9 October 2020
The ratcheting of international opinion was bound to happen if you were a rising global power threatening the status quo, especially when a infectious disease that you could have been more alert to and more forthcoming, is the source for much of the world’s grief this year. I am not in that corner where you think that China crafted this SARS CoV2 satan bug and unleashed it to much of the world, because, today, China is as much globally invested as the rest of the world. In fact, while China was piling up globally trade imbalances, she was becoming more and more reliant of the global system than she could have actually gamed, yet, if you were not alert to how this tilt of numbers could operate, then you would end up acting like you were on steroids.
Trade imbalances have been a global phenomenon, long before the arrival of GATT and its current avatar WTO. In fact, if you look at European colonialism, it was not just their philanthropy or their sense of White Man’s Burden, which were mere euphemisms to promote trade imbalances with the rest of the world. If you see how the British played this game in India, they set about controlling the export of spices, of Indian muslin and then forced Indians into habitual consumption of items which Indians never had a need for- Tea, Western Clothing, Western Cutlery and other items to support the Western mores of life that in Colonial India announced that you were a ‘Burra Sahib’! We must be grateful that the British imported tea from China to India, because they exported Opium from India to China!
In what can be christened only as an adaptation of these strategies, the USA expanded her global footprint by way of first reconstruction efforts and agricultural exports, before long her foot prints were in the name of Defending the ‘Free World’ as she promoted her influence, and then technological advancement caused her to dominate the globe in what can be called Pax Americana. So if American pop, Hollywood and American ‘culture’ came to be a pronounced effect on the global arena, it was primarily because she was admired as the nation that took men to the moon and back, that had super computers, that had Silicon Valley. Much of the innovations in key sectors of the world came about from the USA and countries either bought or used under license or pirated as per their convenience. The Soviet Bloc could not keep pace with the US and her policy of attracting the best minds from across the globe, long before hubris set in and we saw the last two decades a USA assuming her preeminence and tightening her immigration policies, even though Obama brought DACA for University Students. The first big challenge to US in the arena of hitech and global trade came from China.
If China has not been so impatient, she would have allowed 5G embrace by the world, before she raised the ante! If the Chinese could go back to the drawing board, Galwan Valley would not have happened, MoXi would be the show model for other world leaders, of how to understand Chinese sensitivities and still create value for India. Few Indians and even fewer analysts globally understand the significance of the Statue of Unity for Mr Modi and how the Chinese went out of their way to commission this global level project for him! For Mr Modi’s Bullet train project with Japan never got off the paper, and if only the Japanese had brought in a scaled down version which would have been from Ahmednagar to Gandhinagar, to show case the Bullet train, Mr Modi would have been more inclined to balance his foot prints. In any case, Doklam (June 2017)or not, the Chinese delivered to Mr Modi on his dream(October 2018). Likewise, China could and should have waited out this 5G roll out, where India was already on board much like UK Huawei and Canada and much of the EU were. The CCP under Xi’s leadership has not understood the imperative of larger goal, of performance over form! So naturally a kind of animus was unleashed in Chinese handling of OBOR, of the 5G roll out, more of like ‘ Is there an alternative’? This aggressive posture may work with timid countries in Africa and even Asia, but it did set Western Intelligence and Industrial espionage like cats amongst the pigeons! What we can now say with clarity is how the American semiconductors, transmitters and telecommunications conglomerate was goaded by US Deep State to wake up before conceding a crucial technological advancement to a rival power. It was like the Space Race of the 1960s all over again. Even now US has not ready made technological solution for 5G nor for that matter India ( Jio announced it would come up with its own 5G network), but coinciding with the pandemic a campaign was launched to screen off Chinese participation in critical technologies of the future. Suddenly it became a bed rock of the new strategy to handle China. It was triggered by a tipping point whose contours we still are yet to configure, but it made the US lead a global campaign to halt and then to proactively wall of the Chinese presence in what is a growing list of key technology sectors including revolution in energy. So did the Covid19 Pandemic break American illusions of continued global dominance and take a reality check? Was that the reason why Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State declared from the Nixon Memorial in June this year an end to four decades of a Chinese policy that allowed China access to the USA and to benefit from her universities, research labs and her markets?https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/quad-countries-to-focus-on-steps-needed-to-thwart-chinas-aggression-in-indo-pacific/articleshow/78478075.cms
Yet, this current global shift, with even EU clearly signalling that it is no longer going to be business as usual, with Germans making statements they did not even when Tiananmen Square massacre took place in China in 1989. Suddenly many countries which previously had signed up on the Chinese side for Uighur now switched sides, many importers and OBOR beneficiaries developed overnight a ‘conscience’ and it began to weigh them down, drag their feet as it were about going forward with Chinese moves. So this shift is global, and yet USA is making a binary drive within it. Likewise, Australia was facing the prospect of Chinese control of her resources, largely due to a lack of strategic perspective over handing over dairies, cattle farming, mining and now Darwin as a port to Chinese to operate and profit from. So like how the US hitech felt they had reached a tipping point, the Aussie domestic industry felt across sectors that they had reached a tipping point. When they drove a tough bargain, China retaliated with tariffs on meat imports, delayed their owned beef culling too, in the process, refused to unload barley imports, and Australia used this window to position herself as a crusader for the Free World, not just asking China to be held accountable for the CCP Virus that was besieging the world, but also to pronounce a Climate of Strategic Uncertainty. It must have really flummoxed China, why Australia from whom China imported bulk of her raw materials was turning hostile? Why a 2016 verdict by UN Tribunal on Laws of the Sea held Philippines’ claim, denying China valid, would come to be a bone of contention in 2020? So within this matrix of a global coalition against China Australian binary existed as a domestic compulsion to weave a larger context to unyoke from overbearing dependence on China for Australian sustenance.
Japan undertook a leadership change, yet in what can be the loudest signal to China, Shinzo Abe’s brother Nobuo Kishi is the new Defence Minister under PM Yoshihide Suga. Kishi is known for advocating Japan going Nuclear to safeguard her strategic interests. Plus he is a person with extensive links and interests in Taiwan, a known China Baiter and pro Japanese upgradation of military capabilities. This was of course, the year when Japan actually launched a National Fund to help companies decouple manufacturing from China, and more Japanese companies are likely to relocate to Malaysia, to Vietnam, by 2021-22 and all high end manufacturing is going to be in Japan by 2025 under this policy. Of course, one of the greatest shocks that happened to the global system was to its supply chains after China ‘locked down’ Wuhan after the Chinese New Year in January end of 2020 for three months. The global freeze was to affect countries who had outsourced their manufacturing to the Factory of the World that was China. From Toilet Paper to Semi Conductor Chips, it seemed that China was every one’s local source! The worst pinch was when 3M factories from China were unable to ship masks and protective gear to USA and Europe, and US had to resort to high way robbery diverting supplies to it, in the initial days of the global pandemic. So many pandemic related items were now perforce locally manufactured, which was a double edged sword for China, for in short term, the world acutely suffered the derailment of the global supply chain based on China and for the longer term, essential supplies were quickly decoupled from her by most Western nations. So Japan’s strategic disinvestment from China is not a one off, nor is it to be seen as a binary Sino Japanese rivalry, rather, if must be seen also in a larger global reckoning of how not to place all her eggs in the Chinese basket.
That leaves us with India, https://thediplomat.com/2020/09/are-the-us-and-india-on-the-same-page-when-it-comes-to-the-quad/ staring at approximately 8 divisions of PLA in Eastern Ladakh and several more in Chumbi Valley which adjoins India’s Siliguri Corridor. India has done an Operation Parakram style mass mobilisation and deployed a near equal of divisions including Main Battle Tanks and artillery besides going into an emergency purchase flurry for Su 30s, for MiG29s, for Russian light tanks, for assault rifles and other inventory which signal a clear intent from India not to back down. Not only has India now improved her position militarily along the LAC, but she has steadfastly stopped short of provoking the Chinese further in an immediate manner, though current PLA positions in their encroached positions along the entire Ladakh sector is too far forward and would stretch supply and deployment matrix in the coming harsh Ladakhi winter. While concerns exist about whether India is militarily ready for prolonged deployment in LAC, even as the Parliamentary Standing Committee has written to the Speaker Lok Sabha for permission to visit forward positions and ascertain for itself in light of the CAG reports, the supply of winter gear is not going to be a problem since it is not manufactured by China. Much of India’s inventory purchase from Russia is also to keep traditional ally happy, which is why I am certain that Mr Modi will host the trilateral under SCO’s Heads of Government on 30 November 2020, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-to-host-summit-of-sco-council-of-heads-of-government-on-november-30/article32514150.ece and until then as an individual and as PM he is being abundantly cautious, since China is one of the founding members of the SCO with India being one of its later members (2017) only. Before that there is a BRICS Summit that is now planned to be held virtually under Russian Presidency too on 17 November, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/brics-summit-to-be-held-virtually-on-november-17/articleshow/78495022.cms which could afford Mr Modi to reconnect with Mr Xi at a personal level and make for a Confidence Building Measure that multiple MEA and Corps Commander level talks have not managed to clinch so far. Domestic situation in India will be much more clear for Mr Modi after Bihar assembly polls which will be clearly an indicator of his continuing hold over India’s masses, and a sort of referendum on his management of the Covid19 crises. Of course, the calendar suits Mr Modi as the BRICS and SCO summitry will be after the polls, and the Galwan Gallant can recede to the background.
There are more binaries within the Chinese calculus as well, which include Taiwan, Hong Kong, the language imposition in Inner Mongolia, the treatment of Uighur and now Tibetan detainees in forced labour and reorientation camps, even as Pakistan morphs fully with the transfer of two strategic delta isles of Indus to China as a client state…These we will examine in the concluding part of this subject analyses.
(To be concluded)
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