"China and the border dispute with India from 1962 to 2020" - by CWP alum M. Taylor Fravel

The China–India border dispute is perhaps the world’s most continuously negotiated territorial dispute. Since 1981, and until the Galwan Valley clash in 2020, negotiations or talks regarding the border have been held every single year—for thirty-eight years. This includes eight rounds at the vice-ministerial level in the 1980s, fifteen meetings of a joint working group from 1989 to 2005, and twenty-one meetings of the special representatives at the level of national security advisor since 2003. Moreover, several agreements on confidence-building measures were concluded in the 1990s, along with agreements relating to principles for settling the dispute or managing the border in 2005 and 2013. Nevertheless, a final settlement of the border dispute has remained elusive, and the two sides appear no closer to reaching agreement today than they did when negotiations resumed in 1981. At the same time, since 1962, armed conflict along the border had been limited for an extended period; no soldier had died on the border since 1975—until 2020 (Menon 2016: 22).

MT Fravel - Routledge Handbook of China–India Relations

M. Taylor Fravel is the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science and Director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Taylor studies international relations, with a focus on international security, China, and East Asia. His books include Strong Borders, Secure Nation: Cooperation and Conflict in China’s Territorial Disputes, (Princeton University Press, 2008) and Active Defense: China's Military Strategy Since 1949 (Princeton University Press, 2019). His other publications have appeared in International Security, Foreign Affairs, Security Studies, International Studies Review, The China Quarterly, The Washington Quarterly, Journal of Strategic Studies, Armed Forces & Society, Current History, Asian Survey, Asian Security, China Leadership Monitor, and Contemporary Southeast Asia.

Taylor is a graduate of Middlebury College and Stanford University, where he received his PhD. He also has graduate degrees from the London School of Economics and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. In 2016, he was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow by the Carnegie Corporation. Taylor is a member of the board of directors of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and serves as the Principal Investigator for the Maritime Awareness Project.

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By United States Central Intelligence Agency - Map of Kashmir region created by the US Central Intelligence Agency, 2004, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=91503366