Welcome to the Prison Pulpit on the China Compass Podcast. I'm your China Travel Guide in Exile. As usual, still an exile. Missionary Ben, follow me on Twitter, X, at China Adventures, where I share a new Chinese city or county and or county to pray for every single day of the week. You can also feel free to email me anytime. ChinaCompassatPrivacyPort.com. You can visit praygivego.us for many things. One is Patreon. There's a link there to our Patreon account where you can support what we're doing and support especially the work in China. That's what the support would go for is actually towards the work in China. You can also find on Patreon different collections of the podcast that I put together. So targeting a specific region of China, targeting topics like North Korea, Taiwan, targeting different things, all kinds of different things including the Prison Pulpit series where we talked through Richard Wormbrand's writings as well as Pastor Wang Yi. You can also find my substack there at praygivego.us. All of the books and everything else I've published in the past, the short list I've got right here in front of me. The memoirs of William Millen who's the first missionary to Malaysia, Malaka at the time is the city he was in. The second missionary to China, this is 200 years ago. The other book, the autobiography of John G. Payton with the introduction forward, I should say, written by Toby Sumter, Johng.com is the direct link but it's also again, all these are there at praygivego.us. I'm going to be working on part two of the autobiography of John G. Payton, republishing it here later this year, early next year. I'm going to be visiting the islands again there in the South seas here in a couple of months with my daughter. Hopefully we'll have some better pictures this time as that. I got a few pictures last time but didn't get as many good pictures as I would like to have gotten my daughter. We'll help with that. Borden of Yale, the millionaire missionary is also there available at praygivego.us. He, his story, man, if you're interested at all in the Muslim situation in the Middle East and what's going on and what has happened in the past, that's quite the look into that world back at the time Cairo in the early 1900s and what was possible there at that time compared to what's not so possible today in many of those same places. It's just a fascinating look and we can encourage us to pray more for that region and those people in places. The final little book I've got mentioned here, Unbeaten is my story, the story of my arrest interrogation and deportation from China almost eight years ago now. Late next month, April 30th will be the eight-year anniversary of my arrest and interrogation there. I tell the story kind of a little memoir in this little book Unbeaten and Unbeaten refers not to me being awesome. I'm Unbeaten. They can't beat me. It refers actually to it's a play on words, something that was spoken to me by the police that night about how they weren't going to beat me because I'm an American but I know that they do beat the the the the the heck out of Chinese people at speaking of which I met some guys this week that are from China who have been physically beaten by the Chinese police at different times. So it's a real thing but no, they did not beat me. They just threatened me and deported me but they do beat their own people and their own believers. That's why we should be praying for them. So you can get all that again. Praygivego.us. So you just heard my pre-recorded intro to the show. I'm back in India. I was in Bangladesh for a couple of days back in India back in Calcutta. Tonight I'll head up north from here tomorrow with a friend that I'm meeting here from Bhutan actually he's from Bhutan he's flying to Mimi here. We'll travel together up north to the foothills of the Himalayas. It's been some time together. We've got another guy to see. Another people to see this weekend as well. Again, I can't go into all the details about the different ministry activities I've involved in here. India itself is a is it has an issue security issue currently with the Hindu government in place. So we've got to be careful here when I come in and out of the country and what I reveal about what's going on and what we're doing here on the ground. This this podcast is going to be kind of interesting. I mean I'm pre-recording the intro which you've already heard. I've got the pre-recorded outro because I'm just recording on my phone here as I travel. I'm going to record right now just a couple of minutes and then tomorrow maybe from the airport I'll record some more and then as I travel we got to lay over in another city and I record a little bit there and just kind of go through some things along the way as I read more about what's going on in China currently and as I observe things as I travel some interesting things. So what I want to do right now in this particular part again this might end up being five or six kind of sections of the podcasts spliced together to make a total of you know more or less an hour. But what I want to do right now just briefly is explain what happened tonight. Nothing crazy happened but I thought I was going to go get something more recognizable for dinner. I saw on my map near the hotel. I'm staying at a holiday in express so it's kind of a western hotel. Very inexpensive here but nice you know western quality for the most part here. But around the corner from the hotel which is not far from the airport I walk from the airport here about a 10 or 15 minute walk. I saw on the map there's supposed to be a pizza hut about a third of a mile out the door around the corner down this busy street with a lot of buses pedestrians and different things and I'm going to go to pizza hut. Pizza Hut sounds good. I'm going to get some pizza. I haven't had something like that in a while as I've been traveling here in Indian and Bangladesh. So I walk and walk and then I'm walking down I think yeah I haven't seen the pizza yet. I was on the right side of the road. I pulled my map out and I phone looked and I was like way past where it should have been and I thought man there's no pizza hut there. I walked that road. I was looking at every door. There's nothing there. And so I walked past and there was no pizza hut. On the way there I had noticed this weird like Hindu preaching going on. There was like this kind of almost it was a building but it had no proper door and it was almost open air inside. You could just stick straight in from the street to this building and there was a guy preaching. You could tell he was preaching. I thought it was a Muslim guy at first because you do hear that some in the Muslim nations where they're kind of preaching on loudspeakers but this was not Muslim for sure. You could tell by the paintings on the walls and just the way it was set up and so it was it was preaching. Hindu preaching I guess you would say there and so I kept walking on down that I turned around came back and the and where the pizza hut was supposed to be was right about where this Hindu preaching is going on. So again I got back and sure enough it wasn't there. I don't know where pizza hut is supposed to be but I gave up pretty quickly on finding pizza. The only other place I'd seen walking up that I thought looked halfway decent was this Momo shop. Now some of you might know what Momo is. Momo is kind of a Tibetan Chinese. I don't even know where it comes from originally. It's not it's not Chinese. It's more Tibetan I guess maybe but it's a word for dumplings. Chinese style dumplings. Like I said you could say Tibetan style dumplings are popular in Nepal and Tibet as well and Momo's generally have a little bit of meat inside a little bit of veggies maybe and so there's a Momo shop. It's a takeaway Momo shop and I'm looking and looking and they have chicken and cheese Momo. They have these weird Momo's they have Sichuan flavor Momo's it's probably really spicy. All and they even have this one burger thing. I thought I was ordering a chicken burger and I ended up getting this Momo burger. It was literally two chicken dumplings on a burger like like like make like instead of a patty it was the Momo dumplings on the burger taking place of the patty and I'm so glad he said would you like cheese on that and I said I don't need cheese. I'm so glad I didn't get cheese. That would be really weird slice of cheese with the with the with the with the Momo's with the dumplings. Anyway the point of one I'm gonna say is I ordered my dinner there. It turned out to be a little more pricey than what I would expect you know not pricey for a buy American standards for four or five to almost five dollars US but that's a lot for India. India is pretty cheap. I could have found other food other places probably for about you know a third of that price and and gotten full but I ordered some I ordered some Momo's. I thought I was getting the Momo's that were pretty simple plain turns out they were not and I ordered those called the Darjeeling special Momo's whatever was deep fried pan fried Momo's Darjeeling is a famous town north of here. I'll be at the foot of the mountains below Darjeeling here here tomorrow night and Saturday and so I ordered that and then I ordered this add-on little burger thing which wasn't a burger it was Momo's on on bread with with a much of spicy sauce with it and then he talked me into getting some french fries it turned out the french fries were actually good it was really small little order but it was only about you know 70 cents to add that on to the meal so with those three things I ended up getting my meal but again my point is I've been to India I've eaten food here and there everywhere and even I even I won't speak the language but this guy spoke some English well one of the problems was is the the Hindu temple by this point had stopped the preaching and they had begun singing and we're talking loud and that is huge loud speaker and it was loud I mean I'm trying to talk to this guy at the Momo shop across the counter and we we're leaning forward our faces are only about a foot apart and we're trying to kiss each other across the counter and I'm yelling almost and he's yelling and even then we we can't communicate hardly I mean obviously because I ended up getting what I did not want I did not want super spicy I've had a lot of spicy food recently I wanted to get this plain momoes with some meat in them I did get the momoes with meat that's what I got but they were just absolutely drenched in this spicy red sauce not at all what I would have expected for what I what I decided to order and then of course the burger wasn't a chicken burger it was a chicken momo burger two momoes on the on the patty on the sorry on the bread um there so and then the fries though were good and it was really spicy and I ate it and I hope I hope my stomach deals with it okay it was okay it filled me up but it was not what I wanted so even somebody who's relatively a seasoned traveler in places like this even I struggle at times to get what I want when I look for pizza no pizza ended up getting momoes I don't even like momoes to begin with I don't like dumplings much I thought I'll go ahead and get dumplings that the the pictures look decent on the sign but those were the pictures of the basic thing not what I ended up getting I ended up getting the that I would absolutely not have chosen if I had a choice and I thought I had a choice I did have a choice but I didn't know how to order it properly I didn't know how to talk and I couldn't talk over the Hindu singing the Hindu singing by the way was it really the tone and the whininess kind of in the voices reminded me of what's called whino in Peru it's like a it's like a kind of almost like a wailing sound music that's common in the mountains of Peru so I took a little video audio of that so I could show my wife later and see if she see if she thinks the same thing it sounds something like what we see in Peru anyway just a fascinating place here again crowds everywhere I guess the highlight of my time out is I was able to get some caffeine I was able to get the couple bottles of small bottles of mountain dew to have with my with my meal here those are very cheap here you can get that and so yeah here I am back in the hotel I gotta get some sleep it's getting late actually one minute to midnight on I guess it is what day is it today Thursday night here in India which is around noon on Thursday back in North America and so that's all for tonight the next thing you'll hear will be me recording sometime tomorrow from one of the airports either the Calcutta Airport here or from the other layover airport agaritala and it's further to the east in India along the Bangladesh border talk to you again and in just a few moments for you so I'm here in agaritala India I'm not having as much time here as I thought as far as being able to record something for today's podcast but I wanted to give a quick quick update so we've been here about two hours me and my my friend from Bhutan who are traveling together flew here from Calcutta just fascinating we flew over Bangladesh we had to fly across Bangladesh entirely to get to agaritala and it was still like less than an hour flight so less than one hour across Bangladesh entirely to get to agaritala on on the far eastern side of northeast India and then now we're waiting for our next flight which is going to go back over the northern part of Bangladesh to a city called Baghdogra Baghdogra Airport there right at the foothills of the Himalayas right between Nepal and Bhutan and Sikham and not far from Tibet even and so that's our next hour long flight or so we'll finally get to our hotel at eight or nine o'clock tonight but I wanted to share that so Bangladesh again it's I've talked about how crowded it is in Bangladesh the other day on the podcast and it's less than an hour to fly completely across the country and it is home to nearly 180 million people 180 million people less than one hour across about the size of South Carolina or actually bigger than South Carolina slightly but about like Georgia or Alabama I think it was Iowa those are all pretty close comps to the size of Bangladesh and so again I'm here and this this actually this part of India actually has quite a few Christians this eastern side of India certain states over this side have quite a number of believers and so I haven't traveled much over here extensively but I do know there are certain districts that are almost all Christian many many Baptists in many places many classes of course others as well but um so someday I'll travel more out this way but it's very hilly very mountainous tribal peoples everywhere but many of these tribal peoples have come to know the Lord over the years and been been and been reached by the gospel by missionaries and others and so there are many Christian tribes out this way we're not that far from Myanmar from the border of Myanmar which also is a nation of contrast you know you have Buddhist peoples and unreached peoples in Myanmar and you have also Christian tribes and Christian people scattered throughout Myanmar you have a similar situation in far far northeastern India there sandwiched up by Myanmar south of Tibet in China and past Bangladesh again Bangladesh is kind of sits there and is surrounded by India almost on every side there so if you're into geography go pull out a map and check out some of the things I've been talking about here from Calcutta to Agartala and then now from Agartala to Bagdogra which is the airport town and it's next to Siliguri Siliguri is the name of the actual city and that sits at the foot of the Himalayas and the mountain town of Darjeeling which is well known Darjeeling tea is a famous tea that is drunk here well drunk all over the world but it's famous as being from India the British kind of developed the tea plantations in that area we're actually staying at a hotel that is also a tea plantation there near Siliguri is where I'll be the next two nights there as well so that's all just a quick update from Agartala I'll have more later tonight or tomorrow from Bagdogra area Siliguri area and then I'll be able to finish up the podcast and post it at the normal time that you'll be listening hopefully on the weekend on Saturday it'll go live and then Sunday Saturday Sunday you can download and listen so talk to you again a little bit later in a day or two God bless so continuing with this weekend's podcast which is really a combination of numerous small recordings that I've been making since earlier in the week and now it is Saturday here in the foothills of the Himalayas in northern India I'm in the town of Siliguri outside of Siliguri really at a place called Mayfair tea garden resort it's not really a resort but it's a hotel it's nice surrounded by tea gardens here in the foothills of the mountains have some meetings here yesterday and today and I'm trying to finish the podcast before my meetings begin here in a little bit and I'll get it posted it's really Friday evening right now back in North America as I record this I got a couple different things I want to run through including India North Korea China of course and even the Iran situation maybe at the very end if we have if we have time one thing that I don't want to miss it's just really funny I guess sad and funny is the recent North Korean elections that took the article I saw the tweet that I saw that first alerted me to this was a little bit misleading so the tweet says this the title with 99.3% mandate Kim Jong-un sweeps North Korea polls and then I didn't look closely at the subtitle the kind of the caption below it but the caption below actually clarifies that the title was mistaken it's not 99.3% it's 99.93% 99.93% of the ballot was for Kim Jong-un and there's a reason for that so obviously one of the first things I thought was oh wow I didn't even know they're having elections it doesn't really matter in a country like North Korea because of course we know the elections are are rigged they're not they're not legitimate in that but I was surprised to see that the number wasn't a solid 100% who are these 0.7% or actually in real and realistically it's 0.07% who are these people and how did they I mean why would they vote this way if they know it's going to cost them their lives that's almost definitely what would happen right and so I was just pondering that and I thought you know I think I'm going to ask Brock just to give me an explanation of this I know what it'll probably say but I'm curious is the how it will frame it and how it'll put it so what Brock said was actually very helpful it kind of put the things put the thoughts together in order and and it was interesting I'm going to read some of that to you here so my question to Brock was tell me more about the recent North Korean elections how is it possible that 0.7% didn't vote for the dictator considering the likelihood of being punished executed by the regime and I was still quoting there the wrong number it's not 0.7% 0.07 and Brock reminded me of that so this is what Brock said or at least a portion of what Brock said the recent North Korea election was held on March 15th 2026 for the 15th Supreme People's Assembly the countries that rubber stamp parliament with 687 seats as always in North Korea there was one pre-approved candidate per district all loyal to Kim Jong-un I didn't even know this so one candidate per district no competition at all voting was mandatory so you have to vote Kim Jong-un voted himself at a coal mine polling station so that's a good photo ops I guess he's a man of the people voting at the coal mine even the elected 687 seat parliament has no real power it exists to rubber stamp whatever the regime whatever Kim Jong-un himself wants so the official results announced via state media turnout was 99.99% so almost everybody voted I wonder who the few are the didn't that would be bad for them I assume votes in favor of the regime's candidates 99.93 again that's 0.07 who didn't vote in favor 99.93% votes against yes 0.07% this is what Brock is saying here this is the first time since 1957 that North Korea has publicly admitted to any no votes in a national level election in every election from 1957 until now they always claimed 100% approval so I didn't know these details I was just thinking oh that's fascinating but I didn't realize this actually is an anomaly in North Korean voting history having a slight percentage of no votes is an anomaly and again Brock reminds me here that I wrote 0.7% and it's actually reported to be 0.07% which is a very easy mix up thank you Brock for reminding me with the decimal how voting actually works this again this is Brock's headline here for me and why the 0.07% is shocking there is no secret ballot in any meaningful sense you get one ballot with a single candidate's name to vote yes you just drop the ballot straight into the box everyone sees you do it so you've got a ballot with the name of the only candidate and your job is just to drop it in the box I approve he's my guy if you vote no says Brock you have to walk into a separate highly visible booth cross out the name and then come out officials neighborhood watch people and see your police are watching this whole time not showing up at all gets you visited by the authorities within hours so the system is deliberately designed to make this sent obvious and terrifying so the Brock continues and this is Brock is questioning the number even the 0.07% Brock is questioning as if that's even valid I was assuming okay that's a very small number it's probably valid I think that's probably what the regime wanted as well but Brock is questioning that and you'll see why how is it possible that even 0.07% which is roughly 14,000 people out of 20 million voters didn't vote for the dictator the short answer it almost certainly isn't real dissent on that scale it's almost certainly not 14,000 actual people who voted this way or didn't vote in this way here's what experts defectors and an analyst excuse me from groups like in-k news radio free asia and former officials say actually happened deliberate propaganda by the regime and so that's number one the tiny no percentage is almost certainly manufactured or inflated on purpose by admitting a microscopic amount of opposition first time in nearly 70 years the regime can claim we have real democracy like as Steve Dase with Santa shows sacred democracy to outsiders who still while still showing near total control it's sophisticated PR theater that's what Brock is suggesting here number two spoiled or administrative ballots some crossed out votes are probably just mistakes damaged ballots or people who wrote something else all counted as against to create the statistic so take whatever whatever ballots happen to have a little damage and say oh this we can just count this as against and we can pat our numbers to show that there's some true competition even though obviously there's not number three a handful of genuine and now doomed dissenters this is Brock talking any real people who actually went into that booth are facing and this is a list of five things immediate interrogation loss of social status prison camp execution in extreme cases and three generation punishment for their entire family vote against the regime three generation punishment for the entire family the regime uses elections as a loyalty test and census they already know who the point zero seven percent are those people are not allowed to disagree they're being identified and though if that's what again Brock's going on here there's zero tolerance in reality and this is the final point defectors consistently say the actual number of intentional no votes in past elections was effectively zero anyone crazy or desperate enough to do it was caught and disappeared quietly the fact the regime is admitting it this time is the unusual part bottom line this isn't evidence of loosening control or bravery winning out it's the opposite the Kim regime is so confident in its surveillance machine that it can afford to publicly allow a fake point zero seven percent of opposition for propaganda value while the real cost to any actual dissentor remains execution level punishment the entire election is political theater designed to reinforce total control not reflect the people's will so that's Brock there on the North Korea again scare quote definitely scare quotes in this particular context elections now I will say this China doesn't even have any sort of national election in China you have the controlling communist party officials that vote I really don't know enough about the China system to be able to say exactly how it functions and how many are people actually voting for the current dictator but how it all works I don't know all the details of that that be of interesting topic someday I guess but it's not like this it's not where everybody's required to vote China doesn't have a thing where one point how many billion people who would be voting age are required to go to a polling vote if they did however it would be something more like this they would definitely China doesn't allow it because China I guess is smart enough to know that they would see some significant dissent and if they did they would have to then enforce and have some crackdown and that would cause issues among the people China is just not quite in some ways China is not the same beast as North Korea is but they would be and they are on the inside there's still the totalitarian controlling beast of North Korea but they're just smarter I think about it overall and they don't even allow things to get to the point where they would have to crack down and then make themselves paint themselves into a corner like North Korea has into being just the crazy regime that everyone knows is crazy China tries its best to play both sides and to be reasonable again quote reasonable among many of the nation's countries of the world but we know they still don't allow any vote whatsoever not even you know a small dissenting vote like North Korea is pretending to allow here moving on from North Korea I want to look at the India-China relationship for a few minutes here again I'm in India I'm really only and I'm only 50 miles the way the crow flies maybe less from Tibet itself from the Chinese border it's not a border that you can cross maybe some there's some local trade that happens between that particular border and China between Sikkim which is previously its own independent state currently Sikkim is part of India it's a province of India there is a border there and it's not that far away but you're not even allowed as Americans to get near that particular border and only a few locals are allowed to do cross border trade in that area but there's an article here and I mentioned this a few months ago when it happened about the lady the Indian citizen who was deported from China and sent back to India and I'll I'll remind you that story as I read through this article here but this talks about China's dispute over over with India over Arunakal Pradesh which is one of the one of India's north eastern provinces I guess it's really the the north eastern most province of India and that province borders Tibet and it borders China it borders the current border of China it's a disputed border China claims much more of that region than they actually control and India of course claims all of it that it does control and maybe even more in some cases it's a disputed territory but India controls the vast majority of it China China has control down to a certain point but China's control is actually much closer to the line that India itself claimed as being the accurate border late last month again this is an old slightly older article see late last month when was the actually regional article okay this is from December so yeah back in November an Indian citizen named Prima Thongdok who was traveling from London to Japan she wouldn't even go into China nothing to do with China she was detained for 18 hours on her layover in Shanghai and I talked about this at the time Chinese officials claimed her passport was invalid because it listed her birthplace as the Indian state of Arunakal Pradesh which China claims as part of its own territory just a crazy story when it happened to and it's still crazy to read it again makes me makes me laugh not a good laugh just a mocking laugh of China and they're in their craziness the woman also reported that she was told by the officials that she is not Indian but Chinese and that she could not travel on to Japan I got to stop the redistimate again this is China's way of gaslighting and dealing with issues around their fringes and their borders this is how they deal with Taiwan you could have a Taiwanese citizen standing in front of a Chinese person saying no we actually do function as our own country we are Taiwanese you are Chinese and the Chinese person say no you are Chinese no you're Chinese and you can't argue with me you've always been Chinese and you're actually part of China and so even though there's no actual control they still make the claim and just stand on the claim and just repeat it over and over at Nazim there so that's what they're doing this is an official at the Shanghai airport who has no authority to do any of this at all other than just to maybe give her permission in and out of the country but no actual authority over citizenship or passport validity all those kinds of things and they're saying and they're claiming no actually you're Chinese you're Chinese and therefore we're going we're not going to let you continue to your desire destination we're going to send you to back to India which is actually kind of weird if she was Chinese why would they send her back to India I'm not sure the incident did not receive significant attention in mainstream media we covered it here on the China Communist podcast at least for a week or so instead representing nearly the latest manifestation in disputes over Arunakao Pradesh between India and China it is no word in the respect that the relations between the two Asian giants India is now bigger than China or China at least population wise which have other territorial agreement disagreements dating back decades have somewhat thought as of late China refers to Arunakao Pradesh as Dangan with Dangan translated is South Tibet they call it South Tibet because Beijing does not accept the McMahon line McMahon MCMAH ON that was drawn by the British in 1914 as the northern border of the Indian state so yes Britain Britain drew a line that was somewhat arbitrary back in 1914 but it is worth noting that at that time China did not control Tibet to bet was not part of China at that time at best it was an outlying district or an outlying territory that had some connection with China but not controlled by by any means it was independent still at that time and that's when the line was drawn between India and Tibet and China does not the the demarcation was agreed upon by Britain and then independent Tibet I'm getting ahead of myself I just read the article and China considers it illegitimate in fact Beijing has been renaming places inside of Arunakao Pradesh going back to my previous point they're renaming cities in a region they don't control it's just crazy reportedly painting Chinese characters on stones and remote parts of the region in order to demonstrate its claim on the area so going sneaking people in like spies sneaking into the area painting Chinese characters on rocks inside of India's territory as a way of challenging this particular thing in 2023 India pulled out of the world university games that were being hosted in Chengdu Sichuan province of China because Beijing issued stapled visas rather than regular visas to three athletes from Arunakao Pradesh so they did something weird with their visas from athletes from that particular area the state due to its geography is strategically significant and even Indian citizens must apply for a special permit to visit yes foreigners like myself and even other Indian citizens have to have a special reason and permit to visit that area I'm about to visit there someday if I could I'm not sure if it'll be possible probably is possible if but I have to do some some red tape run jump through some hoops to make it happen the India China border conflicts center on the de facto demarcation known line of actual control LAC this is the current LAC is the line of actual control which stretches up to 3500 kilometers in length due to the Himalayan location of the region ill-defined terrain has made the area difficult to delineate with geographical factors such as unclear mountainous territory and melting snow caps constantly changing its precise boundaries the aforementioned colonial drawn maps as well as changes of status resulting from partition and the 1962 war compound the problem so it's a lot of different issues involved in making that that border official both neither side will agree and probably never will agree on that particular border both India and China have been building up infrastructure in these areas and both regularly accuse each other of overstepping the border since Chinese president Xi Jinping rose to power in 2012 for key flash points have occurred the 2017 standoff at Duclum in Bhutan on the eastern flank of the LAC by the way I just spent yesterday with the brother from Bhutan he's a pastor and leader there I won't say his name for security reasons really nice guy he actually had an issue he said coming through China on a layer from South Korea a few years ago and he was deported back to Bhutan he wasn't allowed to fly from China or travel from China to India which is where he had a ticket booked but they forced him to go back to Bhutan directly so some connection again with this whole issue with China and Bhutan in these different regions and so he had issues with that I couldn't understand exactly all the details involved in his situation he wasn't a very experienced traveler so I'm not sure if his ticket had issues or not but yeah it sounds like a very strange thing that they were still very sensitive about him going to India from China especially considering that he lived in this right near this demarcation line there was also the 2020 skirmish in Galwan valley between India's Ladakh region and China controlled Aksai Chin in the far west and a 2021 clash in Sikkim in the east Sikkim again is just north of where I'm sitting right now I'm only probably 20 30 miles from the Sikkim border and just 40 or 50 miles from the China border which is to the north of Sikkim and also a 2022 coral in Arunaka Pradesh in which US intelligence tipped off India so US must have seen China doing something tipped India off and India went to protect their territory and then there was a skirmish there of some sort of the entire region of Arunaka Pradesh Taowang Taowang is the largest cities right up there near the China the the current controlling border of China where China actually controls but it's on the India side Taowang is particularly important to the Chinese government in fact it was the only piece of land China called its own before extending the claim to the entirety of the north eastern Indian state Taowang is home to one of the most significant monasteries into Beton Buddhism and is the birthplace of the sixth Dalilama I don't know which one that was down back in the back in time somewhere there is a large Tibetan community in the area making it critical for the Chinese government which fears Tibetan uprisings and is set on selecting its own candidate as the reincarnation of the next Dalilama there's going to be dueling Dalilamas here that's going to be a title of a podcast at some point in the future dueling Dalilamas and we'll talk about the one China chooses versus the one chosen by the actual controllers and rulers of Tibet in exile in India it is in this context that the continued insistence on claiming Arunaka Pradesh must be considered Beijing is already anxious enough about the Tibetan diaspora and the government in exile along with the Dalilama himself who who India hosts in Daramsala Daramsala India is where the Dalilama lives and has his base Beijing has also has also not hesitated to crack down on the Tibetan refugee community in Nepal for similar reasons I don't know how they crack down with them in Nepal I guess Nepal did allow them to do something like that for a season for China the process of synthesizing Tibetan Buddhism making it more Chinese which by necessity includes the selection of the next Dalilama is of the utmost importance Beijing has secured its version of the Punchan Lama to act as a mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party so they already have a Punchan Lama which is a different level of Lama that's already speaking on behalf of Tibet and claiming or for the party but claiming to speak on behalf of the Tibetan people especially in light of the Dalilama's recent birthday and announcement that his reincarnation will be recognized by Tibetan tradition alone so he's setting himself up to make sure that the claim is made by them alone the fixation on Arunaka Pradesh and Tao Wang in particular is all a part of this bigger story I might have gone through something similar again back a month or two ago I wanted to mention it again and that also leads up to another article that I just read I'm not going to quote and read through the whole thing it's very long took me a while to read I had a skin part of it myself but I want to give a little bit more overview on Tibet our sorry India's relationship with China and the Tibetan conflict between India and China over the years this other article is called Tibet in India's China calculus and if you're interested in this kind of thing at all it's really fascinating I'll put the link in the show notes it's a very well written article it's from an Indian perspective I believe but it's just really it was really good I'm gonna I'm gonna save this and refer to it again in the future I'm sure I just want to kind of read this the the conclusion the last few paragraphs of the article because it helps to summarize everything that was said and I might stop and make a few comments along the way at the heart of the Tibet question remains the battle of conflicting narratives was it historically always a part of China or did it mostly have an independent identity with many similarities to Indian culture China's 2021 white paper on Tibet reiterates the former assertion so China of course claims India or sorry claims Tibet has always been connected more to China Indian claims the opposite and that's what the next line says here India could try to subtly counter this by drawing attention to the osmosis between Indian and Tibetan languages cultures and religions so I didn't I hadn't really thought about that but if you just if you took away all the all the lines all the current national borders regarding China India Tibet Nepal Bhutan all these nations and you were to look at cultures and languages linguistically and culturally where does Tibet fit and undoubtedly without a doubt it fits better with the Indian subcontinent than with China so if you did that again China would be more closely associated with Japan and Korea both of the Koreas and Taiwan of course in that region China would be associated with those nations more broadly and maybe even a little bit with Thailand and Laos and Vietnam they have some similarities in their languages as well and India would obviously be associated Bhutan Nepal India Bangladesh Pakistan even though they're their arch enemies currently and Tibet Tibet would undoubtedly go with India as far as that culturally linguistically now China has always tried to control Tibet they've tried their best to control they've had treaties made with Tibet over the years and they claim those treaties mean that they were actually kind of a vassal state they were a part of China over the years but this little article here this one sentence reminded me that actually yeah it makes much more sense it would make much more sense for Tibet to become a province of India than for Tibet to be a province of China that just makes sense culturally again linguistically even the script of the language I was in where was that I was in I was looking at script the other day what language was I looking at was it no no my buddy here from Bhutan yesterday it's right he was showing me the Bhutanese script the way they write in Bhutan the language they write they have a different name for the language I can't even think of what the name is right now but it sounds like a Tibetan word and their language comes from Tibetan it's a cousin of the Tibetan language and the written script in Bhutan it's it looks just like it's identical to Tibetan it's Tibetan and Tibetan also is related to Sanskrit which is what the Indian languages were originally written in if you look at the Indian languages and the script they use for many of the Indian languages not just one there's multiple languages that are spoken all over India they're very very similar to Tibetan so Tibetan makes more sense as a province of India than of China and that's what this article here is referring to so it's fascinating to see so China already controls much more than it ought to control at least in that particular regard and they're still asking for more they're claiming for more they're pushing further and further south trying to control more I'll add this China is using Tibet it seems somewhat as a buffer in a similar way that they use North Korea as a buffer between China's territory and South Korea and then the US so with India Tibet is sort of a buffer if if there ever was war with India it would be along this Tibetan boundary here and so it wouldn't affect the vast majority of the Chinese people that live far far far far to the north and east from there and so it would be more much more on India's doorstep me India a billion people in India live within a few hundred miles less than a thousand miles of that border with Tibet whereas the vast majority of China's billion or more people live a couple thousand miles away to the east and north India let's see here India could try to counter this by drawing attention to the osmosis between Indian and Tibetan languages cultures and religions that's what I was just explaining here again and let me skip down here for a minute Tibet remains a conspicuous but understated factor in India and China relations historically India has refrained from raising the question of Tibet with China due to diplomatic circumspection and territorial vulnerabilities even as sympathies for the Tibetan cause persisted among sections of the political elite and the public this is kind of a conclusion of the overall article recent tensions with China however especially Beijing trying to change the status quo along the line of actual control have reopened the strategic space for New Delhi to reconsider its Tibet policy in 2025 the non non-Ajin area the 90-year-old Dalai Lama kick started to search for his successor and China has asserted a stake in the process worries among India strategic community also remain over the evolving US China dynamics under a Trump administration in other words is China going to be more pro Trump or sorry is Trump going to be more pro China or more pro India and is that going to cause more conflict between the two as well how is the US going to play their cards in this particular thing this is an Indian perspective at a time when there is rising sentiment of territorial expansionism in China and Beijing is framing Tibet as part of China's historically of China historically New Delhi must up the ante in a battle of narratives and highlight Tibet's distinct identity and cultural connections with India India can strategically counter Chinese propaganda by promoting Tibetan culture and institutions internationally while steering clear of overt political confrontation so this article went through a whole different much of things about the history again of India and Tibet it talked about how back in the day of course India was more on Tibet side but China came in and took over and then not long after China took over Tibet they fought a war with India I don't know much about that war it was 1962 I believe it was a long part of the border there was a China the China India kind of fighting there along the border that's when the line of actual control really took shape back in the early 1960s by the way that was also when China was coming out of what they called the Great Leap Forward which killed millions of Chinese mostly through famine and and disease back at that time the article goes on to explain how India has actually changed its stance numerous times over Tibet there's been seasons when they were more pro-China and they didn't care much about Tibet there's been seasons when they're more pro-Tibet and more against China there's it's gone back and forth on a pendulum similar to the US China relationship and it mentions how in that article how even India cannot rely upon depend upon the US to be stable in its approach because the US has changed at one point the US was very anti-China pro outside of China pro-India pro Tibet back in the 70s and then they changed and they they basically took China over Taiwan they still committed to support Taiwan of course but they officially recognized China back in the late 1970s again under Richard Nixon and then Jimmy Carter there was a change and that left India a little bit out on on its own in that particular circumstance and so again the article goes through this these different rising ups and downs of the relationship between India and China and of course the US is kind of in the mix as well that leads me though to a topic on Tibet itself there's two articles that I've seen recently and they're both basically talking about the same particular thing and it says China's new language law could prove fatal for minority tongue so what this what this article looks at is the reality that within China China still continues even 60 70 years after forcing and and and militarily taking over Tibet they're continuing even now to slowly take away the Tibetan language the Tibetan culture and to force the Tibetans to assimilate into the broader Chinese culture so China recognizes I think that the Tibetan culture and language is much more similar to India so they go in and force them to learn Chinese and so even now I think that would have been the case back in the day it's probably not the case now most Chinese young people growing up or Tibetan young people growing up in the Chinese boundaries are going to feel much more at home in the Chinese empire than they would in India just because they've learned Chinese language now from school they've been forced to learn it and so in China has done this obviously on purpose in 1935 this article begins a group of left wing students in Shanghai warned that ongoing efforts to reform the Chinese language and make it easier for the mostly illiterate population to learn risks setting up a dictatorship of the Beijing speech this is a warning by some left wing students in Shanghai back in the 1930s before communism even became a thing or became in power they supported replacing or supplementing Chinese characters with the Latin alphabet but said this should be done not only for the most widely spoken form of Chinese Mandarin but also for the dozens of other languages used around the country China has dozens of languages like this article mentioned some hundreds even if you want to count all the dialects this multiculturalist position was largely adopted by the communist party then in the midst of a brutal civil war with the ruling party at the time this is when communism was taking power which saw language policy as a key means of maintaining and enforcing national unity when the communist won the war in 1951 however they reversed course promoting instead a single national language Poo Tong Hua which translates literally as the common tongue measures to promote greater literacy such as the development of the pinning PINYN Romanization system of the letters was were built on top of the language Poo Tong Hua which was itself heavily influenced by the Beijing dialect of Mandarin so China chose one particular dialect and made it the official dialect for all of China which is taught in schools across the country even in these minority areas while the propagation of pinning and other educational reforms have essentially eliminated illiteracy in China it's helped to grow the literacy in the country because of the the systematic oneness of the language everywhere the countries other Chinese and ethnic minority languages have suffered even once dominant regional languages such as Cantonese in the south now yield to Poo Tong Hua while many smaller tongues are teetering on the brink of extinction completely again even in Hong Kong I've made the note over the years in Hong that you can now speak Mandarin Poo Tong Hua and be understood by almost everybody whereas 20 even 20 years ago that wasn't the case this week this is just a a week or two ago lawmakers in China meeting for the annual session of the National People's Congress China's rubber stamp parliament that same word was used for the North Korea parliament a little while ago adopted legislation that threatens to push many of those languages over the edge and further diminished even more widely spoken tongues under the new law promoting ethnic unity and progress the state will comprehensively promote and popularize the national common language they've already done this so this is just even taking a one step further making it more official no organization or individual may hinder citizens from learning and using the national common language Poo Tong Hua the law says schools and other educational institutions shall use the national common language and script as the basic language and script for education and teaching it requires preschool children to learn Poo Tong Hua and demonstrate a basic grasp of it by the time they graduate when ethnic minority languages must be used alongside Poo Tong Hua documents and pronouncements shall emphasize the national common language and script in terms of position and order while many minority languages already struggle in China and have seen the number of speakers shriek in the past century as a result of the dominance of Poo Tong Hua just as in Canada minority languages and even French have a hard time resisting the pervasiveness of English in recent years there has been an even more active attempt to curtail language rights and encourage non-Han Chinese ethnograph to speak Poo Tong Hua now this article is reading the words that I read a minute ago about the law that doesn't sound much different than what's already been in place for a number of years so it seems like they're just reiterating that maybe pushing it a little further down the line there have been schools in China that have taught other languages to bet in another other local dialects for a long time since the beginning but they've all been forced to use Chinese now for quite some time so I'm not sure what this is actually changing it might just be reiterating the the old party line under Chinese president Xi Jinping the focus of ethnic minority policy has been driven by an overriding concern about separation he's worried he's he's he's typical dictator he's paranoid about separatism within his country even though they have more control now than they've ever had before which in many cases I've seen crackdowns on the promotion of cultural religious and linguistic rights in Tibet where Beijing has long suppressed local activism in the name of national security hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children have been placed in government run boarding schools we see we saw this starting to happen 20 years ago when we lived in that region cut off from their families I don't know if they're cut off permanently they're cut off at least during the school year languages and traditional culture again more or less they still live in in a region that that speaks their language generally and and has part of their culture this is a little overstated there throughout the region as well as Xinjiang province and Inner Mongolia with the Mongolians textbooks and local in local languages have been replaced by ones in Chinese and ethnic minorities are encouraged by massive propaganda posters to quote be civilized speak poutu hua so yeah again be civilized don't speak your uncivilized native whatever dialect speak poutu hua in the past some link some activists have brought legal cases against the government to protect their languages drawing on the Chinese constitution which codifies the right of all ethnic groups to quote use and develop their own spoken and written languages that's in the constitution of China such cases however are almost never successful and in the most prominent one Tashi Wang Chuk a Tibetan language activist who spoke out about his efforts to the New York Times was jailed in 2018 the new law explicitly warns that those who undermine national unity which it states is based in part on a shared common language should be prosecuted for separatism this could have ramifications among beyond ethnic minority regions one major distinction between the Hong Kong and the rest of China is that the semi-autonomous territories dominant language is Cantonese not put on wang Hong Kong also continues to use traditional Chinese characters not the simplified versions on the mainland i would add of makao is the same makao is as as Cantonese speaking and also uses traditional characters as well as being having Portuguese as one of its national languages as well in in makao because of the Portuguese colony that was there for so many years before for years policy makers in Beijing and Hong Kong have sought to promote poutu hua in the name of national unity and proponents of Cantonese have warned the language could be pushed into minority status as has happened in neighboring guang dong province guang dong literally means canton so guang dong is named the dialect Cantonese is named after guang dong but now in guang dong it is now the minority language and mandarin is taking over as the majority tongue there as well because of that pressure some Cantonese activists have been investigated as part of national security probes in recent years while others have gone into exile just for promoting their native language in that region amid efforts to integrate Hong Kong into the greater bay area not the us bay area but Hong Kong shinjin guang jo makao these are all the greater south china bay area the new law risks further criminalizing any efforts to protect a language spoken by some 80 million Chinese now we're talking about Cantonese 80 million Chinese speak Cantonese and even that language is being pushed further and further down out of the out of the limelight there and those even in those regions where it's the native tongue again this article is talking more about Tibet but it kind of turned on the topic there of of Cantonese as well another article from the BBC similar thing china approves ethnic unity law requiring minorities to learn mandarin and again this is something that has already been in place i'm not sure what the difference is here china has approved a sweeping new law which claims to help promote ethnic unity but critics say will further erode the right of minority groups on paper it aims to promote integration among the 56 officially recognized ethnic groups there's actually about 500 total most of them unofficial but 56 officially recognized ethnicities dominated by the hans Chinese critics say it cuts people off from their language and culture it mandates that all children should be taught mandarin before kindergarten and up until the end of high school previously students could study most of the curriculum in their native language so i guess that's the difference i didn't realize there was that it was that free even most of the curriculum in Tibetan weeger or mongolian for instance so this is now mandating it's most of the curriculum has to be in chinese whereas before it was some chinese and now it's mostly chinese so let's just shifted that from basically some as part of the curriculum to most and this article covers a lot of the same ground here so i'm not going to read i'm not going to read all of it here let's see one final quote here critics believe this new law will cement she's push Xi Jinping shows towards assimilation the law makes it clearer than ever this is a quote that in Xi Jinping's PRC non-hans peoples must do more to integrate themselves with the han majority and above all else to be loyal to Beijing this is from alan carlsson associate professor of government at cornell university this focus on development and prosperity is telling that's another quote professor yan Chong of the national university of singapore to the bbc it is easy to read this language he continues as meaning that minority languages and cultures are backward and impediments to advancement she's approached towards minorities it's consistent with his idea of creating a great and strong chinese nation with a northern hong core northern hong bain jing is area minorities are seen as branching off from that core and hence in some ways derivative even to bet which is crazy and they have no connection linguistically culturally very little connection there much more with india and practice this as prompting concerns about further rounds of increasing control so eventually it will be outlawed completely the way things are going it's what it seems like for sure and i think i think that's what the article doesn't say that but that's what china is slowly doing their taking away slowly the rights to people to have to their own native languages in these regions so there's a couple other things i was going to share today a couple of things i was going to mention but it seems i've run out of time and so i'm going to skip straight to the pray for china section of the podcast where we talk about the cities to pray for matching up every state in the u.s. with every province of china for prayer you can check out pray for china dot u.s. to see all the details about that if you haven't heard it already from me here on the podcast i'm not going to even go through all the seven cities from this week i'm going to start with the first one maybe work through the second or third as well but the first one is particularly helpful this today because it is Tibet pray for dranang d.r.a.n.a.ng dranang county in locca prefecture in central Tibet not far from the regional capital there of lasa dranang county locca prefecture in central Tibet now dranang is the Tibetan pronunciation jianang in chinese zh.a.n.a.ng instead of dranang and shanang shanang shanang is the place of locca i had to pause for just a minute some noise here in the hallway at the hotel where i'm staying i've never heard two ladies make so much noise in my entire life i thought it was a whole crowd of people coming through and it was two ladies two indian ladies talking to each other but to get back to my point locca is the Tibetan name shanang is the chinese name again this is the prefecture the county is dranang county central Tibet Tibet is paired up for prayer with the mountain states in the u.s montana ito huayoming and then the northern half of both utah and northern calirado again Tibet is closed off for most foreigners you can't just visit Tibet whenever you want to you got to get special permits i had another interruption here this is this is actually a miracle that i'm getting this podcast finally finished between trying to meet with people literally con non stop for two days straight and trying to find a quiet place in the hotel to talk for just a few moments it's a miracle this is getting done especially that it's almost an hour long altogether so we'll get through this again Tibet is very very difficult i'm not far from Tibet here where i'm sitting but there's no border crossing there's no way to get in there even the locals couldn't get in there very easily like local Nepalese local botanese but there are some ways and some people are doing some things there's very little but there are things happening so pray for more laborers pray that god would reach into Tibet supernaturally that he would raise up Chinese from within to reach those regions as well i know there's efforts being made but it's it's honestly it's not enough there needs to be more done so that's on sunday sunday the beginning of the week pray for dronon county locale prefecture in central Tibet and again you can check out all of these the whole list is on my sub stack china call dot sub stack dot com check out the whole list and then you'll see Monday Tuesday Wednesday on through the rest of the week and i'm going to probably pick this up again on my midweek podcast and i'll talk about some of the cities we'll pray for later in the week because there's some special area especially for me close areas that are close to my heart so after one final interruption in one final pause i'm going to go ahead and and close out and the next thing you'll hear is the outro that i pre-recorded last week from my home in Malaysia talk to you again in a few days i will be back in Malaysia at home for the next podcast god bless oh and if you'd like pray for my safe travels home this week a Tuesday and Wednesday by train and by plane from from india back to Malaysia and you can also pray as i preach and teach on sunday and monday here in india once again god bless thank you once again for listening to the china kubba's podcast subscribe and leave a review on your preferred podcast platform again if you'd like to check out everything else we're doing and support our china ministry everything can be found at praygivego.us praygivego.us or in the show notes luke 10 verse 2 the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few so let's as always let's ask the lord for more workers more laborers to go into his harvest talk to you guys again in a few days god bless