Indian embassy gets hate messages as PLA discloses casualties

BEIJING: Soon after China People’s Liberation Army (PLA) finally admitted that it had suffered casualties at Galwan, the Indian embassy’s Chinese social media account on Friday received a barrage of hate messages.

On Friday, the PLA Daily newspaper released details for the first time of four soldiers who were killed, and an officer who was injured in the clash at

Galwan Valley on June 15, 2020. It is extremely rare for the Chinese military to publicly acknowledge casualties – for instance, it is yet to release official casualty figures for the war with Vietnam in 1979.

Soon after the report, the Indian embassy’s Twitter-like Weibo account received thousands of abusive messages, followed by outpouring of grief from Chinese citizens and more write-ups in the official media blaming New Delhi for the Indiachina military standoff.

Photos of the four dead PLA soldiers circulating online evoked strong reaction from Chinese citizens. For hundreds of millions of Chinese, it was the first time that they heard about Chinese soldiers losing their lives in a battle.

Multiple videos purportedly showing the lead-up to the Galwan Valley clash between Indian and Chinese troops in June last year were uploaded on several websites. The edited videos showed the Chinese soldiers being outnumbered by Indian troops. The message for the domestic audience was clear – Chinese troops showed both restraint and valour even when taking on the “aggressor”. None of the videos, however, said that 20 Indian soldiers died in the clash.

The nationalistic tabloid, Global Times, published an editorial to give its view on why the information about the PLA soldiers was made public at this time, eight months after the deadly clash.

“Back to the Galwan Valley clash last year, given the tense situation at that time, avoiding a comparison of casualties was more conducive to the stability of the border situation. Now that the round of border standoff has ended, we must make public the heroes’ deeds so that all the Chinese people could admire and commemorate them to understand the weight of peace,” the Global Times editorial said.

Another reason for releasing the information about the PLA soldiers was to reveal the truth, the editorial indicated.