NEW DELHI—The ongoing border standoff between India and China that intensified with a bloody conflict in June last year was actually a Chinese pilot project to test a strategy of global expansion based on the stoppage of trans-border rivers, said an Indian defense analyst. “They blocked the water of the Galwan river and there was a massive build-up, I suspect in response to the massive infrastructure build-up that started in 2019 [by India],” Abhijit Iyer-Mitra, a senior research fellow with the New Delhi-based Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, told The Epoch Times over the phone. On its 73rd Army Day, as India honored on Friday its 20 soldiers martyred in the bloody conflict that happened with China in the Galwan valley last year on June 15, Iyer-Mitra said the incident happened in response to the stopping of the Galwan river’s water, 100 meters into the Chinese side and India’s …