Brij Nath Betab
‘Contain China’ is the new buzz word in international diplomacy today. It is so because of China’s ever increasing inherent expansionist policy; be it her forced annexation of Tibet or her policy to attempt to forcibly take control of Hong Kong or her maneuvers in South China Sea. The world today knows fully that China has cast her eyes on Indian Ocean that caters to 60 percent of world maritime passages. These hegemonic tendencies are a result of false notion of her ‘largest army’ on which premise also rests her ‘Super power’ presumption of ‘military might’. It is this military might that India stands to challenge. It is this challenge that has irked China. Making her assessment of India’s might on happenings of 1962, china thought it could still arm-twist India into ‘redefining’ the LAC to her advantage. It forgot or willfully ignored that much water has flowed down Brahmaputra during the last half a century and India today is an acknowledged world power to reckon with.
As India’s stature in the comity of nations has grown many fold in the Modi era, China ‘lost her equilibrium’ with regard to her neighborly relations with India. Be it India’s close relations with Trump led America or India joining 62 nations to face China over Covid -19 , that originated from Wuhan ,what irritated XI Jinping the most is his failure to help his “Close friend” Pakistan at the United Nations with regard to Kashmir. This happened not only once but twice. It must have been really hard for the Chinese ‘dictator’ to digest this humiliation. What must have been more severe blow to the dragon is in my opinion the speech of India’s Home Minister in Parliament in August 2019 in which he categorically and forcefully declared and reiterated that Aksai- Chin is India’s territory. “Kashmir is an integral part of India, there is no doubt over it. When I talk of Jammu and Kashmir, POK and Aksai- Chin are included in it’, he had declared. He did not stop there but promptly added that ‘Jaan de de ge is ke liye’ (we will sacrifice our lives for this). This was not a mere statement but a reflection of India’s resolve to secure and safeguard her boundaries.
Another masterstroke that irked rather infuriated China was Indian asking Pakistan to vacate illegally occupied areas of Jammu and Kashmir. This followed Indian metrological department including Gilgit and Baltistan in its weather coverage bulletin. Beyond Pakistan this unnerved China as through CPEC she has invested her future there with the aim of safe passage to Gwadar and Karachi ports and has an eye on local land and resources including base metals even gold and copper.
In diplomatic parleys there has been a sort of consensuses between China and India to not allowing ‘ concerns to become disputes’ but the ground reality is that India’s infrastructural push to make the last post at the LAC easily approachable is not to China’s liking. China has typically been periodically doing this gimmick of testing India’s patience ever since its aggression in 1962, but India has been showing restraint. It was this restraint that resulted in signing of five different protocols and pacts in the recent past for ‘keeping peace along LAC’. China, it seems, lately mistook India’s policy of restraint as its weakness and started testing the waters by ‘encircling India’ with more friendly gestures towards our neighbors. Visiting Nepal after completing India visit in 2019 was in continuation of this tactic. Xi was the first Chinese President to visit Nepal in 23years. Nepal recently showed how unintelligently they can behave after being prompted by China.
The fact remains that China has been cornered for outbreak and spread of Covid-19 and her attempts at misleading the world and even W H O. Being frustrated she is trying to use India as leverage. This may particularly be the case after India joined 62 other countries group to fight Covid and America invited India to G-7 summit. With India Australia signing defense pacts after virtual summit between the two Prime Ministers, India got more power to its wings as she already has such pacts with U K, France and America. Today India is globally accepted a power to reckon with and there again China seemingly feels frustrated.
XI Jinping is directly being held responsible for the spread of Corana and the trade relations between America and China have reached to a point where US President trump has decided to halt all flights from China.Uk has asked China to ‘step back from the brink’ and respect Hong Kong’s autonomy’.
Likewise Japan has hinted at ‘relocating’ some of its businesses back to Japan (And India) from China. Postponing Xi Jing’s visit to Japan under the pretext of Covid-19 has been cited as a pointer to the strained relations between the two countries. With regard to talks between the two sides, the real China gets exposed when China’s mouthpiece ‘shrills the pitch’ by ‘warning India over her relations with America’. It becomes evident that deeper US-India co-operation has frustrated China. Apart from this Xi is also facing the ire of his own people. He successfully had maneuvered communist party congress into making him lifelong president with the hope that he will serve the people of China better but his back to ‘ one man rule’ has not only put the general masses but more so the Party’s members and deputies against him. Criticism of Communist party and its command is widening for they are being held responsible for global isolation that China is facing now. Unemployment has increased many folds. It is reported that this number of unemployment in China went up to 80 million in March 2020 from a mere 20million in 2019. This has also prompted Xi to divert attention from his failures. With India ‘staring back’, Xi should realize that 2020 belongs to India. It is here that China has been forced to constantly maintain that the situation at the borders is stable.
Stable does not mean peaceful. Though achieving a pre- stalemate status quo at the LAC would be a big win for India, yet the task of clearing the conception of what the ‘boundary’ between the two countries is, would remain open. Indian Government shall have to deal with this issue at two levels, the Military level and the political/ diplomatic level. At the military level recent up gradation of the security apparatus has definitely sent the message that India has resolved once again to defend her borders and this time she is better equipped both militarily and economically to crush the dragon. At the political level the two summit meetings between Xi Jinping and Modi held earlier must make further political communication comfortable. We must give credit to the maturity of the political powers that there has been no firing at the demarcated or un-demarcated borders between the two Asian giants. We however have to be wary of China’s tactics of keeping us busy in negotiations and preparing for war. This is what exactly China did before 1962. They neither respected Hindi Chini Bhayi bhayi nor adhered to Panchsheel. Today we have not only learned but mastered the language that China understands better. The present government has been pro-active when it comes to national interests. Relations with China are no exception.
Every one of us has full faith in our security apparatus and we are confident of country’s political decision making capability. Beyond that each one of us has to do what perhaps our government cannot do. Government may not be able to officially impose a boycott of Chinese goods. Doing so is bound to have diplomatic consequences, but if we, the people of India, resolve to boycott Chinese goods and raw material, two things would happen. Firstly the trade imbalance that is so heavily tilted in favor of China would automatically get corrected. More than that China would have to think twice before any misadventure as a narrative would be created about India’s strength and Indian’s resolve to take on China. The narrative would be socially distancing China. This is easy and bound to yield desired results. China cannot afford to lose a business partner, demographically as vast as India that is Bharat.
(The writer is a senior broadcaster/
journalist, retired from PBBCI)
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