Anger surges in India over deadly border brawl with China

An Indian government minister has called for Chinese restaurants to be closed. Other Indian officials have suddenly put contracts to Chinese companies under review. And crowds of men are now smashing Chinese-made televisions in the street.

A wave of anti-Chinese anger is cresting across India as the nation struggles to absorb the loss of 20 Indian soldiers beaten to death this week by Chinese troops in a high-altitude brawl along India’s disputed border with China.

“We should bleed China with a thousand cuts,” said Ranjit Singh, a retired army major who is calling for a boycott of Chinese goods. “We need to hit them where it hurts most, and that is economically.”

And the tensions are hardly easing. Sonam Joldan, a teacher in the Ladakh region near the India-China border, reported on Thursday seeing a line of 100 Indian Army trucks heading toward the front line.

Indian and Chinese generals continued to meet on Thursday to discuss de-escalation at the border high up in the Himalayas where the brawl erupted, officials said. But military analysts and satellite imagery indicated that Chinese troops had yet to pull back.

By some accounts, in recent weeks they have taken about 23 square miles of territory claimed by India and show no signs of leaving.

Western intelligence officials said that India would not accept this and that the chances of more fighting remained high, especially with thousands of opposing troops eyeball-to-eyeball along a remote front line that has erupted in violence several times, including a major war between India and China in 1962.

Troops from both sides have been instructed not to use firearms during faceoffs along the border, but that did not stop a vicious hand-to-hand battle from raging for several hours Monday night.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has tried to walk a fine line. Although he seems reluctant to escalate a major conflict with China — which has a mightier military — much of his political brand has been tied up in projecting an image of a forceful, increasingly powerful India, and he has signaled that he will not back down.

“India wants peace,” he said in a televised address on Wednesday. “But if provoked, India is capable of giving a befitting reply.”

© 2020 New York Times News Service