Border Dispute: China Won’t Back Off, India Can’t Back Down

A car rally organized by India’s opposition Bharatiya Janata Party’s youth wing heads towards the Indo China border in Bumla at an altitude of 15,700 feet (9813 meters) above sea level in Arunachal Pradesh, India, Sunday, Oct. 21, 2012. The rally was held to pay homage to the Indian martyrs of the 1962 war between India and China. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

After six weeks of tension between China and India over a Chinese road building project on contested territory, neither side is prepared to back down. Known as the Doklam Plateau, this small area high up in the Himalayas where Bhutan, India, and China share a vaguely defined border, is now the center of a potential conflict with much larger geopolitical consequences.

A spokesman for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, Colonel Wu Qian, told reporters on Monday that China would not withdraw or end the road building project, saying “Shaking a mountain is easy but shaking the People’s Liberation Army is hard.”

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