No modern-day warfare is complete without psyops. While the Global Times appears to have taken the passive-aggressive approach by putting videos of Indian restaurants interspersed with missile pictures.
Meanwhile, Indians have rallied by putting up videos of Winnie the Pooh – which apparently embarrasses Chinese premier Xi Jinping. We don’t know if the mainland Chinese even know what’s going on because the worst clashes between the two troops barely got a mention in the China’s state media owned papers.
However, India’s confrontation appears to have delighted two belligerents who have always chaffed under China’s imperial thumb – denizens of Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Taiwan News even put up an article titled Photo of the Day: India’s Rama takes on China’s Dragon’. They wrote in an article: “On Tuesday, a fierce brawl broke out between Indian and Chinese troops on a disputed stretch of border in the Ladakh region, with the Indian side suffering 20 dead and the PLA allegedly reporting 43 dead and wounded. As nationalism on both sides of the border reached a fever pitch that day, an illustration showing Rama, the seventh avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu, drawing a bow and preparing to shoot a huge arrow into a Chinese dragon beside the words "We Conquer. We kill." was posted on the Hong Kong social media site LIHKG.”
Taiwan is a touchy topic in particular among the Chinese which India could look to exploit. Such is China’s adamance about not giving any credence to Taiwan that Top Gun 2 actually dropped Maverick’s Taiwan patch.
China and Taiwan have a troubled relationship. The former has always self-governed since separating from China in 1948, much to the chagrin of the people’s party. China has often pressured governments worldwide to refer to Taiwan as Chinese territory and managed to do so with several companies including Paramount.
Before that, China got Disney to drop Tibet from Doctor Strange’s origin story and shifted Kamar Taj from Tibet to Nepal.
China’s belligerence could see New Delhi support Taiwan. BJP MPs Meenakshi Lekhi and Rahul Kaswa had earlier participated in Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s swearing-in ceremony which didn’t impress Beijing. The truth remains that India has far fewer enemies than China, which is already facing diplomatic reversals thanks the global spread of coronavirus.
