China showing its military might to India
CHINA is running propaganda on its high-altitude war preparations, threatening India as troops of both sides remain locked in a face-off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh.
Chinese state-run media outlet Global Times said the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) organised “a largescale manoeuvre operation featuring thousands of paratroopers and armoured vehicles to the country’s high-altitude north-western region over a long distance from central China’s Hubei province amid border tensions between China and India”.
It was completed within hours, demonstrating China’s capability of quickly reinforcing border defences when necessary, the paper reported.
On Saturday, China Central Television reported that PLA Air Force airborne brigade recently manoeuvred from Hubei to an undisclosed location in the plateaus of north-western China thousands of kilometres away.
Reacting to the news, Nitin Gokhale, a defence analyst, tweeted: “Since China is bent on trying to create an impression that its terracotta warriors are ready for high-altitude battle, perhaps it is time to talk about an imaginary table top exercise some military enthusiasts have authored and played out in their minds.”
India’s China expert Brahma Chellaney, however, warned: “India extended the hand of friendship to China but that country’s communist dictatorship repaid with aggression in Ladakh, resurrecting the ghosts of Mao’s 1962 military invasion of India. The latest aggression is not just a wake-up call for India, it could prove the final straw.”
State-run media in China have been running war propaganda against India since the Xi Jinping regime earned worldwide opprobrium for initially covering up the coronavirus pandemic, which originated in Wuhan, Hubei.
Meanwhile, a much-awaited India and China military top brass talks to resolve the stand-off in Eastern Ladakh region and the de-escalation of forces across the LAC ended on Saturday.
The details of the dialogue would be shared with top defence ministry officers and Indian Army Chief MM Naravane.
China has made attempts to change the status quo by putting up shelters and setting up a camp in areas that were under Indian control.
Before this military level dialogue, talks between major general-rank officers between the two countries took place on June 2 which remained inconclusive.
A clash took place at the Pangong Lake on May 5 when troops from both armies were involved in a confrontation, which left several from both sides wounded. Sources said the stand-off was not a spontaneous reaction to India’s road construction in Ladakh. Unusual activities were first noticed a few weeks before the clash.
The current standoff in Ladakh is not the usual patrolling face-off but part of the new combative strategy that has been rolled out by China after the Doklam incident.
In 2017, there was a 73-day standoff at the India-China-Bhutan tri-junction in Doklam. China’s road construction in the Bhutanese territory was seen as an attempt to change the status quo by India. The roadworks were stopped. | IANS