CHINA-INDIA: GLOBAL TIMES EDITOR-IN-CHIEF HU XIJIN WRITES ARTICLE STRESSING NEED FOR 'MORALITY' AS CHINA RISES

On September 11 -- the day the joint press statement was issued after the meeting between India's EAM Jaishankar and China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi -- the Editor-in-Chief of the CCP-owned Global Times Hu Xijin authored an article captioned 'China must be militarily and morally ready for a potential war'. The curiously worded article said "Chinese people don't want war, but we have territorial disputes with several neighbouring countries ... Some of these countries believe that the US support provides them with a strategic opportunity and try to treat China outrageously". "Chinese society must therefore have real courage to engage calmly in a war that aims to protect core interests, and be prepared to bear the cost". "We are confident to win on the battlefield if conflicts are fought with neighbouring forces that have territorial disputes with China". Listing five points that China must take care of, it said: "If China does decide to go to war with a neighbouring force, the international community will tend to favour the weaker side". The five points are: (i) we must make it clear that the other side, not China, is the one that breaks the status quo. (ii) we also need to make it clear that the other side is the provocateur in a complex situation. (iii) we must make the international community see that China has made hard diplomatic or political efforts to resolve tensions before the war. (iv) the first shot is fired by the other side, not China. The international community should be fully aware of this. And (v) only in extreme situations, if we need to fire the first shots, we must deliver an ultimatum in advance so that a just war can be started in an upright manner. The article also said that "When dealing with small opportunistic forces, we cannot use our power to quickly cut through the mess, but handle tensions with them slowly. We need to be able to stand such tests. To win the morality of war, we also need to win the war of opinion in addition to being decent. In terms of external conflict, one of our big problems is that we're speaking too little and too slowly. The other side has always spoken more and faster on the details of the conflicts. We must make great efforts to solve this problem."





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