Why Isn't China Bragging About Border Clash With India?
PLA: Little restraint for the cameras
China has not confirmed a death toll after Wednesday’s clash with India in the Galwan Valley.
China’s nationalist mouthpiece the Global Times said in the early hours five Chinese troops were dead, before quickly retracting the story. India acknowledges 20 dead.
One interpretation is China believes this is a time for restraint. Xi and his people know their rhetoric whipped-up local commanders who went too far. And this clash is a strategic disaster that will create a firestorm in India that will push it to the Quad — a proposed military alliance between itself, America, Japan and Australia to deal with Chinese ambitions.
China surrounded …
In essence, China will have surrounded itself with its own blundering and arrogance, just as Imperial Germany did in the run-up to World War I.
That said, does restraint sound like Xi Jinping’s China?
Keep in mind, over the weekend China’s state broadcaster hyped the People’s Liberation Army mobilizing of thousands of paratroopers, armoured vehicles and equipment to a place where it says they could be deployed “within hours” to the border.
Then recall, this conflict is over a few miles of territory in the Himalayas where altitude and supply chain logistics make it a near impossible place to wage ongoing war. According to India, the altitude and freezing temperatures after dark are why the death toll is so high.
Given India has nuclear weapons, is China conceiving of a land invasion of India?
That’s utter madness. Even if India didn’t use nukes, and the border moves a few miles now, the terrain gives India an almost endless number of places to stop a Chinese invasion, and cut off its supply lines. It has minor impact on everything but India’s view of China.
But it is a useful nationalist distraction for Xi, thus hyping troop movements on TV.
Then recall this is the same China that since the New Year has:
Threatened Canada after a Canadian court decided an extradition hearing against Meng Wanzhou, a top executive of Chinese telecom firm Huawei arrested at the United States’ request, could proceed.
Slapped an 80 percent tariff on Australian barley and suspended 35% of Australian beef imports, after Australia joined calls for investigations into the source of the Covid-19 outbreak.
Threatened the European Union over attempts to document Beijing’s disinformation tactics during the Covid-19 pandemic and calls for investigations into the outbreak
Personally threatened American Congressmen submitting bills to make it possible for Americans to sue China for Covid-19 damages
Sunk at least one Vietnamese fishing boat in the South China Sea while threatening Malaysian survey ships
At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, threatened to impose restrictions on medical exports so the United States will be “plunged into the mighty sea of coronavirus.”
Told the world to butt out after it imposed a national security law on Hong Kong. That appears to be in violation of treaty commitments China made to Britain at the time of the 1997 handover.
Restraint? Not likely.
I suggest the following: Indian officers on the scene appear to have reported the details with as much honesty as one can after being caught in vicious hand-to-hand combat where half their unit died. They estimate there were 40 Chinese dead.
Initially, I dismissed that number. As a hockey player, I was involved in the odd fight. Not all went my way. But when someone asked about my black eye, I would say, “Yeah, but you should see the other guy.”
That’s how I took the claim of 40 Chinese dead. But the fact China is both downplaying the incident, and not reporting a death toll leads me to believe it’s a fair estimate.
Dead soldiers are hard to hide. In Afghanistan, the Soviets claimed they had no casualties. But Russian mothers kept getting the bodies of their dead sons. People in town kept going to soldier’s funerals. The lying made Moscow’s position with its own people even worse.
You can’t hide dead bodies. But in a limited clash, you can hide the scope of how they died.
China first said nothing about the incident … other than the Global Times in English instructing India, “not to be arrogant.”
It was an odd choice of words. But let’s review what we know about the clash.
A Chinese unit of 250 engaged an Indian patrol of 50 — a five to one advantage. The Chinese were spoiling for a fight, and came armed with iron rods and metal spiked sticks. And they lost more men.
No wonder the Global Times was schooling India “not to be arrogant.”
In Mandarin, it took China hours to acknowledge the incident. But there have been no reports of casualties on either side … just a clash. To your average Chinese, this looks like just another small spat in a series of little shoving matches over the last few weeks.
Why is China playing it this way at home?
After all, Xi Jinping wants to use nationalism to distract his people from his bungling of the economy and Covid-19.
Here’s why: the dead soldiers will come home for burial. But if there’s little play of the incident in the media, who knows what happened to them?
Especially in rural villages and third-tier cities. Pvt. Li will look like an isolated and unfortunate death in a far off conflict — the kind of thing can happen to soldiers. Tragic, but not part of a big failure.
China has every reason to hide this disaster. Chinese troops outnumbered Indian troops five to one. They had better fighting gear. No Indian soldier should have walked away from that. Yet, they did. And China suffered a 20 percent force loss. That shatters the image China wants to portray of its “mighty” fighting men.
The reason the Chinese aren’t crowing about this: their military got handed its ass on that mountain. And they know it.