India won’t have upper hand if a war breaks out, says PLA
BEIJING: India‘s armed forces will not have the upper hand if the military standoff in the Sikkim sector triggers an “armed conflict” with China, an article on the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) website warned on Tuesday.
The article, written by strategic analyst Wang Dehua, recalled the 1967 conflict in the same region and said the Chinese army had launched “two destructive” counter-attacks against Indian armed forces.
“The Indian side didn’t get the upper hand in the past. And it won’t get an advantage today when the Chinese military has made remarkable progress on modernisation over the past few decades,” Wang, head of the Institute of South and Central Asia, Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, wrote.
The article, posted in the opinion section of China Military Online, the English news website of the PLA, reiterated the Chinese accusation that Indian troops had “illegally crossed the border” and entered Donglang or Doklam.
Wang wrote that “those in India who still uphold ‘confrontation’ in this event should be fully aware of the fact that if a solution isn’t reached through diplomatic or military communication or the issue isn’t handled properly, another armed conflict... is not completely out of the question”.
He referred to the brief conflict between Chinese and Indian forces near Nathu La in 1967. “With the conflict at Nathula and Daggi in September and October 1967 respectively reaching a peak... In self-defense, Chinese troops launched two destructive counter-attacks against Indian side,” Wang wrote. However, it is widely accepted that Indian troops gave the Chinese a bloody nose in the clashes of 1967, killing some 300 to 400 Chinese soldiers.