Dragon Without Fire?

14 January 2021

I want to ask this question about why the Chinese PLAN and PLAAF and PLA suddenly turned quiescent on the SCS seas, including Taiwan Strait, when the USA was so distracted that we would term this as a ‘nation at war with itself’? I was of the view that Chinese moves since the beginning of 2020 was in accordance with the master plan of the CMC and PLA particularly which was to reach a level of modernisation before that year so as to deliver to the Chinese CCP leadership the option to militarily make concrete its ‘One China’ Policy. Remember that PLA is constituted as an Army of the CCP, ( a political party with its armed forces) an unusual definition beyond the Soviet Principle and one that even North Korea did not feel the need to appropriate when the first Kim set up the state with Chinese help!

Where are the Chinese strengths that led to many western observers conclude now that China was going to be the clear challenger to the USA and by extension to the Breton Woods order that she established at the end of the II World War? Successive regimes of the USA set store right up till the Obama administration on this premise of determining China as a country of ‘consequence’ but not strategic relevance, taken in by Deng’s peaceful rise and inputs about Chinese economic debt internally and externally as she integrated with the world in the 80s and 90s. We have Kurt Campell who is now the China czar in the incoming Biden administration, who has written an exhaustive essay in Foreign Affairs https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-02-13/china-reckoning detailing these postures of US administrations to our current time, wherein it is clear that USA had misread the situation entirely and are going to face the consequences of it in 2018, well before 2020 happened.

We are not wrong to think that if there was a ‘golden moment’ that moment is just passing. China and rest of the world can see the USA in utter chaos, with President Trump as belligerent as ever, but with each day passing the clarity of various institutions of the USA be it the Congress, the Armed Forces, the larger Corporate America who have all now come out in clear terms to state that it is Mr Biden who will be sworn in as President on 20 January 2021. ( The supposed welcome Mr McConnell had for an impeachment of Trump a second time, the House Republicans now crossing fence and voting for it as 10 members have, seems to be insignificant, but you can take this as the leaks before the dam breaks.) Even more unexpected is how the Tech companies suddenly discovered both spine and conscience and went about banning Mr Trump across platforms and taking action finally against RW Neoconservative Conspiracists like Q Anon. The right to express and the freedom of speech had been abused by these people whose divorce from reality is so stark that they have no remedy but to cohabit an alternate earth where Trump actually won the landslide he keeps claiming he won. This is not the place, but the context is the same, the one big lie of Donald Trump is the election result. It is why senators like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley had to repeat it as objections inside the Congress and why all Republican Congresspersons, faced an existential crises while voting on those objections, because to deny it would be to be damned for ever!

So was President Xi with his rhetoric the whole of 2020 actually egging the PLA and the Chinese people with a similar kind of authoritarian persuasive alternate reality? That China’s moment was nigh, that she was making the grab for power at the global sweepstakes as part of the ‘restoration of China to her historic place’ and not because it was an excuse to force the Chinese people to shutter down their voices and concerns even more, to use aggrandisement and aggression as screens for that agenda which was meant to actually consolidate President Xi’s hold over China and not China’s hold over the world? Remember in 2020, President Xi was made the most powerful man within the Chinese Communist Politburo, enjoying more power than even Chairman Deng did once, because the CWC has surrendered all its executive power to him alone.

So this Chinese reluctance to seize what I would christen the ‘grand opening of the century’ in the back drop of the Climate of Strategic Uncertainty which was this US Presidential Transition, with what was evidently a rudderless Pentagon ( which took hours to respond to the Capitol siege of 6 January) and which is still marshalling troops for the Inauguration, when American Democracy appears the most appalling unbecoming spectacle for China to contrast and savour, China merely using a lowly Spokesperson of its Diplomatic Corps to compare this with Hong Kong Legislature being similarly intruded upon by pro democracy protestors in 2019 was actually pretty cheap.

Trump’s unpredictability, his increasing adversarial isolation from his own Cabinet and his individual discord with the larger calculus inside Washington made him by November end the ‘lamest lame duck’ and such an opportunity has been given a go by is perplexing, unless you revisit the entire premise behind China spending the entire of the Pandemic Year 2020 with Wolf Diplomacy and Military Exercises off the coast against Taiwan and deploying against India in Eastern Ladakh as simply a screen for President Xi to enforce and isolate all the power and leverage within the CCP system unto himself!

Now President Xi after all, as a decision maker, could perhaps actually be acting in the larger interest of China too, if after being briefed, he actually felt that Chinese military posture was vulnerable, the PLA’s modernisation and tactical and strategic transformation was more a choreographed game rather than reality. President Xi had already revisited the plans of the Chinese Air Craft Carrier fleet, revising the engineering plans after discovering better flight deck engineering ( plans and designs stolen from US) and despite it meaning a delay to the carrier availability by 2030, he had gone ahead, which meant that the flight deck of first two indigenous aircraft carriers of PLAN were set to undergo full overhaul and delays to subsequent 3 or 4 platforms was assured. We also know that China is now negotiating for inducting FGFA Su57s from the Russians in numbers that are still under negotiation, so does that also not jar with the picture painted of an indigenously capable fighter platform the J20s ( which suspiciously look like copies of F35s). If the dots of these Chinese plots are connected, one cannot deny that the strategic decision making in China walked away unsatisfied with the Chinese wherewithal and capability to make that gambit on Taiwan. It is also clear that some where along the line President Xi has undertaken a course correction in military strategy, one that has come about toward the end of 2020, and not the beginning, one that came after the Wolf Diplomacy soured relations with Australia first and the military adventurism soured relations with India.

In further news that came about OBOR scheme, it is clear how the first one is being now handled, China is actually on the retreat. Apart from the railhead and road network that supplies Western Europe and a new trade deal that will continue to harness this infrastructure with EU, no other vital trade related infrastructural spend has come good for China. Many analysts write of the Chinese OBOR as beginning under President Xi and that Pakistan was the first of this grandiosity. Actually KKH as a highway was conceptualised in 1966, completed in 1979 and is accessible to the public since 1986 says Wikipedia. Few Indians know that KKH was one major factor for India’s operation Meghdoot, the spending on upkeep of facility at Daulat Beg Oldie long before India’s Look East Policy and scheme to improve infrastructure in border areas came afoot in the 1990s and is nearing completion now in 2020s. If one sees how Baloch insurgency and the armed interdiction along the Pakistani OBOR https://asiatimes.com/2020/12/china-slowly-retreating-from-pakistans-belt-and-road/ have forced the Pakistani National Assembly to officially hand over this infrastructural aspect to Pakistan’s Army as its asset, you can see how vulnerable Gwadar and the other SEZs that straddle the road branching off China National Highway 314 and now going beyond Hasan Abdal in Pakistan Punjab and reaching the port of Gwadar has become. Despite Pakistan Army launching operations against insurgents in the Khyber Pakhtunkwa and right uptil the Wakhan corridor in POK which abuts Afghanistan and Xinjiang. I don’t wish to muddy the flow here by further distracting the reader with Pakistan’s internal dissension and its failing economic situation, but I can say this much is clear from available information that China is no USA or Saudi Arabia for Pakistan, writing cheques for her at her convenience. By extension, China’s behaviour toward Pakistan and the OBOR project within Pakistan is the clearest indication we have yet of a larger problem- the growing deficit within China and a possible threat of an economic crash within China.

So it could well be that President Xi after consolidating his powers in 2020, has now been briefed honestly about China’s military transformation and her geostrategic economic condition as regards to OBOR or BRI initiative which has made the him cry halt and revisit the premises of Chinese policy going forward. It is like a Dragon warrior who after taming the beast and astride it discovers that it has no more fire! So is the Chinese outreach simply theatre? An optics that served to curry favour with the Politburo, a corruption of information that juiced up Chinese prospects, much like Trumpism has in the electoral arena, and ended up getting trumped? That actually the PLA led military is too incoherent and too incompetent to execute the grandiose cross straits invasion it has been talking up for much of President Xi’s time in office?
We know that within China, there is a lot of discussion and dissension over the rise of Xi. We, even far removed from Chinese politburo politics, are aware that former President Jiang Zemin promotes a faction that is inimical to and uncomfortable with Xi rise. Jiang faction is disconcerted since it was the first to see the present two term system of orderly leadership transition set up by Chairman Deng Xiaoping in post Mao era upended by machinations of President Xi https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3741630. So this discovery of the fireless Dragon he has mounted makes Xi especially vulnerable within the Communist Party.

Kurt Campbell’s appointment could mean that Biden would like to engage with Xi to stand down to a posture the Western Compact is comfortable with, even as US will continue to decouple from China. Biden being a old Cold War veteran and arguably the one who has seen from close quarters the rise of China under Deng to now, is best placed to act in such a way that Xi can deescalate the situation with some face saver thrown in. The opportunity is very much available in the form of Chinese concessions for the COP Summit planned this year end, and in other trade related concessions even earlier. Biden could even goad Modi-Xi summitry to de-escalate the Himalayan confrontation, which has attained a tactical stalemate in any case. While critics and analysts wager that USA will be too besieged within grappling with the economic crises and Pandemic public health issues, I can stick out and say that US under Biden will try to regain as quickly as possible the primacy it has in strategic affairs globally, which would include setting up leadership positions again across the Western Compact and dealing with China to demonstrate that leadership commitment. And Biden will come into his Presidency knowing that in America’s moment of failing, he was offered a peek into China’s evident disarray!