(TibetanReview.net, Jun13’20) – The ongoing border faceoff between India and China now turns out to be not just a matter of difference in perception about the line of actual control (LAC) during a patrolling incident but a calculated counteraction by Beijing over New Delhi’s Aug 2019 move to abrogate Article 370 of the constitution that bifurcated Jammu and Kashmir into the Union territories of Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh, according to latest official Chinese media comments.
China also appears to have created the mischief on behalf of its all-weather friend Pakistan which also severely condemned India’s constitution amendment move. It was after all none other than Wang Xianfeng, press officer for the Chinese embassy in Pakistan, who on Jun 1 tweeted a report from a Chinese analyst on this 2019 move by India.
“India’s actions of unilaterally changing the status quo of Kashmir and continuing to exacerbate regional tensions have posed a challenge to the sovereignty of China and Pakistan and made the India-Pakistan relations and China-India relations more complex,” Wang’s tweet was quoted as saying.
The report that Wang tweeted on was written by Wang Shida, deputy director of the Institute of South Asian Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), a think tank believed to have close links to China’s intelligence service.
Wang has written, “On the Chinese side, India ‘opened up new territory on the map,’ incorporated part of the areas under the local jurisdiction of Xinjiang and Tibet into its Ladakh Union territory, and placed Pakistani-administered Kashmir within its so-called Union territories of Jammu and Kashmir. This forced China into the Kashmir dispute, stimulated China and Pakistan to take counter-actions on the Kashmir issue and dramatically increased the difficulty in resolving the border issue between China and India.”
According to him, Hindu nationalism-dominated “Indian authorities and the strategic community have been blinded by so-called double confidence,” namely the BJP’s political predominance following two landmark Parliamentary election wins in 2014 and 2019 and the US cozying up to India, seeing it as a counterweight to China.
Amitabh Mathur, a former official of the Research and Analysis Wing, sees it a strange that such a tweet emanated from a Chinese official in Islamabad. “There is a Pakistani connection to it and it’s almost as if the Chinese are trying to reassure the Pakistanis,” HindustanTimes.com Jun13 quoted Mathur as saying.
If that is so, army level talks between the two sides would be futile.
