Even as the troops of India and China remained locked in arguably the most serious face-off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh, the northern neighbour is running full-scale propaganda on its high altitude war preparations and threatening India, say reports.
Global Times, the Chinese state-run media outlet on Sunday claimed that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had organised “a large-scale 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.”
According to the Global Times report, the entire process was completed in just a few hours, demonstrating China’s capability to quickly reinforcing border defences when necessary.
On Saturday, China Central Television (CCTV) had reported that PLA Air Force airborne brigade recently manoeuvred from Hubei to an undisclosed location thousands of kilometres away in the plateaus of north-western China.
Defence analyst Nitin Gokhale while reacting to the report 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.”
Since China is bent on trying to create an impression that its terrocotta 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 https://t.co/utx6CzOCF9
— Nitin A. Gokhale (@nitingokhale) June 7, 2020
Brahma Chellaney, India’s China expert, 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 has been persistently running war propaganda against India since the Xi Jinping regime earned worldwide vilification for initially covering up the coronavirus pandemic which originated in Wuhan city of Hubei province.