Never bring a knife to a gunfight, the saying goes, but China does it differently. It brings clubs.
Last Monday, China and India had the nastiest frontier incident since their border war of 1962. In the Galwan Valley of the Aksai Chin, a disputed region the size of Switzerland in the western Himalayas, Chinese and Indian border patrols clashed and 20 Indian soldiers were killed — yet not a shot was fired. The killing was all done with clubs, stones and bare hands.
Killing people without firearms is actually quite hard, but the fact that the fight happened on a steep ridge at night makes it easier to understand how so many died: Many apparently fell or were pushed to their deaths. What’s not so easy to explain is why most or all of the dead were Indian.