China’s Foreign Ministry on Monday said Union Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways and former Army Chief, Gen. V.K. Singh (retd), had made an “unwitting confession” by saying India had transgressed the Line of Actual Control (LAC) on more occasions than China had.

Speaking on Sunday, Gen. Singh said the border had never been demarcated, and while China had transgressed across the LAC up to its perception, India had done the same but the government did not announce it.

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“Similarly, none of you come to know how many times we have transgressed as per our perception. Chinese media does not cover it,” he said. “Let me assure you, if China has transgressed 10 times, we must have done it at least 50 times.”

China’s Foreign Ministry on Monday pointed to his statement as confirming “frequent acts of trespass” by India. Its spokesperson Wang Wenbin said, “This is an unwitting confession by the Indian side”.

Also read: What explains the India-China border flare-up?

“For a long time, the Indian side has conducted frequent acts of trespass in the border area in an attempt to encroach on China’s territory and constantly created disputes and frictions, which is the root cause of the tensions at the China-India border. We urge the Indian side to follow through on the consensus, agreements and treaties it reached with China, and uphold peace and stability in the border region with concrete actions,” he said.

Highlighted by Chinese media

Gen. Singh’s statement was also highlighted by the Chinese media. “V. K. Singh, an Indian Union Minister of State, also former Army General, accidentally told truth of China-India border situation,” tweeted Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the Communist Party-run Global Times. “It’s

India that breaks border status quo, China has to respond to it,” he said.

Last year, China’s official media similarly seized on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s comments at an all-party meet saying “nobody has intruded”, in an attempt to justify the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) moves on the border. Those remarks were widely reported in China in subsequent months and used to point the finger at India for last year’s crisis, which was triggered in May after the PLA mobilised a large number of troops, transgressed the border, and sought to unilaterally redraw the LAC in several areas in eastern Ladakh.

A clash in the Galwan Valley on June 15 led to the loss of life of 20 Indian soldiers and a still unknown number of Chinese soldiers, sparking the biggest crisis on the border since 1967.