The brawl reportedly took place five days ago in the northern sick Um which borders Tibet.

There have been several episodes of conflict between Chinese and Indian soldiers in the past along the line of actual control.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry would not comment on the latest report but gave this statement.

Have listen, Queen is without the duty to Juan.

I want to stress that China's border troops are committed to upholding peace on stability along the border with India.

We urged the Indian sides work in the same way with us and refrain from any action that may escalate or complicates the situation.

We hope that both sides will take the correct precautions to manage their differences.

The response there from the Chinese Foreign Ministry Let's speak now to Shashank Joshi, who's the defense editor of The Economist.

He joins us live now from London.

Shashank.

Thanks very much for joining us.

I mean, frankly, this has been a flashpoint for decades.

Absolutely.

The two countries fought a major war over their disputed border in 1962.

Uh, then it was relatively stable for many decades after the 19 eighties.

Which is why last year's events Ah, major, indeed, a deadly clash between the two armies in the gallon River valley, not in sick him, but much further to the west in a province called Ladakh.

That was why that was such a big deal.

It indicated that the, um the ability of these two countries to manage their border dispute peacefully without weapons, without guns, without fatalities and loss of life that it had essentially collapsed.

Andi, it wasn't just the gallon clash.

We also saw the first ever use off firearms since the 19 seventies on that border last year.

I think what we have to remember here is in the context of this latest clash is that there are still very substantial numbers of armed forces on both sides that are still deployed to the front lines very near the disputed line of actual control, as it's called even now, even in these very harsh winter months.

And so the risk of these flare ups is going to be ever present.

Is this a ljust about sovereignty?

Uh, of course it is.

partly about sovereignty.

This is territory that both sides claim.

It is the kind of meeting point of empires, the British Empire theme, Chinese empires and so, like Aled borderlands between empires.

Um, it's a very blurred, fuzzy area, and you have to rising Asian powers, both nuclear powers, both with large, rising economies that want to stake their claim in the world, um, want to lay claim to this and don't want to give an inch to the other side.

But I think it's also about a much wider sense of distrust and hostility that has erupted between India and China in recent years.

That is not just about land in these mountainous areas that that has very limited practical utility.

It's also about things like India's protection of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan movement, which China considers to be a separatist menace.

It's about India's increasing diplomatic proximity to the United States, China's rival on about competition in the Indian Ocean, with an increasing number of Chinese ships flooding into those traditional maritime areas to India south.

So, in other words, it isn't just about sovereignty.

It's about geopolitical competition as much as anything else.

So when we're seeing these sorts of clashes along that border from both sides.

E is they a genuine concern then that misunderstandings, miscalculations could could lead toa actual war.

There is, I think, for a long time that fear was suppressed by the fact that Aziz biggest this dispute.

Waas the serious as it waas The two sides had agreed lots of things to ease tensions.

For example, uh, they had agreed that soldiers on patrol would not use their weapons.

They wouldn't fire their weapons under any circumstances.

They had agreed, for example, that if a A patrol came across another patrol in a disputed area, they would make their statements say, you're in my territory, you're in my territory, but then they'd go their separate ways, they wouldn't follow each other and you'd built up this edifice of diplomatic agreement to lower the temperature.

What I think last year showed is that amid all of these wider diplomatic tensions that I mentioned not just to do with the border, but to do with trade and an ideology and geopolitical competition.

Those undertakings have broken down and therefore even very small clashes.

Orbits of friction do have the ability that the risk of spiraling into something much bigger, with lots of firepower deployed in pretty close proximity between these two states.

Shashank Joshi Thank you so much for joining us and for your analysis there.