The US has accused China of using border clashes with India to try to change the status quo and encourage New Delhi to fight back.

Alice Wells, deputy assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, said May 20 the similarities between the growing skirmishes in the Himalayas and China's decisive actions in the South China Sea.

"For anyone who fantasizes that China's aggression is just ostentatious, I think they need to talk to India," Wells told the Atlantic Council research institute in Washington.

"Such behavior must be countered," said Wells, who is about to retire from work.

Over the past two decades, the United States has built close ties with India, while relations with China have been increasingly fierce in many areas.

China and India, the two most populous countries in the world, stretched border and fought each other in 1962, quelling hopes of the first Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru for solidarity among Asian powers.

Tensions erupted on May 5 when soldiers from the two countries clashed with iron sticks and threw stones at each other, leaving many injured at Lake Pangong Tso, north India.

This is the first time the two countries have had tensions at the border since the confrontation in 2017, when the Chinese army sent troops and mechanized machines into the disputed area of Doklam between Bhutan and China to build.

After India deployed several hundred soldiers here, Beijing asked New Delhi to unconditionally and immediately withdraw from Doklam to resolve the confrontation.