Not a Blade of Grass

The High-Stakes Geopolitics of Aksai Chin

On November 3, 1958, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China issued a memorandum to the Indian embassy in Beijing, then Peking. It read as follows:¹

According to the report of the Chinese local authorities in Sinkiang, Frontier Guards of the Chinese Liberation Army stationed in the south-western part of Sinkiang discovered in succession on September 8 and 12 two groups of Indian armed personnel at Tahungliutan and Kegrekirekan on the Sinkiang-Tibet road on Chinese territory. These personnel had clearly intruded into Chinese territory to conduct unlawful surveying activities within Chinese borders. They were therefore detained by the Chinese Frontier Guards…The Chinese Government requests the Government of India to guarantee that no similar incidents will occur in future.

Sinkiang is present-day Xinjiang. Tahungliutan is now known as Dahongliutan, literally “Red Willow Beach,” a key military outpost and logistics node on the G219 Highway. This road is the modern successor of the Xinjiang-Tibet route cited in the memorandum and runs through the stark, high-altitude expanse of Aksai Chin at roughly 13,800 feet. Kegrekirekan, meanwhile, corresponds to the isolated tracts near the Karakash River and the Kongka Pass in the southwestern reaches of the Aksai Chin plateau.

The memorandum itself was issued in response to an earlier informal note from the Indian Foreign Secretary to the Chinese Ambassador. That note asserted that the highway lay within Indian territory and sought information on the whereabouts of an Indian patrol party reported to have disappeared in the area.

Neither side realized it then, but this diplomatic exchange marked the beginning of a border dispute that would manifest as a full-scale war four years later and remain unresolved well into the following century. At stake was a little over 7.5 million acres of some of the most hostile and desolate terrain imaginable on the far side of the Himalayas, also known as the “Soda Plains.” This essay attempts to answer a single question. Who owns Aksai Chin? The focus here is strictly historical, not moral and not political. Only the history.

A Forbidding Geography

Aksai Chin is a high-altitude plateau, rising roughly between 15,000 and 16,000 feet above sea level. The environment is severe. The land is unsuitable for agriculture and supports no permanent settlements. “Not a blade of grass grows there,” is how Nehru is famously alleged to have described the region, although the exact phrasing was “no tree grows anywhere in this wide area—there may be some shrubs.”² The remark was rhetorical rather than literal, since sparse grass does grow there, enough to support seasonal grazing during the summer months for sheep, goats, and yaks.

The plateau is isolated by a series of high-altitude natural boundaries. Its northern perimeter is defined by the Kunlun Mountains with perennial snow zones and a steep descent into the Tarim Basin. To the west, lie the offshoots of the Karakoram. And to the east and southeast lies a significant, though less documented, ridge rising about 20,000 feet. Described by early surveyors like Frederic Drew as the primary watershed ridge, this range (centered on the Lanak La) functions as a hydrological divide separating the endorheic westward drainage of the Amtogor and Sarig Jilgnang basins from the eastward discharge toward the Leighten and Tsoggar systems.³

This topographic configuration establishes a distinct internal geography for the plateau. The western sector of the Aksai Chin remains accessible exclusively from the southwest, from the settled regions of Ladakh. This point becomes important later. This geographical proximity once allowed Ladakhi pastoralists to conduct seasonal altitudinal migrations, driving livestock to higher elevations during the summer months without the necessity of traversing major orographic barriers. Such cyclic grazing patterns rendered the western plateau, particularly the Chang Chenmo valley and its contiguous rangelands, a viable resource for seasonal exploitation.

The environment nevertheless remained precarious. Abrupt, premature snowfall routinely compromised accessibility and obscured the already limited forage. These unpredictable weather events often resulted in significant livestock mortality before the herds could be successfully extricated to lower elevations.

At the same time, the same geography that permitted limited Ladakhi access made the plateau forbiddingly dangerous for herdsmen approaching from the north or east. Entry from those directions required crossing high mountain ranges, effectively reserving much of the western plateau, by force of terrain alone, for seasonal Ladakhi use.