Firstpost-by Claude Arpi
Just as ‘truce’ doesn’t have the same meaning for the outside world as for Mao’s children, ‘pacification’ for the Great Helmsman in the 1950s was not what we usually understand.
Today, very few remember that as far back as 776 BC, the Greeks had introduced the Olympic Truce: A truce or ékécheiria (‘laying down of arms’); always announced before the Olympic Games so that all athletes and spectators could travel safely to the Games and peacefully return to their respective countries.
Of course, the truce has been thrown to the wind in Xi Jinping’s China and the International Olympic Committee, which primarily serves its own economic ends, is ever ready to kowtow to totalitarian China for the purpose. The truce has no meaning for Beijing; just look at the number of Chinese military planes entering Taiwan’s air defence identification zone (ADIZ) every day. In January alone, a total of 142 PLA Air Force aircraft were tracked in the ADIZ, including 102 fighter jets, three bombers, and 37 turboprops.
Further Qi Fabao, the aggressive PLA regiment commander who triggered the Galwan Valley border clash on 15 June 2020 (on the occasion of Xi Jinping’s birthday), has been nominated as a torchbearer during the Winter Olympic Torch Relay in Beijing. At the same time, Beijing wants India to remember 1962.
According to The Hindu: “Ahead of the 60th anniversary of the 1962 India-China war which falls in October this year, official Chinese military researchers have compiled a new history of the war reassessing its significance and legacy, bringing the spotlight back to the war amid the current tensions in relations.”
The author is Zhang Xiaokang, the daughter of General Zhang Guohua, who commanded the Tibet Military Command (TMC) and directed the Chinese offensive against India in the eastern sector in October 1962. Her ‘new history of the war’ is titled One Hundred Questions on the China-India Border Self-Defence Counterattack. However, reading extracts published on a Chinese website show that there is nothing new in her book, apart from the usual lies. Click here to read more.