India China border tension: Chinese ambassador acknowledges PLA deaths

Until now, Chinese officials had been speaking of “casualties” without specifying on which side of the LAC. While India released the names of its personnel who fell fighting, China remained silent.

Written by Shubhajit Roy

New Delhi | Updated: June 27, 2020 07:28 AM IST

2 min read

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Chinese ambassador to India Sun Weidong.

Sun Weidong, China’s ambassador to India, has acknowledged that there were Chinese “casualties” too in the June 15 clashes in Galwan Valley in which 20 Indian Army personnel were killed. In the first acknowledgement by Beijing of Chinese casualties, Sun, during the course of an interview Thursday, told the PTI news agency about “fierce physical conflicts and casualties between the two sides”.

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The transcript of Ambassador Sun’s interview has been posted online by the Chinese embassy.

Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the state-run Global Times, too has written about deaths in the Chinese ranks in the Galwan Valley clashes.

Paying “high tribute to the PLA officers and soldiers”, Hu wrote: “I believe that the dead have been treated with the highest respect in the military, and that the information will eventually be reported to society at the right time, so that heroes can be honored and remembered as they deserve.”

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So far, the Chinese statements were ambiguous about casualties on their side. On June 19, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian spoke of “fierce physical conflicts and causing casualties”. He repeated this on June 24 without specifying casualties on the Chinese side. But a day later, Ambassador Sun made clear there were “casualties between the two sides”.

Shubhajit Roy

Shubhajit Roy, Diplomatic Editor at The Indian Express, has been a journalist for more than 25 years now. Roy joined The Indian Express in October 2003 and has been reporting on foreign affairs for more than 17 years now. Based in Delhi, he has also led the National government and political bureau at The Indian Express in Delhi — a team of reporters who cover the national government and politics for the newspaper. He has got the Ramnath Goenka Journalism award for Excellence in Journalism ‘2016. He got this award for his coverage of the Holey Bakery attack in Dhaka and its aftermath. He also got the IIMCAA Award for the Journalist of the Year, 2022, (Jury’s special mention) for his coverage of the fall of Kabul in August 2021 — he was one of the few Indian journalists in Kabul and the only mainstream newspaper to have covered the Taliban’s capture of power in mid-August, 2021. ... Read More

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India China border dispute