China's mouthpiece admits President Xi Jinping planned LAC conflict with India

In a first of its kind admission, China's state-run media Xinhua acknowledged Chinese President Xi Jinping's 'personal' intervention in the India-China border conflict, admitting that it was Xi who had undertaken 'strategic and tactical planning' over the LAC border conflict. In a lengthy profile titled 'Xi Jinping, the man who leads CPC on new journey', Xinhua credited the Chinese President for 'finding solutions' to China-India conflict, saying that he 'spearheaded' planning to manoeuvre the border standoff, amongst other issues like the so-called South China Sea arbitration. 

The report by the Chinese government mouthpiece reads, "From conducting regular patrols in the waters of Diaoyu Islands, fending off the so-called South China Sea arbitration, finding solutions to China-India border conflicts, to facilitating the return of Chinese people illegally detained overseas, Xi has spearheaded strategic and tactical planning and, if necessary, personally intervened."

This is the first time that China has taken ownership for the LAC dispute, India has made it clear on numerous occasions, that China attempted to 'unilaterally' change the status quo in Eastern Ladakh during the 2020 Galwan Valley clashes. In the aftermath, China continued to try making further incursions into Indian territory, engaging in aggressive behaviour, opening skirmishes and being pushed back by forces in Arunachal, amongst refusing to budge or provide any forward-looking proposals in the military and diplomatic level meetings.

Xinhua's report establishes that all these had Xi Jinping's 'personal' hand in it. In fact, it suggests that the LAC standoff, along with its aggression in the South China sea, the brutal repression of democracy in Hong Kong and China's entire 'conflict doctrine' is meant for Xi Jinping's elevation.

Pentagon nails China's role in border conflict

Earlier on Saturday a report from the Pentagon had established that China had deployed a 'substantial reserve force' from the Tibet and Xinjiang Military Districts in order to provide a rapid response to the border standoff. The Pentagon confirmed that in 2020, China took an audacious step of building a large 100-home civilian village in a piece of 'disputed territory' between the Chinese Tibet Autonomous Region and India's Arunachal Pradesh state in the eastern sector of the LAC.

It further informed that at the peak of the border standoff between the two sides in 2020, China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) even installed a fibre-optic network in the remote areas of the western Himalayas to provide faster communications and increased protection from foreign interception. In fact, PLA field commanders were viewing near-real-time intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and reliable communications to streamline decision-making processes and shorten response timelines. 

Moreover, the Pentagon report had also revealed that China even attempted to prevent India from deepening its ties with Washington. "China has continued taking incremental and tactical actions to press its claims at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with India and has unsuccessfully sought to prevent New Delhi from deepening its relationship with the United States," the Pentagon report stated.