I have written so many blog posts about recent activities by China, that I think my entire blog has become just an anti-China propaganda machine. Just kidding. I love China. It's a great country with great food and great people. China also has some of the most developed cities in the world and the development index of the country is soaring in the charts. But I think these are the only things which I could say positive about China. Rest is just what you see on the news these days.

There have been so many issues on which China has been in the news recently. But apart from TikTok, it's only about how China is bullying its neighboring countries and how the international community is taking a stance against China.

Starting from Hong Kong, it was the first instance where China used excessive force in meddling with the basic laws of one of its Special Administrative Region. From illegal arrests and unfairly influencing the elections from Beijing, we have seen it all. Then we also saw how China was furious about the United States supplying arms to Taiwan.  China has always claimed that Taiwan is essentially a part of China and Taiwan has always taken an opposite stance by saying that it’s an independent territory. It’s quite evident with all the media articles that if some country disagrees with China, it stirs things up a lot for them.

One such major incident which was all over the news during June 2020 was about how China is trying to seize land from India, illegally, from the Indian Territory of Ladakh, which is situated in the Himalayas. And this is not the first time China has attempted to do something like that in the Himalayas. On the night of June 15th, 2020, Chinese military personnel had a deadly confrontation with the soldiers of the Indian Army at the high altitude Galwan Valley in India's Ladakh region. The PLA personnel came to meet Indian Army officers and it was supposed to be a peaceful meeting. But no one knows at what point the meeting went sour and the PLA soldiers attacked the Indian Army personnel present there with the help of makeshift weapons.

The Indian soldiers quickly retaliated to this situation and attacked PLA's personnel present at the Galwan meet by beating them to a pulp, disfiguring their weak bodies, and throwing them in the nearby Shyok River. An estimated total of 43 PLA's personnel died in this confrontation and the Chinese state-run media didn't even acknowledge the death of their soldiers. On the other hand, the casualties on the Indian side were far less than the Chinese, and the Indian media also acknowledged that it has lost some soldiers too, giving voice to their gallant acts that night, making them martyrs in from of the whole country.

This is not the first time China has been a part of a confrontation with India. China operates through a policy of aggressive territorial expansion and always meddles with the neighboring countries in the Himalayan region. One such incident took place in Doklam, which is a trijunction area between China, Bhutan, and India. Doklam is a part of Bhutan, which is an ally of India. In June 2020, Chinese troops began constructing roads at the Doklam plateau, which is though a part of Bhutan, is falsely claimed by China. This region is very close to Sikkim, which is an Indian territory. Indian troops after a few days crossed the border into Doklam as a part of the Operation Juniper and confronted the PLA's officials present there. They stopped the troops in constructing the road and because of that, there was a military standoff between India and China which continued for around three weeks. Finally, in August 2017, both the nations withdrew their troops from the region, which by the international media, termed as a big diplomatic win for India.

China is also supporting Nepal in the incorrect map put up by them which shows an Indian Himalayan territory a part of Nepal. The international media is saying that China is doing this because it is giving immense support to the communist party of Nepal by taking part in virtual meetings. The Nepalese Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli was also seen making bizarre remarks about the Hindu God Ram that he was a Nepalese and the capital of Ram, Ayodhya was in Nepal, which stirred a nation-wide criticism in India sparking comments from political leaders to the general public. Oli's such remarks could have been the reason that he is trying to woo the Chinese Communist Party to support him, as he is taking a stance against India and is also said to forget the religious ties between both the countries.

Very recently, the US State Secretary Mike Pompeo said that China's actions in the Himalayan region are not acceptable. Pompeo also appreciated India for banning 59 Chinese applications and taking a strong stance in Galwan Valley. He also suggested India decrease its dependence on China in terms of trade and commerce and start diverting the supply chains away from China with regards to telecommunications and medical equipment. This statement has come just a few days after the US stopped all of Huawei's involvement in the development of the 5G infrastructure in the country owing to national security concerns.

As I have already said before, China is operating through an aggressive territorial expansion policy for the past many decades. It has shown a notorious behavior towards the citizens of Tibet, which it had arbitrarily grabbed a few decades ago. It is only a matter of time when more and more countries would start taking a stance against China and someday China would have to stop taking such arbitrary measures to gain more land.