India and Pakistan do not launch missile strikes at each other. But the truce is shaky. And that’s when China comes into play. He renamed the names of several settlements in the Himalayas, located in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. Delhi rejected Beijing’s move, saying that this land will always belong to India.
The fact is that the territorial dispute between the two largest powers in the world, which began more than 70 years ago, has not been resolved. And China, which has invested a lot of money in Pakistan’s economy, was formally neutral in this conflict. But the Chinese media completely sided with Pakistan and waged an anti-Indian propaganda campaign. US President Donald Trump immediately reacted to the ceasefire announced by India and Pakistan on May 10, saying that he was responsible.
After all, the United States promised Delhi and Islamabad tariff relief if they stopped shooting. The Indians did not like this comment. Delhi said that the topic of trade was not discussed at all during the talks between the top officials of the two powers. India and Pakistan, the Indian representative pointed out, had agreed through their own channels to suspend fire. Anyway, the military conflict between India and Pakistan has affected the interests of all the great powers.
Trump, who cares very much about his ratings among voters, hastened to attribute the Indian-Pakistani truce to himself. This was not an extravagant prank by the head of the White House. Even under the administration of Joseph Biden, Washington tried to turn India into an outpost to counter China’s expansion in South Asia. Units of the US Army regularly conduct military exercises with the Indians near the borders in the Himalayas, over which there is a dispute between Delhi and Beijing. And at sea, the Indian Navy conducts maneuvers with ships from the United States, Japan, and Australia. However, India constantly emphasizes that it adheres to an independent foreign policy course. Therefore, at the level of diplomacy, the maximum that Washington has managed to achieve is the formation of a QUAD dialogue consisting of India, the United States, Japan and Australia. But this, of course, is not a military bloc.
Moscow also cannot remain indifferent to the conflict situations in South Asia. India and Russia are bound by an agreement on a particularly privileged strategic partnership. Russia has been and remains India’s largest arms seller. And as soon as the military of India and Pakistan stopped pulling the triggers, the information services of the two countries began to bring down on the heads of viewers and readers around the world reports of the enormous damage inflicted on the enemy. Pakistan, in particular, claimed that it had hit a Russian-made S-400 Triumph anti-aircraft missile system with its missile. India has said that this is disinformation. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally visited the location of the complex. The video from the event site indicates that it is functioning normally.
The dispatches of the Pakistani media about the number of Indian fighter-bombers shot down also look very dubious. Allegedly, Pakistani pilots managed to shoot down Indian Rafale planes supplied by France, as well as Russian-made MiG-29 and Su-30MKI. The information about this is not very convincing. Nevertheless, the shares of Dassault Aviation, the manufacturer of the Rafale, fell. But the prestige of Chinese military equipment has increased. After all, Pakistani pilots flew Chinese-made planes and fired Chinese missiles.
China’s information machine did not fail to take advantage of these reports. According to the Reuters news agency, after the start of the largest direct confrontation between India and Pakistan in recent decades, Beijing called for a cease-fire. But the Chinese press triumphantly wrote about the strikes by Pakistani aircraft and missile systems. This was seen as confirmation of the superiority of Chinese weapons over those purchased by India. The Indian Embassy in Beijing has also been involved in the controversy. It issued a statement claiming that The Global Times, Beijing’s voice abroad, was publishing Pakistani propaganda.
From this we can conclude that China was not completely neutral when the explosions occurred in both parts of Kashmir and in the Pakistani province of Punjab. China was sympathetic to Pakistan, a state with which it has informal ties that are close to allied.
The question is natural: although the ceasefire between India and Pakistan is shaky, it is still better than continuing the war. Could this agreement serve as a lesson for Russia and Ukraine? It’s worth pointing out right away that the roots of the conflict are completely different. The historical confrontation between India and Pakistan is based on an ideology – religious nationalism.