(TibetanReview.net, Aug18, 2017) – In an apparent move to sharply increase pressure on India, an influential retired Chinese naval officer has suggested that his government was likely to issue an ultimatum against India by the end of this month on the Doklam standoff which has now continued for over two months. “If India keeps its troops in Chinese territory, China’s foreign and defence ministries are very likely to release an ultimatum before September,” China’s official Global Times newspaper Aug 16 quoted Xu Guangyu, a retired rear admiral and senior adviser to the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, as saying.
The warmongering newspaper further quoted Xu as saying, “The ultimatum will clearly tell India and the world that China will give a certain number of days to India to withdraw its troops. After the deadline, if Indian troops still remain within China’s territory, India will be responsible for all the consequences. China has multiple ways of pushing India back to its own soil if India ignores the ultimatum, as a few dozen military personnel and one bulldozer [in Doklam] is a piece of cake for the Chinese military.”
Nevertheless, Xu has said his government should prepare for the possibility of escalation, because Indian troops will resist, and if there was bloodshed, China needed to be fully prepared for military conflict. And he has expressed confidence that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was more than capable of dealing with any escalation.
The newspaper cited foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying as reaffirming China’s position that the withdrawal of the Indian troops in Doklam was the precondition to solving the problem.
In this connection it quoted Ye Hailin, director of the National Institute of International Strategy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, as saying, “This means that even when India withdraws its troops from the Doklam Plateau, China will not let the matter drop, because withdrawal is just the precondition, not the solution. China will still make India pay for its offensive and provocative behaviour even if India withdraws its troops as China requests.”
The newspaper also cited Song Zhongping, a military expert who had served in the PLA Rocket Force, as saying the quality of Chinese weapons and military personnel was overwhelmingly better than India’s despite the fact that the latter had purchased some US and Russian-made weapons in recent years. In particular, he has emphasized that China’s long-range rocket artillery was not only better than India’s, but the best in the world. The rocket boasts a terminal guidance function, which means it can search for its target before it strikes, he has said.
He has also maintained that given the kinds of weaponry China had, geographic barriers of mountains and plateaus were not an obstacle for the PLA to destroy its enemy.
And as if war is already round the corner, the report said many hospitals in different provinces of China were controlling the use of blood. It cited “a reliable anonymous source” from a hospital in Changsha, capital of Hunan Province, as saying the blood bank had been relocated by the PLA while the local government was organizing a blood drive to replenish supplies. The same was true of some other top hospitals in Hubei Province, and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, it added.
The stocks of blood were transferred before the Jiuzhaigou earthquake in Sichuan Province on August 8, and they are likely to be transferred to Tibet, the report said.