In a New York Times (NY Times) article titled, ‘China's Discreet Hold on Pakistan's Northern Borderlands’, published on 27 August 2010 and a subsequent rejoinder published on 9 September 2010, the American foreign policy strategist Selig Harrison painted an astoundingly imaginative picture of Gilgit-Baltistan. He claimed that this region was witnessing a creeping Chinese occupation at the hands of 7,000–11,000 soldiers of the People's Liberation Army, as well as a simmering local rebellion against Chinese and Pakistani control. What was actually happening on the ground was the post-floods repair work by Chinese labourers and engineers, who have been involved in the construction and maintenance of the Karakoram Highway for several decades. The NY Times article portrayed this construction activity as a military manoeuvre by the Chinese army, even suggesting that tunnels created as part of a proposed gas pipeline in the region can be used for storing missiles. While berating Pakistan for supporting ‘de facto Chinese control’ in Gilgit-Baltistan, it simultaneously praised India for promoting supposedly democratic elections and a free media in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

As was the case for Three Cups of Tea, what is significant about such imperial discourses is not merely their penchant for monumental myth-making but the larger politics which they service and enable. Harrison's article was lauding India's role in Kashmir at a time when massive street protests had rocked the region, leading to state violence that eventually resulted in more than a hundred deaths and brought critical global attention to India's injustices in Kashmir. To hype up Pakistan's mistreatment of the parts of Kashmir under its control then became an Indian foreign policy need—one that India's intelligence agents, lobbyists, and strategists serviced by promoting a particular kind of intellectual and journalistic discourse on Gilgit-Baltistan. The patently false NY Times article was followed by one in The Guardian titled, ‘China and India: The Great Game's New Players’ by former Indian finance and defence minister, Jaswant Singh, which repeated the myth about how thousands of Chinese troops were stationed in Gilgit-Baltistan. By early 2011, an ‘Institute for Gilgit-Baltistan Studies’ had emerged in Washington. Led by comprador intellectuals, the first major seminar that the Institute organized was titled, ‘China's growing presence in Gilgit-Baltistan’, at which—no less intriguingly—Selig Harrison quietly apologized for the incorrect information that he had provided in his NY Times article barely six months before.