China’s new road cuts travel time to Karakoram Pass, raises red flags in Delhi

Chinese infrastructure building activity has also increased in depth areas with a new logistics depot coming up at Golmud, 1,000 km from the Line of Actual Control, that will have an underground petroleum and oil storage facility.

Updated on: Dec 18, 2020, 13:48:29 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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Satellite imagery and communication intercepts along the 3,488 kilometre Line of Actual Control (LAC) shows that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is undertaking a significant road and building infrastructure upgrade across Karakoram Pass and Aksai Chin to ramp up military capacities and capability against India.

The India China border standoff has continued for more than seven months. (ANI)

It is quite evident from the surveillance data available to conclude that despite Beijing’s verbal commitments of mutual military disengagement and de-escalation from friction point on Ladakh LAC, the PLA has no intentions of troop or equipment withdrawal from the area.

While the government is tight-lipped about the developments, the number of military vehicles and troop hutments have increased along the 597-km Ladakh LAC with a number of fresh dug-outs indicating that the PLA is prepared for a long haul with Indian Army.

Indian officials said what was a matter of serious concern was that China has built an alternative 8-10 metre wide road to Karakoram Pass that would shorten the distance to the strategic gateway into Daulet Beg Oldi sector by two hours.

Also Read: India, China to resume diplomatic talks on Friday over Ladakh disengagement

“Nearly all the kutcha (unmetalled) roads have been surfaced in the Aksai Chin area with the axis being widened for bigger vehicles carrying heavy equipment,” said a senior military commander.

The Chinese infra building activity has also increased in depth areas with a new logistics depot that will have an underground petroleum and oil storage facility coming up at Golmud. The new depot is nearly 1,000 km from the LAC but is linked to Lhasa via Tibet Railway. It will enhance the capacity and capability of the PLA to deploy in Tibetan border with India for a long time and feed the troops in case of a worst-case scenario.

While there is continuous activity on Sikkim border, the new concern is the building of two new underground facilities at the Pang Ta air base across Arunachal Pradesh. The PLA uses underground tunnels inside mountains for housing aircraft rather than blast pens on the air bases. A similar tunnel park has been noticed at Lhasa Gonggar air base with an increase in the number of military aircraft.

The 1962 Xinjiang military command town of Kangxiwar across Karakoram Pass and on the banks of Karakash River is being revived with a direct highway connectivity to Hotan, a critical air base of PLA Air Force for dominating the restive Uighurs and a launch pad of fighter operations in case of a worst case scenario in East Ladakh. Hotan is located 320 kilometres from the Ladakh LAC.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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