Thread by @seshanm

#HighCostOfGalwan
"Ladakh standoff cost China more. Look at its ‘chocolate soldiers’, big tech failure" theprint.in/opinion/ladakh…

"However, an important issue not debated or highlighted enough in most analyses is that the costs imposed on China have been more disproportionate. China has mostly suffered financial and psychological costs apart from the usual military ones."

"The current deployment has come at an even larger cost for the Chinese who have had to mobilise around 10 times more personnel from the rear to the forward areas in their Western Theatre Command, as against Indian mobilisation of around 3 times more personnel to the frontlines"

"India was supposed to be a sideshow used for the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) to practice its new theatre commands as well for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s directive of ‘training through operational action’."

"Since that move has been thwarted, China now faces a multi-front threat, a much more formidable challenge compared to India’s two-front threat, since the United States and even Japan have pledged military support to Taiwan against Chinese aggression."

"Closely following India, the US’ Commerce Department too made it hugely difficult for Huawei to procure semiconductor chips not only directly but also from companies that use US technology, hampering the entire Huawei supply chain."

"This twin move, compounded by Xi’s ‘self-goal’ in hugely regulating big tech in China, has devastated the Chinese digital empire.

"The Chinese PLA has had to scrape the bottom of the barrel while recruiting and the newly inducted personnel are neither hardy nor technically proficient to handle the brutal nature of war."

"The strategies to recruit them include video games and music videos. Soft peacetime ‘chocolate soldiers’ need extra comfort. This is a stark reminder that the Chinese experience of war is essentially null"

"Not only this, but after losing close to 40 soldiers during the Galwan clashes in June 2020, China has indulged in continuous information warfare against its own citizens. The entire wasteful exercise of 2020, which was essentially engineered to unilaterally stake a claim and

appropriate Indian territory, has shown no results on ground.

"Naturally, its propaganda machinery has been working overtime to ensure that the Chinese citizens do not question the PLA and Xi about this.

China’s costs have been mostly intangible yet intensely damaging and acute."

"Entanglements with India have cost China a lot and given a cause célèbre to other countries to stiffen their spines and oppose China on all fronts."

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