Ahead of Party Congress, many Chinese see Doklam pact as a publicity loss

BEIJING: The border standoff between India and China and consequent peace agreement is one of the issues that will figure in discussions at the upcoming Communist Party Congress on October 18.

The Party Congress comprising 2,800 delegates will discuss a range of topics and elect the new set of leaders in the party's Politburo standing committee led by the general secretary and the country's president Xi Jinping, who is expected to get a second 5-year term.

Many among the Chinese elite and party rank and file did not like the agreement on troop withdrawal by China's People's Liberation Army and Indian soldiers after weeks of border standoff, David Kelly is research director at China Policy, a Beijing based consultancy said during a lecture here this evening.

Discussing his research on Chinese opinions on the subject, Kelly said, "It (border agreement) is a big publicity loss". He said,"The newspaper reading public is not satisfied. Readers believe that if the PLA can attack, it should attack".

The ordinary Chinese has come to believe that China is a dominant military power in Asia. There was no need for the PLA to stand still on the border for six long weeks and finally enter into a peace agreement if it really believed that Indian troops had invaded into Chinese territory, analysts said. The agreement has somehow raised questions concerning the government's claim about India invading Chinese territory, they felt.

The situation was very different when the International Court of Justice delivered a judgment against China's claims on the South China Sea in July last year. All sections of the Chinese public and the intelligentsia were with the government in rejecting the verdict because they firmed believed that much of the sea area was rightfully belonged to China.

Kelly said this was not the case during the border standoff with India, which resulted in diverse opinions being voiced across different platforms in the Chinese media and among strategic analysts. There are signs the government could not get full endorsement of its actions from all sections of the public.
Some analysts felt that a military issue of this kind would involve decision making at the highest level, which includes president Xi Jinping. Some other analysts thought that military commanders posted in the border region may have made preemptive moves that need to supported by the political authorities in the government, Kelly said.