25 May 2021
We knew this Climate of Strategic Uncertainty had been called into operation when China discarded her decades old ‘peaceful rise’ policy and switched to what has been called ‘aggressive revisionism’ which manifested as Wolf Diplomacy and PLA Exercises. In 2013, Ladakh which is today a clear zone of intransigence, came to the spot light first, with a massive intrusion in the plains, one which was initially denied by Indian authorities and finally led to a stand off, which was resolved only because of a G7 summit in Shanghai, as recounted by the then NSA Mr Shyam Saran, in 2020. We know of Viet Navy and Coast Guard having flare ups with Chinese ‘fishing flotilla’ around the same time period and even earlier.
What we need to understand is China’s current posture when her officials threatened Australia yesterday in a manner that can be associated with an era of Imperialism and Colonialism than the now Post Wars era, is not a manifestation of Xi Thought, but it is one that is a continuum of China’s regain her identity plot, from the days of Chairman Mao. If in the initial phase CCP apparatchik focused on internally sorting China, now they are focused on Hong Kong, where we have seen the West capitulate to the CCP’s new legislative strangulation of that territory’s freedoms and autonomy, officially ending the Chinese One Nation Two Systems. So from Macau and Hong Kong, now China’s approach to Taiwan has been one where it has abandoned any pretence of a sweet deal of willing integration under this ONTS and perhaps the unwillingness of Taiwan to swallow the bait for so long, meant an official end to this template. Nothing is premature in China, for those who know her, know that CCP is like a conglomerate with strategic goals, where having an army or militarised membership with all aspects of State power placed for its use without curbs has allowed it to shape the narrative in manner that has exploited cleverly the Western obsession with production and GDP numbers. So if the West was softened by an eager mass producer who would willing reduce costs and who would wish away every regulatory concern of the unscrupulous western capitalist, it was done with the larger and more clear strategy of paving a path for the amassing of Chinese Comprehensive Nation Power, which propelled China today into a front ranking nation. We indeed have a formally binary world, once more, with a huge difference from the Soviet, Post World War II system that faces Western Capitalist Order. One where the Chinese occupy the high table in many key aspects of Western system itself, from university education to innovation, and one that will because of its deep integration to the Western systems, be very difficult and involve dextrous manoeuvring to decouple from going forward, though for the immediate decades, decoupling is merely a phrase and it will summon every will within the Western System to undertake this task…
We have to understand here, that far better than Singapore, it is Taiwan that has understood the CCP and taken appropriate calibrations to counter the CCP, even as the West hems and haws about the self inflicted ‘One China’ policy. Why the legendary Lee of Singapore was wrong about China is not because of democratic impulses that came to the fore in the mainland around the turn of the Century, or even the Falun movement as a ‘resistance’ to CCP, it is because, there is only so much that production and ‘work’ as can liberate a people. That now the CCP entering its 100th year of existence officially with it being officially rung in on 1 July 2021, the Chinese steam for its growth has been flagging down for some time, one that has been dressed up using the usual tactics of inflating one set of figures and deflating another. It is very much clear that the path of adding 10% GDP growth to turn around a 100% cumulative in one decade between 2010 to 2020 was not afflicted by the Wuhan virus and the global Corona Pandemic, though now this is likely to be used by the CCP as its fig leaf. It is not to suggest that China has achieved little, in fact countries like India would consider themselves lucky if they had managed even a quarter of the steady growth China has pulled off in the last 25 years. But as Lee now needs reminding ‘growth is not every thing’.
While Taiwan under President Tsai has done well to judge China correctly, the biggest surprise is actually from the EU where the strategic Investment alliance signed last year with China has been allowed to flounder, over sanctions that were raised for Uighur and counter sanctions against MEPs and prominent EU business and academic persona by CCP. Japan has actually managed to contract much greater slice of the SE Asian infrastructure pie, not to mention its Bullet Train project in India, and by promoting and training with Australian and other regional Navies, Japan has clearly shifted its strategy from post WWII associated Pacifism that its Trans Pacific neighbour the USA enforced upon.
We know that the borders have turned restive between China and India, and now one expects going forward an extended period of massing of troops, by the PLA and Indian military countering these. This year’s spring rotation of units in Depsang and other areas of Eastern Ladakh did not bring any surprise to the Indians like last year and as India reappropriates formations earlier tasked against Pakistan, to bolster her border presence against China, her veteran analysts are calling for a rethink of her key decisions about the need for a mountain strike corps, for a bolstering of air combat capability both conventionally and unconventionally using drones. As details emerge, this much is clear, that India will build back brick by brick, a strategic force calculus it abandoned in the initial euphoria of Mr Modi’s and Mr Xi’s Chemistry in their summitry. India’s demographic advantage will remain going forward, whereas the latest census from China, however dressed up, indicates a intrinsic weakness that is forcing Beijing to have a rethink on her population strategies. Then there is something called the X factor. All calculations that men and material resources when considered and factored bring to bear, do not survive what we call as this X factor. For India, the way, her people have held in the face of an unarguably visible collapse of all things civilisational in the past six weeks, is as much a sign of strength as it is a sign for China that India as a civilisational hegemon that China under CCP has laboured to erase, remains as a incomprehensible contention. Then there is the Himalayas…the great lake of nearly half a billion cubic litres of water formed in the great valley of Siang river, near the South Eastern Tibetan border with Arunachal Pradesh is thwarting the efforts to start the World’s Largest Hydel Project yet by the CCP, a milestone she would much like in its centennial celebration wish list! If the Three Gorges Dam offered many in China sleepless nights over last year’s unprecedented rains and floods, this one formed around 2017-18 and under Chinese geological evaluation, is by itself a reminder to the CCP that Nature’s forces are inexplicable and not always resolved through gun barreling or pouring of brick & mortar.
As with any totalitarian approach, the biggest belling question is who will! Ensconced as President Xi is with no time limit now, it will be increasingly difficult for course corrections to be offered. While lower riparian states of India and Bangladesh, neighbours facing salami slice stunts like Vietnam and India, even Phillipines with a new Presidential challenger putting on his boxing gloves on China recently, with flotillas of fishing boats resembling cyber phishing attacks as a kind of naval militia over Whitsun Reef even Duterte’s continuation in power in Philippines will not make a comeback for China.
Ten years from now, international and internal strategists will look back at the gambles CCP took under Xi, by falling for her own narratives, of backing herself too much without more nuanced comprehension of global responses, and ending up with a series of self goals. It would forever seal CCP’s ambitious gamble that became undone due to a mindset of ‘inevitability’.
indiarubberman.com 