China releases footage of 'medieval' fight to the death with Indian troops on Himalayan border after four of its soldiers were killed in brutal fighting with fists, stones and sticks

China confirmed the deaths more than six months after the hand-to-hand fight
Beijing claimed the announcement could help the world 'understand the truth'
State TV aired a video which allegedly showed the brawl at Galwan River valley
The fatal clash occurred in the Ladakh region's Karakoram Mountains last June
India said 20 of its men had died in the battle involving fists, clubs and stones
The two sides are engaged in a phased pullback from their positions after talksChina has released a video which reportedly shows its border clash with Indian troops last June after Beijing admitted that four of its soldiers were killed in the fatal high-mountain fight.
The footage, aired by Beijing's state broadcaster CCTV, is said to capture the bloody hand-to-hand combat between Chinese and Indian forces at the Galwan River valley, which also resulted in the deaths of 20 Indian servicemen.
The official channel claimed the clip showed an Indian army 'several times the size of the Chinese side' launching a violent revenge attack after a Chinese commander had tried to solve the two nations' border disputes through peaceful talks.
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China's state broadcaster CCTV has released a video which it claimed showed Chinese troops' hand-to-hand border clash with Indian forces last June, which left four of its soldiers killed
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The official channel claimed that the clip showed an Indian army 'several times the size of the Chinese side' launching a violent revenge attack after China attempted talk to them peaceful
The announcement, coming more than six months after the bloody hand-to-hand fighting, should help global audiences 'understand the truth and the right and wrong of the incident,' Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said.
Yet the delay also appeared to reflect China's deep culture of military secrecy, as well as concerns over the potential domestic and international fallout from the bloodshed.
Immediately after the clash atop a high ridge on June 2020 in the Ladakh region's Karakoram Mountains, India announced it had lost 20 of its soldiers in the battle that saw fists, clubs, stones and other improvised weapons used to avoid a firefight.
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The battle took place after 'the foreign military openly violated the consensus reached with us and blatantly crossed the line to provoke [us],' according to the military channel of CCTV
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The footage reportedly showed Qi Fabao (central), a regimental commander, trying to solve the two nations' border disputes through peaceful talks before the bloody brawl broke out
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The Indians claimed that after their men were savaged with nail-studded clubs, the Chinese People's Liberation Army mutilated their corpses. No bullets were fired as per a peace treaty which bars firearms within 2km of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the line drawn down the 17,000ft valley after India's defeat in the 1962 Sino-Indian War.
China was believed to have also suffered casualties but did not provide any details, saying it didn't want to further inflame tensions. The announcement that it did indeed lose soldiers comes now that the two sides are engaged in a phased pullback from their original positions following multiple rounds of negotiations.
The People's Liberation Army Daily newspaper said Friday that the four killed were named as official state martyrs and awarded other posthumous honors.
It said the title of 'border-defending hero' was conferred on Battalion Commander Chen Hongjun, while Chen Xiangrong, Xiao Siyuan and Wang Zhuoran received first-class merit awards. It attributed their deaths to fighting in 'a clash with trespassing foreign military personnel,' without mentioning India directly.
Qi Fabao, a regimental commander from the PLA Xinjiang Military Command who was wounded in the clash, was awarded the title of 'Hero regimental commander for defending the border.'
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India announced it had lost 20 of its soldiers in the June battle. This undated handout photo released by the Indian Army on February 16 shows Chinese soldiers and tanks during military disengagement along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) at the India-China border in Ladakh
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In this photograph provided by the Indian Army, army officers of India and China hold a meeting at Pangong lake region in Ladakh on the India-China border on February 10
China's state broadcaster CCTV shared a 2015 interview with Qi on Friday. In the video, the weeping commander recalled taking care of a wounded soldier.
Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of state newspaper The Global Times, also posted a video purporting to show Qi confronting an Indian soldier. In the undated clip, a man said to be Qi shouting at his enemy: 'If you don't want to fight, then get out of here'. It is unclear if the argument led to the fatal combat last June.
'Regimental commander Qi Fabao roared on the far-flung country borderline. I think as long as the country needs, a man should live like (Qi and the others) and die like them,' Hu wrote on his account on Twitter-like Weibo.
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In this file photo taken on July 4, 2020, Indian soldiers drive vehicles along mountainous roads as they take part in a military exercise at Thikse in Leh district of the union territory of Ladakh
Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of state newspaper The Global Times, posted a video purporting to show Chinese regimental commander Qi Fabao confronting an Indian soldier. Qi was wounded during a border clash with India last June, and four Chinese soldiers died, China has confirmed
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RECENT TENSIONS: Pro-Beijing social media accounts recently posted images purporting to show Indian troops battered and bound with rope on the banks of a lake in the disputed region on the Himalayan border
Earlier, unconfirmed reports had put the number of Chinese dead as high as 45, and Lt. Gen. YK Joshi, who commands the Indian Army's Northern Command, said Indian observers counted more than 60 Chinese troops being taken away on stretchers, though it wasn't clear how many suffered fatal injuries.
Joshi told Indian station News18 that Chinese forces had appeared unwilling to make concessions until Indian forces occupied commanding heights on Aug. 29-30. An agreement to begin pulling back was reached Feb. 10.
'This disengagement is happening because we had taken the dominating position on the Kailash range. So, now the purpose has been achieved, we are going back to status quo ante April 2020,' Joshi told the station.
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An Indian army convoy move along a highway leading to Ladakh in the June 18, 2020 picture
Separately, an Indian security official said Friday that the military estimates at least 14 Chinese soldiers were wounded, eight of whom later died. That assessment was based on the number of stretchers used to remove the injured on the night of incident, input gathered from the Chinese forward hospital and field reports from the ground.
Another security official offered a similar account, saying at least 12 Chinese soldiers were 'seriously' wounded in the incident.
Both spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with government regulations.
The tense standoff in the Karakoram mountains began in early May, when Indian and Chinese soldiers ignored each other's repeated verbal warnings, triggering a shouting match, stone-throwing and fistfights on the northern bank of Pangong Lake, which is marked by eight contested ridges where rivers flow into the waterbody.
By June, frictions escalated and spread north in Depsang and Galwan Valley, where India has built an all-weather military road along the disputed frontier. Since the clash, both countries have stationed tens of thousands of soldiers backed by artillery, tanks and fighter jets along the de facto border called the Line of Actual Control, or LAC, with troops settling in for the harsh winter.
Each side accused the other of instigating the violence, which has dramatically changed the India-China relationship.
Responsibility for the clash 'doesn't lie with China,' Hua told a briefing in Beijing on Friday. She said China has 'exercised great restraint, reflecting China's tolerance and commitment as a responsible power.'
'However, the Indian side has repeatedly exaggerated and hyped the casualties, distorting the truth and misleading international public opinion. Now the PLA Daily has published a report on the incident to reveal the truth,' Hua said.
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China's announcement on Friday should help global audiences 'understand the truth and the right and wrong of the incident,' Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said
Relations between the two countries have often been strained, partly due to their undemarcated border. They fought a border war in 1962 that spilled into Ladakh and ended in an uneasy truce marked by additional clashes. Since then, troops have guarded the undefined border while occasionally brawling. The two countries have agreed not to attack each other with firearms.
The fiercely contested control line separates Chinese-held and Indian-held territories from Ladakh in the west to India's eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims in its entirety. It is broken in parts where the Himalayan nations of Nepal and Bhutan sit between India and China.
According to India, the de facto border is 3,488 kilometers (2,167 miles) long, while China says it is considerably shorter. As its name suggests, the LAC divides the areas of physical control rather than territorial claims.
China remains committed to 'resolving disputes through dialogue and maintaining peace and stability in the border area,' Hua said. 'We hope to work with the Indian side to ... maintain peace and tranquility in the border area and promote the long-term healthy and stable development of relations between the two countries.'
Patch of uninhabitable desert that India and China have been fighting over for centuries
The Himalayan border between India and China has been disputed for centuries, but the two countries have been fighting over it most recently since the 1960s.
In the 18th century it was fought over by the Russian, Chinese and British empires, and after India gained independence ownership of the region became more confused.
China values the region because it provides a trading route to Pakistan, and recent hostilities have been sparked by fears in Beijing that India will cut it off from the crucial overland corridor.
The current official border between the two was set by Britain and is known as the McMahon line. It is recognised by India but not by China.
In reality, the border between the two countries is on Line of Actual Control (LAC) where Indian and Chinese forces finished after the Sino-Indian War of 1962.
Aksai Chin, the site of the latest tensions, is located in India according to the official border but is claimed as part of the Chinese region of Xinjiang by Beijing.
It is an almost uninhabited high-altitude scrubland traversed by the Xinjiang-Tibet Highway.
The other disputed territory is hundreds of miles away to the east of Tibet.
The 1962 Sino-Indian War was fought on these two frontiers as Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru put it, a struggle over land where 'not even a blade of grass grows.'
In addition to the disputed border, China had seized Tibet ten years before and accused India of trying to to subvert Beijing's interests by granting asylum to the Dalai Lama.
There was also a Cold War element and India wanted to see if the US would back it in a confrontation against communist China.
Delhi had ignored the desolate corner of the subcontinent which allowed the Chinese to build a military road through it during the 1950s to connect the province of Xinjiang to Tibet.
The Indian discovery of this highway was a major factor which led to ferocious clashes leading up to the war.
Yet the Indians had just two divisions posted at the border when the Chinese invaded, never suspecting that Beijing would be so bold as to cross the McMahon Line.
The war lasted for one month and left more than 2,000 dead on both sides. It was a heavy defeat for India and led to the new border, the LAC, being established and pushing India back from McMahon line.
Much of the reason for the ongoing conflict is the ill-defined border, the result of a confused status the region had during the colonial era, which was made more murky by India's war with Pakistan in 1947.
Chinese interest in the region surrounds President Xi Jinping's centrepiece 'Belt and Road' foreign policy to have vast infrastructure throughout the old Silk Road.
Beijing fears that increased Indian presence in the region will cut off its trade route to Pakistan.
The two sides have blamed each other for recent hostilities but analysts say India's building of new roads in the region may have been the fuse for May's standoff.
Both sides have dispatched reinforcements and heavy equipment to the zone.