'China bashing' in the Indian media

It's the silly season in India-China relations. If you've tuned 1 into one of the more hawkish 2 Indian television channels or are reading the views of the many experts on India and China, it might seem like the two countries are at each other's throats.

There has been a spate(后面) of denials from the Indian foreign ministry 3, the border guards and even the Indian air force. All insist that there have been no clashes and no violations 4 of Indian air space.

"A media report about two ITBP [Indo-Tibetan Border Police] jawans [soldiers] having been injured due to firing from across the Line of Actual Control has come to notice. It is factually incorrect," the Indian foreign ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

And here is what the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman had to say about the same incident（事件）: "I have not heard of the scenario 6 you mentioned... I have noticed, however, that Indian media has been releasing some groundless information recently. I wonder what their intention is."

'Without pause'

But China's concerns about accuracy（精读） do not seem to bother a large chunk 7 of the Indian media, which is engaged in a rather serious bout 5 of "China-bashing" these days.

Such China "stories" continue without pause.

Facts do not seem to matter as some Indian media organisations believe that this is the best way to grab a larger market share.

"Nothing has changed on the ground between the two countries," a senior Indian official, who preferred anonymity 8, told the BBC.

"I just can't understand the reasons for this hysteria," the official said.

China is India's largest trading partner, with two-way trade volumes crossing $50bn in 2008.

The two countries have been trying to negotiate a solution to their decades-old boundary dispute, a process which shows few signs of reaching fruition anytime soon.

There hasn't been a single fatality 10 （病死率）in skirmishes along the undefined India-China boundary since 1967, but the memories of the crushing defeat inflicted 11 by the Chinese on India in the 1962 war have not faded from the minds of some Indians.

In a sense, the ghost of 1962 also has not been exorcised from the memories of a certain narrow, but influential 12, category of retired 13 generals and diplomats 14, who still harbour ambitions of "giving it back to the Chinese".

Media war

In the last two decades - ever since a path-breaking visit by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to Beijing in 1988 - there has been a visible effort on the part of the two governments to try to narrow their differences.

A code was agreed on how patrol parties were to act in case they encountered each other.

These encounters do take place and the two sides have a specified 15 drill in such cases, which appears to have worked well over the years.

But now, the threat to a stable India-China relationship is coming not from the governments, but from sections within the media.

If the largely private Indian media is belligerent 16 about China, a response is beginning to emerge from the Chinese side as well.

"India likes to brag 17 about its sustainable development, but worries that it is being left behind by China. China is seen in India as both a potential threat and a competitor to surpass," the state-run Global Times wrote in June this year.

In essence, a media war, initiated 18 by a few Indian television channels and newspapers, has now been joined from the Chinese side as the Global Times opinion piece indicates.

Briefing editors of national dailies, a senior Indian official suggested that there was no point in the press showing any "hysteria".

Not many journalists, it would appear, want to listen to such suggestions. （本文由在线英语听力室整理编辑）