AksaiChin is a region of the union territory of Ladakh illegally captured and administered by China. The region located in northeast Ladakh is a cold desert that borders the chinese occupied regions of muslim Uyghur dominated Uyghur province and buddhist Tibetan dominated Tibet province. Aksai Chin constitutes the eastern portion of the larger Kashmir region which has been the subject of a dispute between India and China since the late 1950s.
when China in mid-1950s surreptitiously built a road inside Aksai Chin to connect the recently captured Uyghur and Tibet regions. After that, they slowly started capturing more and more areas of the region. When then-PM JawaharLal Nehru initiated a forward policy a euphemism for forwarding deployment of troops up to India’s claim line, it culminated in the 1962 India China War after which China captured 38000 sq. km of area in the region. Aksai Chin is a Turkic name first mentioned by Muhammad Amin, the #Yarkand guide of the Schlagintweit brothers.
In the 1860s..Aksai Chin back then stretched indefinitely east into Tibet, south of the Kunlun Mountains. Some sources interpret Aksai to be a word of Turkic origin with the meaning “white stone desert”, Some modern sources interpret it to mean “white brook” instead and even o mean “eastern” in the Yarkandi Uyghur dialect. The meaning regarding the word “Chin” is disputed, though most say,.It is taken to mean “China” though some say it means. “pass”..Because of its average 5,000-metre elevation, the desolation of Aksai Chin meant that it had no human importance and with low oxygen levels it meant that other than as an ancient trade route, as part of silkroad it had no use.
The region provided a temporary pass during summer months for caravans of yaks and camels between the regions of Uyghur and Tibet, Central Asia and China. For military campaigns, the region held great importance, as it was on the only route from the Tarim Basin to Tibet that was passable all year round. The Dzungar Khanate used this route to enter Tibet in 1717. In 1842. Ladakh was conquered a few years earlier by the armies of Dogra king Raja Gulab Singh, led by Zorawar Singh Kalhuria, his general under the suzerainty of the Sikh Empire.
Following an unsuccessful campaign into Tibet in 1840, Gulab Singh and the Tibetans signed a treaty, agreeing to stick to the “old, established frontiers”, which were left unspecified. British, who installed Gulab Singh as the Maharaja of Jammu Kashmir under their suzerainty. tried to negotiate the border by setting up the Johnson line and just before India’s independence in 1947 set up a new Mcmohan line, both of which are not recognized by China. The area is largely a vast high-altitude cold desert with numerous snow covered or barren mountains up to 7000 meters. Aksai Chin area has a number of endorheic basins with many salt or soda lakes.
The major saltwater lakes are Surigh Yil Ganning Kol, Tso Tang, Aksai Chin Lake, Hongshan Hu, etc. Much of the northern part of Aksai Chin is referred to as the Soda Plains, located near Aksai Chin’s largest river, the Karakash, which receives meltwater from a number of glaciers, that enters the Tarim Basin, where it serves as one of the main sources of water for Karakax and Hotan Counties. The western part of the Aksai Chin region is drained by the Tarim River. The eastern part of the region contains several small endorheic basins.
The largest of them is that of the Aksai Chin Lake, which is fed by the river of the same name. The region as a whole receives little precipitation as the Himalayas and Karakoram block the rains from the Indian monsoon. due to inhospitable terrain and lack of oxygen, there are no human settlements only some dwelling of road maintenance staff and semi-permanent border outpost manned by Indian and Chinese troops on both sides of the de facto border called LAC or Line of Actual Control and has seen several border skirmishes.
The region lies just east of Depsang Plains, Demchok area controlled by Indian Army, and has seen several border skirmishes. India intends to get back the entire region under its control one day. There is nothing of economic importance in the region but recent surveys have found huge mineral deposits that can be exploited commercially. There are several places worth visiting but due to security reasons tourism is non-existent in the region
