The Chinese suffered much higher casualties in the June 2020 Galwan Valley clash than earlier reported. Several of the Chinese soldiers drowned while crossing the fast-flowing Galwan rover, as per an investigative report by Australia’s The Klaxon.
“In June 2020, during the border defence struggle, Wang Zhuorang’s (a Junior Sergeant) company was ordered to perform a support mission… (while crossing the river, the flow suddenly increased and) comrades in arms kept slipping and being rushed downstream,” The Klaxon quoted a report created by Chinese online bloggers and social media researchers.
This report is titled “Galwan Decoded” and is one of the cited sources for this piece by The Klaxon. The researchers behind “Galwan Decoded” have refused to be identified due to security concerns, nevertheless, has shed a light on the casualties on the Chinese side. “A lot of facts about what really happened, what led to the skirmish, have been hidden by Beijing… What was told by (China) to the world were mostly fabricated stories…Many blogs and pages have been culled by (Chinese authorities) but digital archives of mainland China reveal a different story,” the report cited by The Klaxon claims.
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“Of the four soldiers China has confirmed died, only one - Junior Sergeant Wang Zhuoran - is reported as having drowned. The other three, PLA Battalion Commander Major Chen Hongjun, Private Chen Xiangrong and Junior Sergeant Xiao Siyuan, were killed by Indian forces,” the report by The Klaxon says.
The clashes were allegedly kicked-off by a temporary bridge set up by the Indian Army over the Galwan River which the Chinese objected to. This temporary bridge was set up to monitor the Chinese activities in the Galwan buffer zone.
“According to a Weibo user alias name Qiang who claims to have served in the area, the PLA was creating infrastructure in this buffer zone, violating the mutual agreement and had been trying to expand its patrolling limits within the buffer zone since April 2020,” Chinese researchers say in “Galwan Decoded”. “at least 38 PLA troops along with Wang were washed away and drowned that night…of which only Wang was declared among the four officially dead soldiers… After the incident, the bodies of the soldiers were first taken to Shiquanhe Martyr Cemetery, followed by local ceremonies at the local towns of the killed soldiers” the report further states.
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The Galwan clashes were the deadliest between India and China in over four decades. After the clashes, the Indian government reported that 20 soldiers of the Indian Armylaid down their lives in the clashes which were triggered by Chinese aggressive territorial claims followed by military skirmishes near the Pangong Lake. The Chinese acknowledged that 5 soldiers of the PLA had lost their lives after 8 months in February 2021.
