From Incremental Encroachment Strategy as part of Active Defence and Three Warfares to the Cognitive Battlespace — Implications for India and the Indo-Pacific
“Modern wars no longer begin with bullets. They begin with maps. Before territory is occupied, perceptions are occupied. China’s repeated cartographic offensives reveal a sophisticated strategy to redraw borders without firing the first shot.” – Major General (Dr) S B Asthana
Backdrop
China’s repeated publication of official maps claiming Arunachal Pradesh, Aksai Chin, Taiwan and the South China Sea is far more than diplomatic posturing. It is part of a long-term strategy of Cartographic Warfare—integrating legal warfare, psychological warfare and narrative dominance within Beijing’s doctrine of Active Defence. This article examines how maps have become instruments of grey-zone conflict, why Nepal and Bangladesh illustrate the regional spread of cartographic politics, and what India must do to counter this evolving challenge. As geopolitical competition increasingly shifts into the cognitive battlespace, India must respond not merely with diplomatic protests but through an integrated strategy combining military preparedness, legal documentation, strategic communication and international partnerships.
Maps are no longer passive representations of geography—they have become active instruments of geopolitical competition. China’s repeated cartographic claims since 2023 demonstrate a carefully calibrated strategy aimed at manufacturing legal legitimacy, shaping public perception and gradually altering the status quo without conventional conflict. This article explores how cartography has evolved into an integral component of China’s Three Warfares strategy and assesses the implications for India, the Indo-Pacific and the future of grey-zone competition.
I am sharing my detailed analysis below. My connected publications outside my website Asthana Writes have been hyperlinked for further studies.
Cartographic Warfare: China’s Silent Offensive to Redraw Borders Without Fighting
From Incremental Encroachment Strategy as part of Active Defence and Three Warfares to the Cognitive Battlespace — Implications for India and the Indo-Pacific
Major General (Dr) S B Asthana, SM, VSM, PhD (Veteran)asthanawrites.org | @asthana_shashi | June 2026
BACKDROP
Military history teaches that wars are rarely won on battlefields alone. Before soldiers’ advance, maps often do.
For over two decades, China has perfected a strategy of expanding geopolitical influence without firing a shot — artificial islands, maritime militia, border villages, renamed towns, revised historical narratives and officially published maps together constitute a sustained campaign to alter perceptions before altering realities on the ground. Between 2023 and 2026, Beijing repeatedly published official maps and renaming lists claiming Arunachal Pradesh, Aksai Chin, the South China Sea and Taiwan — not isolated diplomatic irritants, but instalments of a long-term strategy of incremental encroachment. As fourteen nations issue joint statement in favour of PCA decision against China in South China Sea in favour of Phillippines, the question remains-Does it make any difference to any P5 member like China?
This strategy is not China specific. Trump administration in 2019, officially altered the US government’s standard world map to show the Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory, rather than Syrian territory occupied by Israel, despite UN continuing to oppose this unilateral position. The recent incidents of President Trump photos with American flag on Greenland gives out his intentions through imagery, a point he repeated in NATO Summit last month after Davos.
India must recognise that maps have become weapons in the cognitive battlespace, and that the first contest of this century is being fought in the realm of perception before it is fought at the frontier.
From Geography to Geopolitics
Traditional maps were instruments of navigation; modern geopolitical maps are instruments of power. Every sovereign map officially released by a government carries political legitimacy, and once incorporated into school textbooks, administrative documents and diplomatic correspondence, disputed territory gradually embeds itself within national consciousness. China understands this dynamic better than most nations and has converted cartography into an institutionalised policy tool rather than an episodic nationalist gesture.
The Anatomy of China’s Map Offensive: Arunachal Pradesh as the Primary Target
The publication of China’s Standard Map in August 2023 — which added a controversial tenth dash east of Taiwan to its baseline nine-dash-line claims — set the tone for what followed. It was accompanied that same year by a renaming list covering 11 locations in Arunachal Pradesh and reinforced in March 2024 by a further batch of 30 Chinese names. The May 2025 standard map again folded the entire state, labelled South Tibet, together with Aksai Chin, parts of Ladakh, all of Taiwan and disputed stretches of Bhutan into China’s territorial presentation. By April 2026, Beijing’s Ministry of Civil Affairs had issued its sixth list, renaming 23 further locations — residential areas, mountain passes, rivers and lakes — each tagged with precise GPS coordinates and rendered in Chinese characters, Tibetan script and Pinyin. Parallel administrative pressure has appeared in Ladakh, where new counties raised in Xinjiang near the Karakoram range overlap into Indian-administered territory, and in the South and East China Seas, where more than eighty islands, reefs and undersea features have received standardised Chinese names contested by Vietnam, the Philippines and Japan.
Each set of names is not a cultural curiosity but a legal artefact. Beijing’s domestic regulations now stipulate that foreign place names deemed harmful to China’s territorial claims cannot be used on Chinese maps without authorisation, converting nomenclature itself into an instrument of jurisdiction. This is method, not impulse. The standard map, the renaming lists, military spokesperson statements and digital cartographic ecosystems reinforce one another in a layered documentary offensive. Externally, it manufactures a maximalist opening position for future negotiation. Internally, it hardens domestic sentiment, lowering the political cost of sustained confrontation. Every diplomatic protest lodged by an affected country paradoxically feeds Beijing’s narrative that it is merely defending sovereign territory it never legally possessed.
Active Defence, Salami Slicing and the Strategy of Incremental Encroachment
Chinese military doctrine often appears contradictory to outside observers: Beijing describes itself as pursuing ‘Active Defence’, while simultaneously engaging in persistent territorial expansion. The contradiction dissolves once the doctrine is properly read. Active Defence permits offensive tactical action provided it is packaged within a defensive political narrative — every expansion is presented as defending “historic sovereignty.” This logic explains South China Sea militarisation, East China Sea coercion, border-village construction along the Himalayas, military pressure around Taiwan and incremental transgressions along the Line of Actual Control. The strategic objective is not immediate conquest but gradual alteration of the status quo until resistance becomes politically or militarily too costly to sustain — what the author terms as “Incremental Encroachment Strategy of China” and Western analysts term Salami Slicing and others call the Cabbage Strategy. Maps supply the documentary justification for every slice.
Cartography as the Undeclared Fourth Warfare
China formally incorporated the Three Warfare’s concept — Public Opinion Warfare, Psychological Warfare and Legal Warfare — into PLA political doctrine in 2003. Cartographic Warfare is not listed as a separate doctrine, yet it represents the practical convergence of all three. Publishing an official map is simultaneously an act of legal warfare, since it manufactures documentary legitimacy; an act of psychological warfare, since repetition normalises an illegal claim; and an act of public-opinion warfare, since domestic audiences gradually internalise disputed territory as unquestionably Chinese.
The purpose is not merely to claim ground but to alter the cognitive environment in which the dispute is discussed — winning acceptance before winning territory. Sun Tzu’s counsel that supreme excellence lies in subduing the enemy without fighting has been modernised for the information age, extending into historical reinterpretation, selective legal argument, state media, academic publication and digital platforms, each reinforcing the other until international audiences begin describing disputed territory as merely “Chinese-claimed” rather than illegally claimed.
The Regional Echo: Nepal and Bangladesh
Cartographic politics is no longer confined to China alone. Nepal’s 2020 political map incorporating Kalapani, Lipulekh and Limpiyadhura demonstrated how cartography itself can become an instrument of foreign policy; the claim was subsequently mainstreamed into state symbolism when Nepal’s central bank issued a revised Rs 100 note in 2025 depicting the disputed territories — moving the claim from diplomatic note to everyday sovereign identity, and drawing a firm Indian rebuttal describing it as a unilateral and artificial enlargement of claims. While Nepal lacks Beijing’s coercive reach and Three Warfare’s apparatus, and its actions should not be mechanically equated with China’s revisionist model, the technique — official cartography institutionalising a claim, shaping domestic opinion and placing the other side on the diplomatic defensive — echoes the wider trend unfolding amid intensifying Chinese influence in Kathmandu. Bangladesh has faced a different form of the same pressure, with reports of Chinese objections to Bangladeshi educational material depicting Arunachal Pradesh as Indian territory — evidence that Beijing seeks to shape not only its own maps but how third countries portray disputed ground.
A Global Phenomenon
China is not unique in weaponising cartography, even if it practises the craft with unmatched doctrinal sophistication. In March 2019, the Trump administration officially altered the US government’s standard world map to depict the Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory rather than Syrian territory under occupation, a position the United Nations continues to reject. In February 2026, the office of the US Trade Representative triggered a diplomatic row by posting a map of India marking an interim trade deal that showed the entirety of Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and China-controlled Aksai Chin as unified Indian territory without the customary disputed-boundary notation; Pakistan’s aggressive protest saw the post deleted within 72 hours and characterised as an oversight. President Trump’s photo-opportunities with the American flag planted on Greenland — a stand which he repeated at the recent NATO summit — signal intent through imagery rather than formal cartography.
Strategic Implications for the Northeast and the Indo-Pacific
The cumulative weight of these cartographic offensive carries implications that extend well beyond bilateral irritation between New Delhi and Beijing. For India’s northeastern frontier, it reinforces the strategic logic behind sustained investment in the Vibrant Villages Programme, all-weather connectivity to forward areas, and habitat development that keeps border populations rooted rather than migrating away from contested zones, since depopulated frontiers are precisely the vacuum that incremental encroachment seeks to exploit.
For the wider Indo-Pacific, it signals that grey-zone cartographic assertion is becoming a template rather than an isolated Himalayan phenomenon, replicated with local variations in the South China Sea, the East China Sea and now, through Nepal’s example, in the sub-continental neighbourhood. Partners such as Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines and Australia, each contending with their own version of Chinese map lawfare, share an interest with India in developing common legal and information responses rather than litigating each instance in isolation. A coordinated Indo-Pacific approach to cartographic and narrative aggression would raise the reputational and diplomatic cost of each fresh assertion, denying Beijing the low-cost, high-yield character that currently makes this instrument so attractive.
Russia consolidated its annexation of Crimea through constitutional amendment and official maps well ahead of international recognition catching up; Morocco’s maps depict Western Sahara as integral national territory; Turkey has advanced expansive maritime claims through its “Blue Homeland” doctrine; and Venezuela’s renewed claim over the Essequibo region relied on official cartographic narrative before political escalation followed. History repeatedly shows that territorial claims begin with maps before they are reinforced through diplomacy, legislation or military presence — and that strategic competition today extends into an information domain where China, Russia, Iran and even democratic states have each been accused of shaping perception to secure advantage without direct confrontation.
India’s Response: From Protest to Comprehensive Strategy
India has correctly and consistently rejected every illegal Chinese map. Following the April 2026 list, MEA reiterated that India categorically rejects Beijing’s “mischievous attempts” to assign “fictitious names” to Indian territory, that invented nomenclature carries no ground impact, and that Arunachal Pradesh was, is and will remain an integral and inalienable part of India. New Delhi has further warned that such manoeuvres inject unnecessary negativity into bilateral relations and stall efforts to stabilise the Line of Actual Control. But diplomatic protest, however unequivocal, is a necessary rather than sufficient response to a threat that is cumulative and institutional by design, although India is confident that it does not change anything on ground.
A comprehensive Indian response should rest on four mutually reinforcing lines of effort. First, institutionalise strategic communication: every Chinese map, renaming list or documentary assertion should draw immediate, coordinated diplomatic rebuttal accompanied by systematic publication of India’s own archival, treaty-based and administrative record, converting reaction into counter-documentation. Second, strengthen deterrence by denial along the LAC through accelerated border infrastructure, persistent domain awareness, logistics resilience and forward posture — narrative firmness unsupported by hard capability on the ground will only invite further testing.
Third, build an integrated information strategy that fuses official cartography, digital diplomacy, think-tank outreach, academic scholarship and international legal argumentation, presenting India’s strong legal and historical case with far greater coherence to global audiences unfamiliar with the dispute. Fourth, deepen coordination with Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines and other Indo-Pacific partners confronting similar lawfare, while managing neighbourhood signalling — from Kathmandu to Dhaka — with a mix of firmness and diplomatic sensitivity, so that bilateral irritants are not exploited to deepen the region’s strategic dependence on Beijing.
Conclusion: Winning the Battle Before the Border
China’s repeated publication of official maps between 2023 and 2026 is neither symbolic nor accidental. It is a carefully orchestrated strategy that integrates Active Defence, the Three Warfares, lawfare, cognitive warfare and incremental encroachment into a coherent geopolitical approach — one increasingly echoed, in different registers, by Nepal’s cartographic signalling and by cartographic controversies as far afield as the Golan Heights, Crimea and the Essequibo. Borders in the twenty-first century are contested as much through narratives, legal interpretation, digital platforms and official documents as through military force.
India possesses the military capability, diplomatic stature and civilisational confidence to resist such revisionism. What it now needs is an equally sophisticated narrative strategy — one that matches Beijing’s long-term planning with its own integrated approach to strategic communication, legal preparedness, technological innovation and coalition building. In the emerging era of grey-zone competition, the nation that shapes the map of minds will ultimately shape the map of the world.
Additional Research References
Within the site Asthana Writes by the Author
Trump, Xi and Cold War 2.0: Managing Rivalry in a Fragmented World
Some publications outside website
Remaining publications in the hyperlinks in the text of the Analysis.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Major General (Dr) S B Asthana, SM, VSM, PhD (Veteran) is a globally recognised Strategic and Defence Analyst with 45+ years of leadership experience across military operations, global strategic affairs, international diplomacy, and United Nations peace operations. A PhD holder from Jawaharlal Nehru University, he is the author of over 500 publications and has appeared in 5,000+ television interviews and debates worldwide. He is a former Director General of Infantry of the Indian Army and former Director of the United Service Institution of India (USI), India’s oldest defence think tank. He lectures regularly at strategic and military forums, UN organisations, think tanks, and universities across the world, and is a frequent contributor to the Indo-Pacific Defence Forum, Economic Times, South China Morning Post, Modern Diplomacy (EU), and 50+ international publications. The author retains the copyright of the article.
Website: asthanawrites.org | Twitter/X: @asthana_shashi | YouTube: @GenAsthanaAnalyses | LinkedIn: Shashi Asthana
The views expressed are personal and do not represent those of any institution.
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