China Forces Blogger into Humiliating TV Apology for Questioning Beijing’s India Claims

A 38-year-old Chinese blogger named Qiu Ziming who writes under the name “Labixiaoqiu” on the social media platform Weibo was forced to broadcast a humiliating video apology on Tuesday for daring to question Beijing’s official narrative of the clash between Chinese and Indian soldiers in the Himalayas last June.

After months of refusing to disclose how many casualties it suffered in the Galwan Valley hand-to-hand battle, the Chinese military claimed in February 2021 that it lost only four soldiers in the fight, compared to the 20 casualties that were long ago disclosed by the Indian government. Indian outlets claimed over twice the number of Chinese soldiers died as Indians.

A great deal of skepticism was expressed online about China’s claim and their government quickly began arresting everyone who rebuked the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) narrative, charging them with illegally “defaming the country’s heroes and martyrs.”

Qiu Ziming appeared on a prime-time broadcast of China’s state-run CCTV network, clad in a prison uniform and locked in a cell, to denounce himself for “smearing” the “heroes” of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). 

“I feel extremely ashamed of myself, and I’m very sorry. My behavior was an annihilation of conscience,” groveled the imprisoned blogger, who had about 2.5 million followers on Weibo before his account was suspended.

“During the many years I surfed online, my writings have become more and more frivolous and arrogant. Without learning about the whole picture, I spoke ill of the heroes who gave their lives to guard our home. My words not only hurt the reputation and honor of those soldiers, but of all PLA soldiers,” he said during his one-minute apology video.

The Hindustan Times noted that the CCP keeps forcing prisoners to make “confession” videos before they even go to trial, despite condemnation of the practice from across the free world as a human rights violation. 

Qiu was arrested two weeks ago and formally charged on Monday, the first of seven detainees to be charged for questioning the official government narrative of the Galwan Valley clash. The law against “defaming martyrs” he was charged with was rewritten on the very same day his charges were filed.

Chinese media stubbornly refused to specify exactly what Qiu wrote that was so offensive, but India Narrative said on the day of his arrest the blog included a video posted by the PLA that made its claim of losing only four soldiers look absurd.

“If you look at it carefully, the four who lost their lives were honored for their ‘rescues.’ If even the people who went to save others were sacrificed, then that must mean there were people who weren’t saved, which means there must be more than four people who died,” Qiu reasoned.

In subsequent Weibo posts, Qiu suggested the highest-ranking Chinese officer at the Galwan clash fled the scene to save his own life. The youth wing of the CCP reported his post to the authorities, triggering his arrest on the all-purpose charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” He faces up to ten years in prison.

The South China Morning Post described Qiu’s skeptical posts as a “contrast to the tide of poems and tributes unleashed online since the identification of the soldiers,” which Weibo gathered and promoted under a hashtag that translated to “they died for me.”  

China’s state-run Global Times reported on Tuesday that schoolchildren are being taught to revere the “five precious frontier soldiers” – four “martyrs” plus one wounded – from the Galwan Valley battle. School administrators linked them to the “medical heroes” who helped battle the coronavirus in the “hero city” of Wuhan.

Inconveniently for the CCP’s myth-making and dissent-quashing efforts, PLA officers have quoted varying numbers of Galwan Valley casualties when holding discussions with Indian military officials or talking among themselves, with some estimating as high as 14 deaths. The Indian military estimates that between 25 and 40 PLA soldiers died in the battle, including at least one officer.