Editor’s note for Tuesday, January 5, 2021

My thoughts today:

Tense, but all quiet on the Himalayan front? “‘Stalemate on the Line of Actual Control’ is probably going to be a headline we will see a lot of in 2021,” writes veteran observer of India-China relations Ananth Krishnan in his new newsletter:

I think I will need a good thesaurus to find new ways of saying the same thing. Reports this week in India suggest both sides are preparing for the long-haul as the stand-off continues with no signs of disengagement.

Meanwhile, the new Great Game continues in Afghanistan: The Hindustan Times reports that “10 Chinese spies” were caught in Kabul, but given “a quiet pardon [and flown] home in chartered aircraft. Afghan security forces had “seized arms, ammunition and Ketamine powder, a recreational drug” from one of their homes in Kabul in a raid in December.

The report says that the “Afghan security establishment believes the 10 detainees were creating a fake East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) module…to entrap ETIM operatives in Afghanistan.” ETIM is a possibly non-existent seperatist group that rights groups say China uses as “an excuse to impose restrictions on Uyghurs.”

The Chinese Foreign Ministry seems to be waving a small olive leaf at Australia. In response to a prompt from the state broadcaster, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson today hailed the heroism of an Australian police officer who died while trying to save a Chinese citizen from drowning in a whirlpool while on a river hike.  

Our word of the day is to be given the death penalty (被判死刑 bèi pàn sǐxíng).

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief