Аксай Чин: История названия и территориальных споров.

Region in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Kashmir administered by China

Aksai Chin was first mentioned by Muhammad Amin, the Yarkandi guide of Schlagintweit brothers contracted by the British East India Company for exploration of Central Asia. Amin explained its meaning as "the great white sand desert". Linguist George van Driem states that the name intended by Amin was Aqsai Chöl (; ) which could mean "white ravine desert" or "white coomb desert". The word chöl for desert seems to have been corrupted in English transliteration into "chin". modern Western, Chinese, and Indian sources. Some modern sources interpret it to mean "white brook" instead. At least one source interprets Aksai to mean "eastern" in the Yarkandi Uyghur dialect. The word "Chin" was taken to mean "China" by some Chinese, Western, In 1895, the British envoy to Kashgar told the Chinese Taotai that Aksai Chin was a "loose name for an ill defined, elevated tableland", part of which lay in Indian and part in Chinese territory. The current meaning of the term is the area under dispute between India and China, evolved in repeated post colonial usage.

Because of its elevation, the desolation of Aksai Chin meant that it had no human importance. 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. Ladakh was conquered in 1842 by the armies of Raja Gulab Singh (Dogra) under the suzerainty of the Sikh Empire. The British defeat of the Sikhs in 1846 resulted in the transfer of the Jammu and Kashmir region including Ladakh to the British, who then installed Gulab Singh as the Maharaja under their suzerainty. The British appointed a boundary commission headed by Alexander Cunningham to determine the boundaries of the state. Chinese and Tibetan officials were invited to jointly demarcate the border, but they did not show any interest. The British boundary commissioners fixed the southern part of the boundary up to the Chang Chenmo Valley, but regarded the area north of it as terra incognita.

William Johnson, a civil servant with the Survey of India proposed the "Johnson Line" in 1865, which put Aksai Chin in Kashmir. This was the time of the Dungan revolt, when China did not control most of Xinjiang, so this line was never presented to the Chinese. Johnson presented this line to the Maharaja of Kashmir, who then claimed the 18,000 square kilometres contained within,Unreliable source: date=October 2019 and by some accounts territory further north as far as the Sanju Pass in the Kun Lun Mountains. The Maharajah of Kashmir constructed a fort at Shahidulla (modern day Xaidulla), and had troops stationed there for some years to protect caravans. Eventually, most sources placed Shahidulla and the upper Karakash River firmly within the territory of Xinjiang (see accompanying map). According to Francis Younghusband, who explored the region in the late 1880s, there was only an abandoned fort and not one inhabited house at Shahidulla when he was there – it was just a convenient staging post and a convenient headquarters for the nomadic Kirghiz. The abandoned fort had apparently been built a few years earlier by the Kashmiris. In 1878 the Chinese had reconquered Xinjiang, and by 1890 they already had Shahidulla before the issue was decided. In 1897 a British military officer, Sir John Ardagh, proposed a boundary line along the crest of the Kun Lun Mountains north of the Yarkand River. At that time, Britain was concerned about the danger of Russian expansion as China weakened, and Ardagh argued that his line was more defensible. The Ardagh line was effectively a modification of the Johnson line, and became known as the "Johnson Ardagh Line".

In 1893, Hung Ta chen, a senior Chinese official at St. Petersburg, gave maps of the region to George Macartney, the British consul general at Kashgar, which coincided in broad details. In 1899, Britain proposed a revised boundary, initially suggested by Macartney and developed by the Governor General of India Lord Elgin. This boundary placed the Lingzi Tang plains, which are south of the Laktsang range, in India, and Aksai Chin proper, which is north of the Laktsang range, in China. This border, along the Karakoram Mountains, was proposed and supported by British officials for a number of reasons. The Karakoram Mountains formed a natural boundary, which would set the British borders up to the Indus River watershed while leaving the Tarim River watershed in Chinese control, and Chinese control of this tract would present a further obstacle to Russian advance in Central Asia. The British presented this line, known as the Macartney–MacDonald Line, to the Chinese in 1899 in a note by Sir Claude MacDonald. The Qing government did not respond to the note. According to some commentators, China believed that this had been the accepted boundary.

The line is named after Henry McMahon, foreign secretary of British India and the chief British negotiator of the conference at Simla. The bilateral agreement between Tibet and Britain was signed by McMahon on behalf of the British government and Lonchen Shatra on behalf of the Tibetan government.

Both the Johnson Ardagh and the Macartney MacDonald lines were used on British maps of India. When British officials learned of Soviet officials surveying the Aksai Chin for Sheng Shih tsai, warlord of Xinjiang in 1940–1941, they again advocated the Johnson Line. At this point the British had still made no attempts to establish outposts or control over the Aksai Chin, nor was the issue ever discussed with the governments of China or Tibet, and the boundary remained undemarcated at India's independence.

Upon independence in 1947, the government of India used the Johnson Line as the basis for its official boundary in the west, which included the Aksai Chin. The construction of this highway was one of the triggers for the Sino Indian War of 1962. The Indian position, as stated by Prime Minister Nehru, was that the Aksai Chin was "part of the Ladakh region of India for centuries" and that this northern border was a "firm and definite one which was not open to discussion with anybody". A visual side by side comparison shows a very detailed duplication of Aksai Chin in the camp. The model was surrounded by a substantial facility, with rows of red roofed buildings, scores of olive coloured trucks and a large compound with elevated lookout posts and a large communications tower. Such terrain models are known to be used in military training and simulation, although usually on a much smaller scale. Local authorities in Ningxia claim that their model of Aksai Chin is part of a tank training ground, built in 1998 or 1999. In August 2017, Indian and Chinese forces near Pangong Tso threw rocks at each other. On 11 September 2019, People's Liberation Army troops confronted Indian troops on the northern bank of Pangong Lake. A continued face off in the 2020 China–India skirmishes of May and June 2020 between Indian and Chinese troops near Pangong Tso Lake culminated in a violent clash on 16 June 2020, with at least 20 deaths from the Indian side and no official reported deaths from the Chinese side. In 2021, Chinese state media reported 4 Chinese deaths. Both sides claimed provocation from the other.

Aksai Chin is one of the two large disputed border areas between India and China. India claims Aksai Chin as the easternmost part of the union territory of Ladakh. China claims that Aksai Chin is part of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and Tibet Autonomous Region. The line that separates Indian administered areas of Ladakh from Aksai Chin is known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and is concurrent with the Chinese Aksai Chin claim line. The Akasy region is sparely populated region with few settlements such as Heweitan, Khurnak Fort, Tianshuihai and Dahongliutan and Kangxiwar which lays north of it, with the latter being the forward headquarters of the Xinjiang Military Command during the 1962 Sino Indian War. Aksai Chin covers an area of approximately The area is largely a vast high altitude desert with a low point (on the Karakash River) at about above sea level. In the southwest, mountains up to extending southeast from the Depsang Plains form the de facto border (Line of Actual Control) between Aksai Chin and Indian controlled Kashmir. In the north, the Kunlun Range separates Aksai Chin from the Tarim Basin, where the rest of Hotan County is situated. According to a recent detailed Chinese map, no roads cross the Kunlun Range within Hotan Prefecture, and only one track does so, over the Hindutash Pass. Aksai Chin area has number of endorheic basins with many salt or soda lakes. The major salt lakes are Surigh Yilganing Kol, Tso Tang, Aksai Chin Lake, Hongshan Lake, 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, crosses the Kunlun farther northwest, in Pishan County and enters the Tarim Basin, where it serves as one of the main sources of water for Karakax and Hotan Counties. The western part of 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 the Karakoram block the rains from the Indian monsoon. The nearby Trans Karakoram Tract is also the subject of ongoing dispute between China and India in the Kashmir dispute. Prior to European exploration in the 1860s, there were some jade mining operations on the Xinjiang side of Aksai Chin. They were abandoned by the time European explorers reached the area. The route, referred to as the Chang Chenmo line after the starting point in Chang Chenmo River valley, was discussed in the House of Commons in 1874. In addition of being longer and higher elevation than Karakoram Pass, it also goes through the desolate desert of Aksai Chin. In the 1950s, India collected salt from various lakes in Aksai Chin to study the economic feasibility of salt mining operations in the area. By the end of the 1950s, in addition to having constructed a road, numerous PLA Ground Force outposts were constructed in a few locations, including at Tianwendian, Kongka Pass, Heweitan and Tianshuihai. The road was later upgraded to the China National Highway 219. In the modern day, there are a few businesses along the highway serving motorists. In the 2010s, geological surveys were conducted in the Western Kunlun region, which Aksai Chin is part of. Huoshaoyun, a major lead zinc deposit, and numerous smaller deposits were discovered in the region. The mining development for Huoshaoyun started in 2017.

China National Highway 219 runs through Aksai Chin connecting Tibet (Ngari Prefecture) and Xinjiang (Hotan Prefecture). In July 2022, Ministry of Transport of China published updated China National Highway Network Plan that includes China National Highway 695 which will go from Lhünzê Town, Lhünzê County, Tibet to Mazar Township, Yining County, Xinjiang travelling through Aksai Chin.