LAC (China–India)

The Line of Actual Control (LAC) is the working military boundary between the People's Republic of China and the Republic of India, stretching roughly 3,400 km across the western, middle, and eastern sectors of the Himalayas. Unlike a formally delimited international border, the LAC is a de facto line whose precise alignment is contested: India and China hold differing maps of where it runs, and it has never been jointly surveyed or mutually demarcated on the ground.

The term entered diplomatic usage after the 1962 Sino-Indian War, when Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai referred to a "line of actual control" in correspondence with Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. It was formally institutionalised in the 1993 Agreement on the Maintenance of Peace and Tranquility along the Line of Actual Control and the 1996 Agreement on Confidence-Building Measures in the Military Field, both of which committed the two sides to respect the LAC pending a final boundary settlement.

The LAC is conventionally divided into three sectors:

• Western sector: centred on Aksai Chin, administered by China but claimed by India as part of Ladakh.
• Middle sector: running along Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh; the least contested.
• Eastern sector: largely tracking the McMahon Line along Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims as "South Tibet" (Zangnan).

Because patrolling limits diverge, troops from both sides periodically encounter each other in disputed pockets, producing standoffs at places such as Depsang, Demchok, Doklam (a related Bhutan–China dispute, 2017), and Galwan Valley, where a June 2020 clash killed at least 20 Indian and 4 acknowledged Chinese soldiers — the first combat deaths on the LAC in 45 years. Subsequent rounds of corps-commander talks produced phased disengagement at several friction points, with a further patrolling arrangement announced in October 2024.