NEW DELHI: Miffed at international opinion seemingly tilted in favour of New Delhi in the Doklam standoff , China's aggressive state-backed media has accused Western media of being biased in favour of India simply because it is a democracy.

What's more, India "arouses sympathy" because it is "in a weaker position compared with China", said an opinion piece in China's Global Times on Tuesday.

"India in the Western media is a victim which has been bullied by China, even though India illegally entered Chinese territory and violated international law to unilaterally intervene in the 'territorial dispute' between China and Bhutan ," said the Global Times article.

It was, of course, parroting Beijing's stance that India, rather than its own Peoples Liberation Army troops, violated the border in Doklam on June 16. Never mind that Bhutan - where Doklam is located - and India both called China the aggressor .

That the Western media too portrayed China as the aggressor has annoyed the Global Times columnist.

Western media reports "mainly cited India's rhetoric and what happened from the Indian media's point of view, depicting a mild India which called for a troop withdrawal and bilateral negotiations", said the opinion piece in the Chinese publication.

It added that India has "several advantages" in the sphere of international opinion, chief among them being the fact that it's a Western-style democracy.

"India has a Western-style political system and can gloss over its illegal acts under the banner of democracy," said the piece, adding that India has been a busybody in the region since World War II and the "Western media has ignored all this".

"Since WWII, India has been one of the few countries that annexed a sovereign country. It has inherited colonial legacies and directly interfered with or even diplomatically and militarily controlled its tiny neighbours. The independence movement by India's ethnic groups and the rebellions of some religious sects were put down with cruel suppression. But Western media has ignored all this," said the article.

Global Times believes that India has managed to pull the wool over everyone's eyes simply because it gained independence from the British through non-violent resistance.

"Westerners believe India is a country of peace. Over thousands of years, India was invaded about 300 times. It gained independence through nonviolent resistance to the British Empire. The West believes India created a peaceful model of an anti-colonial movement. Therefore in the eyes of some Western scholars, India has been well-behaved and will not invade or bully other countries," said the Chinese media article.

