As per a report by India Today, China has desecrated religious sites near the holy site of Hindus, Kailash Mansarovar, to deploy surface to air missiles. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is carrying out heavy militarisation at the Line of Actual Control given India’s aggressive stance on border issues as well as on the decoupling of the Indian economy with the Chinese supply chain.
China has very limited options as far as the economy is concerned as it already enjoyed a huge trade surplus of around 50 billion dollars in the last fiscal year. In the economy, only India has the leverage to punish Chinese companies and minimize the imports from China to reduce the trade deficit, which the Modi government is already doing.
Given the fact China’s options on the economic side are limited; it is militarizing the border to match Indian aggressiveness. In the last few weeks, India has increased construction activity in Ladakh area and Lipulekh at the India-China-Nepal tri-junction to cut the time taken to reach border areas. This is not going well with PLA which has now responded by desecrating the religious sites of Hindus and deploying missiles in the area.
Today, China can desecrate Indian religious places in Tibet because 70 years ago the Nehru government allowed the Chinese annexation of the Tibetan plateau, which, for centuries, has worked as a buffer between the two Asian giants. India was controlling the areas around Kailash Mansarovar and collected taxes from villages till the late 1950s until China engulfed this part too during its annexation of Tibet. But, Nehru continued to take China as a friend despite repeated warnings from friends, colleagues, and well-wishers of India.
“The Chinese government has tried to delude us by professions of peaceful intention… They managed to instil into our Ambassador a false sense of confidence in their so-called desire to settle the Tibetan problem by peaceful means… The action of the Chinese, in my judgment, is little short of perfidy,” wrote Sardar Patel in 1950 in a letter to Nehru. However, the then Prime Minister did not take any action against China and a few months after the People’s Liberation Army invaded Tibetan plateau with silent approval from Nehru and his Communist stooge Defense Minister, Krishna Menon.
For more on Nehru’s betrayal of Tibet, read this article on the website of Central Tibetan Administration.
As per the article by India Today, the site of religious importance to Hindus now resembles a war zone due to heavy deployment by the People’s Liberation Army. The sites which are being desecrated are not only important to Hindus but to Buddhists also, even though Buddhism is among the largest religions of China. Mt Kailash and many areas along with Manasarovar, including Rakshastal and Gauri Kund, are revered places in Hinduism and Buddhism.
This shows that PLA has no affinity or respect towards citizens of its own country and it is more of a private militia owned by a political party which in turn owns a country. The Chinese Communist Party treats the people of China as private property where the citizens have no say or stake in the government functioning.
The Communist government of China is frustrated by the fact that Indian people as well the government is boycotting the Chinese goods to “purify” its businesses and it cannot do anything about that. The Chinese companies have lost business worth billions of dollars in the last few months due to the ‘boycott of Chinese goods’ movement.
Previously, Chinese goods used to dominate Indian markets in almost every festival but in the last few months, two big festivals- Raksha Bandhan and Ganesh Chaturthi- passed but a single Rakhi or Ganesh idol was not imported from China. In a normal year, these festivals would have filled billions of dollars in the coffers of Chinese companies but now they have lost their businesses.
China is venting its frustration on India like any small-time thug by desecrating the religious places of Hindus and Buddhists in Tibet and has deployed missiles in the area because having already a trade surplus of 50 billion dollars; it has very little space to respond on the economic front.
