New Delhi: The Western Theatre (WT) command of China’s Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) set up its social media account on the Chinese Twitter-equivalent ‘Sina Weibo’ on Friday with the profile picture set amid the rugged and rocky Galwan Valley—a hotly contested territory between the Asian giants India and China, currently seeing one of the worst phases of their bilateral relationship.
The use of Galwan imagery in the post where it was written in Chinese characters “Splendid landscape, no inch to give up” is indicative that China aims to take its propaganda war against India to an altogether new dimension.
The WT’s first post on ‘Sina Weibo’ declared that it will select 10 people by lottery on February 1 who will be gifted a stone each from Galwan Valley.
The move may be indicative of an effort to whip up public sentiment centered on the Galwan Valley and to spur a national frenzy to establish national-territorial claim over the disputed territory.
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Galwan Valley is the scene of the brutal fight between soldiers of the two sides on June 15, 2020 which resulted in the death of 20 Indian soldiers and at least five PLA soldiers, and later led to unprecedented military mobilization and deployment of troops by both sides across the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
Of all the five theatres, the WT is the PLA’s biggest theatre geographically by far and possibly the most troublesome as this command is responsible for the India, Afghanistan, South Asia, and Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) fronts besides handling what China terms as “counterterrorism” in Xinjiang and Tibet.
On January 1, there were reports that Chinese movie stars Wu Jung and his wife Xie Nan had featured in videos and pictures while unfurling the Chinese flag is what is purported to be in Galwan Valley. Wu starred in the 2015 Chinese blockbuster ‘Wolf Warrior’.
The use of movie stars in dramatic settings is perhaps reminiscent of Joseph Stalin’s ‘Great Patriotic War’ in 1941 when he gave a clarion call to the Soviet nation to devise a new military tactic whereby all citizens were asked to fight off the Nazi invaders.
Reportedly the WT’s post has gone viral among Chinese netizens most of whom expressed desire to win the ‘stone from Galwan’ revealing the intent of the PLA strategy.
