Withdraw, get captured or killed: Ex-China diplomat to India
A former Chinese diplomat, Liu Youfa, told Chinese state media that India has three possibilities, they can pull out voluntarily, can be captured, or if the dispute escalates, can get killed. "The Chinese side is standing there waiting for India to make a sensible choice, which is the first scenario (withdrawal of troops)," Youfa added.
A former Chinese diplomat, who was earlier Consul General in Mumbai, told Chinese state media on Wednesday that Indian troops faced three options at Doklam as the stand-off entered one month: withdrawal, capture or an attack by China "should the dispute escalate".His comments underline the sharpening rhetoric from Beijing - and the threat of use of force - over the stand-off, with the Chinese government still insisting that there was no room for diplomatic solutions until India fulfilled a "precondition" of withdrawing unilaterally.Liu Youfa, former Chinese Consul General in Mumbai and now a strategic affairs expert, told state broadcaster China Central Television's English-language channel on Wednesday, "When people in uniform get across the border and move into territory of another country, they naturally become the enemies who have to face three consequences."CHINA WAITING FOR INDIA TO MAKE SENSIBLE CHOICE "First," Liu continued, "They can pull out voluntarily. Or, they can be captured. And should the border dispute escalate, they maybe killed. These are the three possibilities."Liu added, "The Chinese side is standing there waiting for India to make a sensible choice which is the first scenario." "It is the best result for both sides to avoid a confrontation," Liu said.His comments reflect the hard-line approach to the stand-off that China has assumed, in what some experts have seen as muscle-flexing and posturing aimed at getting India to withdraw.MILITARY EQUIPMENT IN TIBET The PLA's official newspaper, the PLA Daily, reported this week in the latest indication of muscle-flexing that it had transported military equipment to Tibet under an exercise held on the plateau, although the location in northern Tibet near the Kunlun mountains is far from the site of the stand-off near the Sikkim section.In fact, the site of the stand-off at the India-China-Bhutan tri-junction is thought to be one of the few pockets along the border where China is at a considerable disadvantage in terms of both terrain and its capability to sustain a long-term forward posture, which some experts say might partly explain its shrill rhetoric.Also read: Doklam standoff: China says no bilateral talks with India till impasse is resolved