https://thewire.in/security/chinas-g...e-lac-westward
China's Galwan Valley Claim is Attempt to Extend Official Claim Line, LAC Westward
At no point in the past has China laid claim to the entire Galwan Valley, a sliver of flat land abutted by steep gorges through which the Galwan river flows and enters the Shyok river, and the maps Beijing has itself published in the past show its claim line stopping short of the confluence. Earlier this week, however, in the wake of bloody clashes between the Indian and Chinese armies in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed and China too suffered an unknown number of casualties, both the Peoples Liberation Army and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing have described the Galwan Valley as part of China’s territory.
The Galwan river
is named after Ghulam Rassul Galwan, a Ladakhi adventurer who accompanied many European explorers in the region at the turn of the 19th century. According to Ladakhi history the Galwan Nullah was named so by British geologists after he discovered a passage through what seemed like an impenetrable set of gorges. Over the years, the status of the Galwan Valley has changed and, if the recent developments are to be taken into account, it is still changing.
Commenting on the incident of July 15, the official spokesman of the Western Theatre Command of the PLA, Zhang Shuili, accused the Indian side of “deliberately launching a provocative attack” and he went on to add that “the sovereignty of the Galwan Valley has always belonged to China.”
India, of course, disagrees with this claim....................
Since 1993, both India and China have maintained the fiction of a “Line of Actual Control” in the area, which was all right till the other day. Suddenly the Chinese have decided that the entire Galwan Valley is part of their territory.
The Chinese goal now seems to be to establish their boundary along the Shyok river, as it seems to be to push forward and control all of the north bank of Pangong Lake constraining Indian defences relating to the Leh region. As for the LAC, to paraphrase Humpty Dumpty, it is where you choose it to be.