it has installed along the border or intelligence-gathering measures.