Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: It is turning out as the Dragon’s Monumental Misadventure.
After forced to eat crow for four months, China has, for the first time, reluctantly admitted that it lost soldiers in the border clash with India in the East Ladakh region on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) on June 15 this year.
This indirect admission hints at the intensity of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA’s) former soldiers’ strong protest against the Xitler regime’s stonewalling tactics to keep the martyred soldiers’ deaths under wraps, attempts to sweep civil and military dissent under the carpet, and salvage some of the nation’s prestige. It also reflects the state of utter confusion in its top leadership on how to find an honorable escape route.
If it became a global suspect due to its role in the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, China has also become an international laughing stock due to its failed misadventure against India, which was meant to whip up nationalism in the country so as to camouflage international opprobrium. It fears that other countries may also take a cue from India, dictate terms, and force it to turn its most-ambitious project ever, the Border Road Initiative (BRI) into a fossil.
The very admission of the fact of the PLA’s soldiers’ death also indicated a weakening of the position of Chinese President Xi Jinping within the Communist Party, his own government, and the armed forces—all of which he himself heads.
Writing in Global Times, Hu Xijin, Editor-in-Chief, claimed this week that China has suffered “far fewer” casualties than the Indian side in the Galwan Valley clash. This English-language outlet is a sister publication of The People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s mouthpiece. And it clearly reflects the thinking of China at its highest echelons of the power structure.
By this belated admission, China has acknowledged that its soldiers suffered casualties in the violent clash in June in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed and many others injured. India acknowledged their sacrifice.
From the very beginning of the clash, India had maintained that the Chinese suffered heavy losses and more casualties compared to India. Some reports had suggested that at least 40 Chinese soldiers had died and many others wounded—the reports even pointed out that the total number of casualties could be more than 100.
But China always denied these reports, infuriating ex-soldiers in its country who wanted their martyrs’ sacrifices acknowledged. Parents, friends, and well-wishers of the martyred soldiers were also annoyed at this heavy-handedness of their own government, with some parents reportedly requesting their only sons to quit the armed forces.
It is in this backdrop that China has now launched yet another disinformation campaign to demoralize Indian soldiers. Beijing has installed loudspeakers along the LAC in East Ladakh to carry out psychological warfare. Interspersed with Hindi and Punjabi songs, Chinese propagandists are ‘warning” Indian soldiers to back off as they would be immobilized in the minus-50 degree temperatures in the coming harsh winter.
But Global Times tried to even up this admission and control some damage.
Tagging an Indian report on Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s statement in Parliament, Hu Xijin tweeted, “As far as I know, the death toll of Chinese troops in Galwan Valley clash on June 15 is far fewer than 20 deaths of Indian troops. No Chinese soldiers were captured by Indian troops, but PLA captured many Indian soldiers that day.”
And this is only the beginning of China’s meltdown.