A TALE OF TWO NARRATIVES

China’s success, or its narrative of it, in the Galwan heights border brawl can be rendered as not ‘losing face’ (diu lian). China’s semi-colonial history (late 19th and early 20th centuries’ control of its eastern seaboard by European powers and encroachment of its west by Japan and its north by Tsarist Russia) is narrated in terms of humiliation and injured pride. Contemporary ultra-nationalism finds fuel in this, and embryonic arrangements by which China loses face in the eyes of its people or internationally are not an option.

Enforcing a Chinese right, redressing a Chinese grievance, especially on Chinese territory at the border, is in keeping with the best tradition of its political philosophy. China’s own Kautilya, Han Feizi (280–233 BCE), writes: “[In any show of weakness] our own state will be in peril and our ruler will face contempt.” When an adversarial power presents you with their nibbled maps, it will just not do.

Xi Jinping and, by extension, the body politic of China, wants not to lose face (bu yao diu lian), by keeping the messy maps in the Himalayas ordered. This was inadvertently confirmed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi who (naak oonchi rakh ke) clarified that “neither is anyone inside Indian territory nor has any Indian post been taken over”. Whilst this claim was made with a firm eye on the citizenry as well as to allay China’s cartographic anxieties and geopolitical sensitivities, Modi’s statement was picked up and virally played on Chinese screens to show China as not being the aggressor but India as the one that ‘illegally intruded’ (China Global Television Network) and sent its soldiers to die on Chinese soil.

China, as a rule, never releases figures of casualties at times of conflict. Only as late as 1984 did it publish figures from the 1962 war with India. This policy of concealing deaths has as much to do with its own form of ‘losing-face’ or ‘saving-face’ nationalism as it does with its domestic politics. Since the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979, Chinese casualties are only inferred. Hu Xijin, the editor-in-chief of Global Times, explains Beijing’s refusal to share the number of losses of the People’s Liberation Army in the Galwan border as an act of “goodwill” to “avoid stoking public mood”.

Satellite imagery by the US-based Maxar Technologies shows what appear to be Chinese structures on a terrace overlooking the Galwan Valley as well as the disputed ‘fingers’ of Lake Pangong Tso. Nathan Ruser, a satellite data expert at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, holds that “‘disengagement’ really isn’t the word that the [Indian] government should be using”. Chris Biggers, analyst at the geospatial intelligence company HawkEye 360, corroborates this. The Chinese mainstream media is silent on these images (and several aspects besides), whilst claiming sovereignty over the valley; the BBS (bulletin board system) 6park is one of the few fora endorsing the images and forewarning war if China does not ‘back off ’. Others on weaponised social media have cherry-picked from Indian Twitter feeds and articles.

Marked usually by drip-feeds of controlled calibration by the Chinese regime, Rénmín Rìbào (People’s Daily) and Jiefàngjun Bào (PLA Daily) have been largely taciturn. Wang Yunfei in Ordnance Industry Science Technology journal promised China “will counter-attack resolutely ...not be bound by the LAC”. Lan Jianxue in the China Daily assailed the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Hindutva agenda for driving aggressive policies at home and abroad.

Users on Weibo (the Chinese Twitter) have been more bellicose—a screenshot of a WeChat conversation: ‘huoguo (hotpot) 1, gali (curry) 0’ has been doing the rounds. Weiyue Qinyu tweets that Indians were “captured and dumped like dumpling[s]” and “more than 100 dead and wounded”. Another warns Chinese travellers and claims that 3,000 hotels in India have refused check-ins to them. Already “ingrained in Indian people’s lives” and playing “key roles in improving Indian society’s functional efficiency”, the banning of apps subsists as “a mere scrap of paper”—Global Times and 21st Century Business Herald write it up as maiming start-ups in India and dissuading Chinese investment.

In this status quo-altering tale of narratives, the Chinese view remains that India has ‘no face’ (meiyou lian) in a headclash of its own making. India, for its part, sees China as exhibiting a ‘thick-skinned face’ (lianpi hou in Mandarin) but receiving a ‘moonh-tod jawaab’. ■

Prem Poddar is professor, institute for communication and arts, at Roskilde University, Denmark, and Humboldt senior fellow, Germany

China’s policy of concealing losses has as much to do with its ‘saving-face’ nationalism as it does with its domestic politics