Indicus Plot- Counter to Sinovium?

03 March 2021

What to make of the spectacle of 600000 doses by Sinovac arriving on a Chinese military aircraft to Philippines Vilamor air base, received by President Duterte. The Chinese ambassador made a triumphant statement on the occasion, one that echoes strangely with those made in colonial era by British Residents in Indian Principalities. Extolling the virtues of China and offering hope to Philippines! Chinese vaccine blue print is far greater in outreach including offshore packaging in Mexico!https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-mexico-vaccine-idUSKCN2AS0P0?taid=603c320fc0731c000122747b&utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter

For those with a backdrop awareness, this is Philippines which fought a case over Mischief Reef and Scarborough shoals and won an arbitration which China refuses to acknowledge calling these arrangements of rules of international order alien to it, derived to suit Western Powers and to deny Asian powers their place in the global sun! The way President Trump had rendered the USA ineffective was on full display, for despite having good vaccines developed by US research, Americans are struggling themselves, being the biggest victims of this Modern Plague- the Corona Pandemic. This Corona Pandemic has surely placed the USA on the ropes, one that would make spectators wonder if she can bounce back and beat the Chinese challenger in the ring!

The way the Republicans have gone about adhesively and prostrating to former President Trump, the way they have voted on relief in the House ( nil votes in favour of the ambitious $ 1.9 trillion bail out of the USA), it is all reminiscent of the divided country that has doggedly dampened USA’s CNP since the Clinton administration. So, if there is anything, the Conservative 6-3 SCOTUS will determine in the suits filed by conservatives seeking to make voting arduous and deny voter rights to people of colour by disadvantaging them selectively, it would mean that judicial action would define actually if America remains a super power or not. In 2013, with a narrow majority under Chief Justice Roberts the SCOTUS voted to give 9 southern states back, their right to frame legislation about voter eligibility indirectly without a reference to the federal government as stipulated under the Voting Rights Act of 1965! ( Shelby County case) In USA, the new Jim Crow Laws are all about making it so difficult for African American and Native voters to vote, by reducing polling stations in their neighbourhood, by making documentation and eligibility criteria for postal ballots, for early voting, etc. So if Georgia had not made the US Senate a tied house with VP Harris as the tie breaking vote, the chances of any American relief or restructuring were dismal, and going forward the crucial 2022 election results would further determine why and whether US can actually return to the global arena once more.

The merits of economic momentum cannot be denied, that while America suffered first the sub prime crises of 2008 and then subsequently when Obama Administration wrote huge bail out cheques, these went largely to shore up the accounting books of banks and companies, whereas this exact time, the near similar Chinese bail out cheques went to building high speed rail network across China, to modernisation of the PLA, offering jobs and rewarding Chinese enterprise and improving Chinese productivity! Right now, China is already up and running, while the US is largely in corona coma, may stir slowly, and we never know if it can actually catch up to China ever! One of the key analyses in Thucydides Trap- Destined for War book by Graham Allison, that I don’t disagree with is how fundamentally the Chinese system is far superior and far more efficient than the US, that now clearly the gap between Chinese and American economic performance has not just opened up, but so widened that Americans will just keep playing catch up.

Many Indian observers are aware how India could have emerged as a global alternative to China, how instead of being the global go to for Corona Test kits, for laboratory agents, for vaccines, for PPEs, India just about managed to make a small presence in only PPEs. India’s soft ware edge, soft skills edge, English speaking skills, have not translated into any opportunities for Indian players so far. We hope that Vaccine Maitree in which we are offering the Oxford Covishield to countries of the third world, some amounts as donated and rest as per contract by Serum Institute will make a mark! Yet the high visibility of Chinese vaccine donations and deliveries so far indicate that we have lost this round too. We could not come through on mission mode in any of those areas where we had a clear edge, we could not fast track the bouquet of vaccines that are being developed here jointly or stand alone like nasal dosing, mRNA vaccine as puff at room temperature, even though the PMO shows keen interest in this sector. Did we put our money where our mouth is?

Pakistan celebrated 70 years of strategic partnership with China, and as a country, this is truly a unique all weather friendship she has fostered. The largest investments of OBOR initiative of China have been to the oldest and in fact the first infra project of China abroad-the KKH. Let us not forget how grateful the US was for Pakistani interlocutors who arranged Kissinger’s famous trip in the 70s to meet Chairman Mao, that led to the opening up of China to the West. Naturally, when Biden Administration announced the return of military ties to Pakistan, it signals that perhaps the Pentagon views a strategic role now, as a communication link to PLA through Rawalpindi?

Did India agree to renew the 2003 ceasefire accord with Pakistan under Chinese nudge? Or was it a US nudge? Either way, the Game of the Orient, or dominance in the Eastern Hemisphere, is one that was afoot for last four decades, where the dysfunctional US domestic politics and lack of historical perspective meant that when Junichiro Koizumi https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2005/04/30/national/japan-india-share-strategic-agenda-claims-koizumi/ and his successors have been crying hoarse to uplift India as a counter balance to China, no serious effort has been made by the USA to actually address it. In fact, only in the last few months of its term, the Trump Presidency, sought to urgently halt the Huawei 5G roll out, to address SCS free pass the Chinese had obtained and could not thwart two key trade deals, the EU Investment Agreement and the RCEP which going forward will ensnare Europe and Asian tigers of Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia, along with Australia into the Chinese economic embrace.

I realise why Americans are so blind sided by China. It is because they are history wise agnostic about India. In fact, most western thinkers and scholars whose books now influence leaders in the West write about global culture and global perspective without the Indian one included, especially puzzling when the current Modi government has been ‘Tom-Toming’ the need for India to project itself as the Vishwaguru! Consider Allison’s scenarios and his historical perspective for example, since I recently read it, I am fresh with it.

1. He talks of Chinese civilisational influences as ‘osmotic’ and unique without considering how hollowed out it would be without Buddhism. How much of China’s philosophical grounding is based on texts called Sutras, how Chinese have themselves culturally referred to their source codes from the West ( meaning India). Curiously he does not even think for once how China would have turned out if Dr Sun Yat Sen succeeded not Chiang Kaishek or Mao after the Qing Collapse?
2. When he says China influences Asia, is he not aware that architecturally that influence is Indian in origin from Borobudur to Angkor Wat? Is he not aware of how Tamil influence is prevalent in South East Asia from culinary to cultural traditions, or how Ramayana is adopted and told uniquely across Myanmar to Malaysia? That only Chinese migrants keep their traditions, many of whom fled the chaos during the Opium Wars and the Qing Collapse and of course the Japanese invasions?
3. It is not denial of India’s cultural hegemony/ imprint over China that irks in such western scholarship, it is also how they paper over the Buddhist legacy and that includes when they talk about Tibet, which is simply a Buddhist Kingdom like Bhutan or Sikkim, which unlike either has not been able to maintain its traditions and cultural uniqueness under the CCP rule, with the Dalai Lama in Exile.
4. If China had a global share of GDP in ancient times, there was one other country whose share of GDP and whose economic allure was such that practically every Western- i.e. European explorer sought only it- India. That is why you have the ‘West Indies’ in the Caribbean you have ‘East Indies’ (now called) Indonesia, you have natives in the Western Hemisphere of Americas all called ‘Indians’, and still western scholars now want to pretend that India did not exist in their calculations as they sought global dominance?
5. In fact, of late, one finds a disturbing trend where there is not just Indology studies but also Tamil studies in Western universities being subsumed under South Asian or East Asian chairs. Pray what is South Asian, if not the Indian subcontinent? Is not Indic civilisation that has left its remarkable imprimatur on Asia and not the other way round?

Unless the Indian government makes this clarion call to it’s Western partners to pull back from this disastrous consequence of denying India in Western Academia and of clubbing India with South Asia or South East Asia, the West will never have the historical and cultural ballast to counter the Chinese who are writing a script about their global dominance as if it was just a ‘return’ after a brief 100 year spell of ignominy or humiliation. ( This narrative can be actually true for Indic culture that British Colonialism impoverished and afflicted India materially and spiritually!)

What America needs to cobble together is a Marshall Plan for India, which she can easily do with German, Japanese and Australian partnership. If Indian military needs are looked after and her embrace of high technology is facilitated, with partnerships in Biotech, nanotechnology, robotics, and Machine learning, India can offer both market and muscle to the western compact. All that America needs is to make the same choices it made in the 70s, those she offered to China, access and support, with which she hoped to wean China, to make her a counter weight to the Soviets and win over.

Without India in the Asian matrix, and global stage, the US-China stakes for oneupmanship will end with the end of the Pax Americana. Whether it is inevitable this decline of American power? Right now, without any grand plan or bold moves from the Biden administration and if only incrementalism is seen on ground, I would wager so.