‘INDIA MUST AVOID 2FRONT CONFLICT’
Chinese media led by official news agency Xinhua on Monday continued to name and shame India for “trespassing” into China’s territory, saying New Delhi’s “bloated self-assertiveness” had triggered the standoff near the Sikkim border.
The commentary by Xinhua, an official organ of the Chinese government, made a specific reference to minister Arun Jaitley’s comment that India now is different from what it was in 1962.
“Bluffing about a potential clash that could be similar to that 55 years ago when India’s military suffered a bitter defeat, Indian defence minister Arun Jaitley said, “India in 2017 is different from India in 1962,” implying the country’s improved military strength and bloated self-assertiveness,” it said. Statecontrolled newspapers went about their anti-India chore with warnings that included threat of Chinese interference in J&K and cautioning New Delhi against getting involved in a two-front conflict with China and Pakistan over Kashmir.
Lin Mingwang from the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai told the Global Times: “China has nothing to do with the situation in Kashmir, but it would be unwise for India to engage in two conflicts at the same time.”
Chinese media, possibly with the government’s tacit approval, has begun to rake up the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan more frequently.
India will “burn” itself if it uses the ‘Dalai Lama card’ to exert pressure on China amid the ongoing military standoff near the Sikkim border, state media said Monday referring to the hoisting of the Tibetan flag on the shores of a lake in Ladakh.
“If New Delhi is pulling the strings of the Tibetan exiles’ political act of flag-hoisting, it will only have burned itself. Both border issues and the Tibet question concern China’s core interests and China won’t yield to provocations,” the newspaper said.
An editorial in the China Daily said New Delhi is pursuing its security concerns at the Sino-Indian border in Sikkim at the cost of Bhutan’s sovereignty, adding that the idea that Beijing will attack the Siliguri Corridor is “ridiculous”.