India announced a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics
on February 03, 2022 after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) picked a People’s
Liberation Army (PLA) soldier involved in a bloody 2020 conflict with India as
a torchbearer in the Games’ torch relay.
India’s state broadcaster also decided
to not telecast the opening and the closing ceremonies of the Games as a
result.
“It is indeed regrettable that the Chinese side has chosen
to politicize an event like the Olympics … the Charge d’Affaires of the Embassy
of India in Beijing will not be attending the opening or the closing ceremony
of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics,” said Arindam Bagchi, the official
spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs on Thursday.
The Indian government was considering sending its top
diplomat to Beijing to attend the opening of the games until this week, but
then Beijing made a PLA regiment commander, Qi Fabao, a torchbearer of the
games on Wednesday, irking India. Qi had been involved in a violent border
clash with Indian soldiers in the Himalaya’s Galwan Valley in June 2020.
New Delhi had earlier decided to set aside its problems with
China following a meeting between the foreign ministers of India, Russia, and
China in November, and supported the Games that were boycotted by many
countries including the United States.
This was because traditionally India doesn’t believe in
politicalizing sports events and has never boycotted one since its existence,
according to Srikanth Kondapalli, a professor of Chinese studies at
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
But India was blindsided when Qi who had sustained head
injuries during the Galwan clash took the flame from Wang Meng, China’s
four-time Olympic short-track speed skating champion. While doing so both “made
military salutes to each other,” reported Chinese state media Global Times.
“The inclusion of a PLA soldier who tried to kill Indian soldiers
at Galwan in 2020 in the Olympic torch relay was a provocative act that
triggered the decision to boycott,” Madhav Nalapat, strategic analyst and
vice-chair of the Manipal Advanced Research Group, told The Epoch Times.
To India, Qi’s participation is a politicization of the
Games because the only criteria of his selection as a torchbearer was his
involvement in Galwan conflict, said Kondapalli of Jawaharlal Nehru
University.
Frank Lehberger, a sinologist specializing in CCP policies
and a senior fellow at the Indian think tank Usanas Foundation, told The Epoch
Times that long before the Olympics started he expected China to “concoct some
symbolisms” to humiliate India during the Olympics as revenge for PLA’s
“humiliating defeat at Galwan Valley.”
The Galwan conflict, which took place in the Himalayan
border region for eight hours on June 15, 2020, claimed the lives of 20 Indian
soldiers. The hand-to-hand combat involved PLA soldiers attacking Indians with
iron rods and batons wrapped in barbed wire.
After refusing to disclose its casualty count for eight
months, the CCP admitted in February 2021 to losing four soldiers, when ahead
of Party’s 100 anniversary, it announced military honors posthumously for
them.
However, an investigative report citing findings from a
group of social media researchers published by Australian media outlet The
Klaxon on Wednesday said that China lost 38 soldiers, mostly drowning in the
sub-zero temperature waters of the Galwan River.
The PLA soldiers honored with the “July 01 medal” in 2021
were a part of 29 CCP members honored on the occasion. The July 1 medal is a
decoration bestowed by the Party’s paramount leader on those members of the CCP
who make outstanding contributions to the Party in “China’s revolution,
reform, and opening up” according to CGTN, the overseas arm of China’s state
broadcaster.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who awarded the medals in a
ceremony held in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on June 29, 2021, said the
recipients had “staunch faith.”
Global Times reported at the time that having staunch faith
“is to stay true to the original aspiration and dedicate everything, even the
precious life, to the cause of the Party and people.”
Lehberger said India should have understood the CCP’s
character and seen this coming. “And India’s reluctance joining the boycott
earlier was understood by the Chinese side as the signal that they could act in
even more provocative way,” he said.
Satoru Nagao, a non-resident fellow at the Washington-based
think tank Hudson Institute told The Epoch Times that only 25 countries are
attending the opening ceremony and most of them are “non-democratic” countries,
adding that India’s decision to diplomatically boycott the Games was “good.”
“For China, admiring its soldiers is far more important than
respecting India, because India is an enemy for China. Soldiers are fighting
the enemy, India. China showed that it is respecting soldiers who are fighting
the enemy India,” said Nagao.
This incident is not the first time the CCP has used the Galwan
conflict to send a message. Over the New Year, various Chinese state media
shared videos of PLA soldiers raising a CCP’s red flag at Galwan Valley.
And on December 29, 2021 the Chinese announced
“standardized” Chinese names for 15 places in Arunachal Pradesh, an Indian
state on the border with Bhutan and Burma that the Chinese regime has attempted
to claim and aggressively intruded upon in the past few decades.
“It shows that Chinese nationalism is directed against
India,” said Kondapalli, adding that there’s a need to watch out to see if this
portends more aggression towards India in the future.
China will next host the 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou in
eastern China’s Zhejiang Province from September 10 to 25.