“7 KM From China, a Village Says It’s Losing Land ‘Inch by Inch’ and Army Denies Fresh PLA Encroachment In Arunachal
Lobsang 
"7 KM From China, a Village Says It's Losing Land 'Inch by Inch' — and No One Can Prove Them Wrong"
According to the daily Jagran that a fresh controversy over India’s north-eastern frontier flared up this week after a section of the media reported that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had encroached into Arunachal Pradesh’s Upper Subansiri district and set up camps there. The Indian Army moved quickly to quash the claims, calling them “incorrect and without any basis,” even as a local tribal body’s letter to the district administration kept the controversy alive.
The Trigger: A Tribal Body’s Letter
The row stems from a memorandum dated June 26, submitted by the Nah Welfare Society (NWS) representing the Nah community of Taksing circle to the Upper Subansiri Deputy Commissioner. NWS president Keru Chader wrote that the PLA has, over the past 10 to 15 years, gradually expanded into five locations near the McMahon Line: Oying, Paniar, Marpan, Potrang Lake and Tindingtang. Some of these sites, the society said, hold religious significance and were under Indian control until 2020. Villagers traditionally used the areas for grazing, hunting and collecting forest produce; the NWS says local communities are now losing ancestral land “inch by inch,” and has enclosed photographs to support its claim.
The Army’s rebuttal was unambiguous: “These reports are incorrect and without any basis,” it said in a statement, denying any recent encroachment or the establishment of new camps inside Indian territory. Outgoing Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi separately described the border as stable, though sensitive, pointing to over 1,100 ground-level military interactions held annually to manage differing perceptions of the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Arunachal Pradesh Home Minister Mama Natung has ordered a district-level probe before deciding on further steps, while opposition leaders have demanded a central government inquiry into the allegations.
Taksing sits barely 7 km from the international boundary, in terrain so remote that independent verification remains extremely difficult — a gap that helps explain the disconnect between grassroots alarm and official assurance.
Understanding China’s ‘Salami-Slicing’
Strategic analysts often frame episodes like this through China’s so-called “salami-slicing” strategy a term rooted in Cold War theorist Thomas Schelling’s idea of advancing in increments too small to individually justify a military response, but which cumulatively deliver territorial or strategic gain. Commentators such as Brahma Chellaney and former Army Chief General Bipin Rawat have used this framework to describe Beijing’s approach along the LAC: a border road here, a resettled herding village there, a “xiaokang” (well-off) model village next none provocative alone, yet part of a pattern China has also employed in the South China Sea. Not every strategist agrees with the label; retired Lieutenant General H.S. Panag has argued that most of China’s territorial objectives were effectively settled by 1962, and that subsequent border frictions are aimed more at signalling and embarrassment than at fresh annexation.
A Relationship Shaped By 1962
The episode cannot be separated from history. India and China signed the Panchsheel Agreement in 1954, championing the spirit of “Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai,” only for relations to collapse after the 1962 war fought partly in the region then called NEFA, today’s Arunachal Pradesh. Trust has been rebuilt and broken repeatedly since: the 1993 LAC peace accord, the 2017 Doklam standoff, the deadly 2020 Galwan clash, and the 2022 face-off near Tawang. Yet 2024-25 brought a cautious thaw a new patrolling arrangement, Prime Minister Modi’s August 2025 visit to Tianjin, resumed direct flights and the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra reinforced last month by the 35th WMCC talks in Beijing, where both sides expressed satisfaction with progress toward normalisation.
That is precisely the paradox Taksing exposes. Even as diplomats speak of “peace and tranquillity” along the frontier, villagers on the ground describe a slow, steady erosion that no summit statement has visibly halted. Until the state government’s promised probe reports back, the truth of what is happening at Taksing will remain caught between two starkly different vantage points New Delhi’s negotiating table and Arunachal’s remote border ridges.
Conclusion
What emerges from Taksing is less a single incident than a familiar pattern repeating along a border that has never been formally settled. The Nah Welfare Society’s testimony and the Army’s flat denial cannot both be entirely right, yet the contradiction itself is telling: seven decades after Panchsheel, India and China still lack a shared, verifiable picture of where one country ends and the other begins. Whether this is “salami-slicing” in action, or, as sceptics argue, routine friction dressed up in alarming language, that very ambiguity is precisely what keeps such episodes recurring at regular intervals. The real test now lies with the promised district-level probe. A transparent inquiry that actually reaches Taksing’s remote ridges rather than one that quietly settles the matter in Itanagar or Delhi would do far more to reassure the Nah community and the nation than any diplomatic statement issued from Beijing or New Delhi.
About the Author
Jun Hao 
Rinchen Tashi 
Karma Ngawang