New Delhi: Four days before the anniversary of the Galwan valley violent incident, and days before the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China on July 1 and China's Army Day on August 1, Chinese state-owned TV media carried visuals of a battle-scarred regimental commander who had fought with Indian troops that fateful day on June 15, 2020.
Earlier on February 19 too, the Chinese state-owned media had unleashed a propaganda war that showed Qi Fabao, the regimental commander from the PLA Xinjiang Military Command, holding out against advancing India soldiers in a manner showing the latter as aggressors. Four PLA personnel—Chen Hongjun, Chen Xiangrong, Xiao Siyuan and Wang Zhuoran—had died during the brutal brawl.
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India lost 20 soldiers including the commanding officer Colonel B Santosh Babu in the clash that was fought by both sides with spiked clubs, stones and iron rods. The visuals were from a high-level military honorary meeting on Friday where Qi was shown to be saying: “We’d rather sacrifice our lives than lose an inch of territory… If the troop is compared to a sharp sword, then the courage and uprightness of soldiers is the blade of the sword.”
The meeting was organized by the Political Work Department of the Central Military Commission (CMC), China’s top military decision-making body. It is through the CMC that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) exercises civilian oversight of the PLA. In an apparent bid to further China’s ongoing effort to politically doctrinate the PLA, Qi, still sporting the head scar that he obtained during the skirmish, also spoke of the four soldiers who fell in the Galwan Valley incident.
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Significantly, just a day before, China’s National People's Congress (NPC) had passed a special law that sought “to protect the dignity and rights of military personnel in China”. Chinese state-owned agencies had reported that the new law ensured that “no organization or individual may in any way slander or belittle the dignity of soldiers, insult or slander the honour of soldiers, and must not damage or defile the honors given to soldiers.”
It also said that the “honours obtained by a soldier shall be enjoyed for life, and shall not be revoked except for statutory reasons or through statutory procedures.” On May 31, a popular Chinese blogger Qiu Ziming, with more than 2.5 million followers, was sentenced to jail for eight months after he questioned the PLA toll in the Galwan Valley clash. Besides alleging that the PLA had under-reported its losses, Qiu had written that the commanding officer survived as he was a high ranking officer.
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China is undertaking a major effort to modernize, reform, and reorganize the PLA and in that sense of the term, the PLA is seen as one of the main organs of the CCP. According to a report by the US Congressional Research Service released last Friday (June 4, 2021): “Political education and oversight—including through the presence of political officers and other Party entities at every level of the PLA leadership hierarchy—are key features of the PLA’s organization and activities.”
