For all the goodwill the Modi Government has repeatedly displayed towards China, the response from the other side has been to reiterate its continued opposition to India's entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group
It was during Diwali festivities, when some organisations in the country called for a boycott of Chinese products, the Chinese Embassy spokesperson here found it necessary to bark some warnings and threats to India. The warnings included loss of Chinese investments to India and further toughening of Beijing’s stand on the continuing northern and eastern border problems. “India needs China more than the other way round”, was the sum and substance of the threat.
In the same breath, the Chinese spokesperson also underlined that a deceleration of Chinese imports into India would not affect Beijing, as trade to India constituted only two per cent of China’s total export trade globally. That little tail the Chinese official held up was more to spite India than to convey that any boycott of China goods will not affect that country’s economy.
Such reactions from Beijing are not infrequent. The entire history of Red China ever since 1955 is replete with warnings, threats, border demands and rattling of its sword. In the 50s and 60s, we almost daily witnessed Red China’s 100th, 200th, 300th threat to what now is Taiwan but which used to pretend that it was the real mainland Chinese Government.
A plethora of threats, flexing of military muscle, ignoring of international opinion, are common features of China’s external relations. China is building airstrips, artificial islands and Air Force displays in the internationally disputed South China Sea islands have become a regular feature. There are seven other countries around those islands who all have claims on them.
Nearer home, since last Wednesday, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) was engaged in a face-off with the Chinese People’s liberation Army (PlA) along the line of Actual Control (lAC) in leh district’s Demchock area. The Chinese Army had come close to the Indian side of lAC and have refused to go back.
Philippines even won its claim in the dispute at the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. But China has just chosen to ignore it. Then there are continuing disputes with Japan over the Senkaku islands. The Chinese do not let the dispute run clod. Frequent military activity around those islands keep the relations with Japan tense.
For 60 years, the natives of Tibet, including their spiritual leader the Dalai lama, ensconced in India have been waiting for a kinder word from Beijing but the Communist leadership in China threatens any country that invites the holy Tibetan leader to visit. Taiwan recently had a tongue lashing when it elected Democratic Party leader Tsai Ing-wen as that country’s President on a ticket of asserting that island country’s independent policy.
For all the goodwill that the Modi Government has repeatedly displayed towards China, including during the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping, the many one-on-one talk that Prime Minister Modi had with him at many international conferences, including the recent one at Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit, the response from the other side has been to reiterate its continued opposition to India’s entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group.
Beijing’s support to Pakistan in key issues of terrorist menace continues, including its refusal to identify terrorist groups working from Pakistani soil openly. On the other hand, if the Dalai lama visits Arunachal Pradesh, President Xi is all jumping with anger. The rulers in Beijing have disputes with every country on the China border. New Delhi has repeatedly seen that all talks to settle border disputes have one theme: What is with us now is ours and let us negotiate only what is yours that we claim to be ours.
Therefore, Southeast and East Asian nations are not taking China’s occasional sweet cooings at their face value. The Chinese and Vietnamese Ambassadors in India have been denouncing each other’s policies almost openly as Vietnam begins to feel the Dragon’s nostrils touching its territory. Whatever assurances Beijing gives are unreliable guides as the Hong Kong region has found out.
China has floated the one belt-one-silk-route plan to get all the South, Southeast and Eastern Asian nation under itsdiktat in the name of reviving the ancient trade route, but all neighbours are increasingly turning suspicious of the real intention of the Chinese leadership.
The threat to Indian groups on their successful campaign to boycot Chinese goods has unnerved Beijing, for all the bravado it puts up saying exports to India constitute only two per cent of China’s total exports. The boycott, wherever it has been successful, has political lessons, even if China ignores its economic impact on Chinese exports.
The anger in Beijing’s reaction is also partly because of the troubles that country faces currently in both politics and economics. The Chinese economy has decelerated from the double digit claims of the previous decades to seven per cent.
The “miracle” economists were talking of was largely based on export led growth — exports manourvred through low cost production, financed largely through the Government-financed and owned massive manufacture. “China’s economy”, writes Zhang Jan, professor of economics and director of the China Centre for economic studies at Fudan University, “has lately become a source of mounting concern”.
The debts of public sector enterprises earlier encouraged to grow big beyond all demand considerations, are part of the public concern. Private investment has declined from 20 per cent to eight per cent. That has shaken up employment situation and reports are that the rural migrants to the Chinese urban behemoths are returning to the countryside. There are several other constraints too.
There have been several instances of dumping and complaints from other bidders like from the UK, France, the US etc. The other thing is that Indian capital goods market is huge and expanding and neither China nor Germany can afford to be kept out of it. So China is not making a favour when India is choosing Chinese capital goods.
This year, a determined, unofficial bid not to buy Chinese firecrackers turned the tables on that country’s dead cheap cracker attack on Indian enterprise. A small blip but neverthless a warning to Beijing of a nation’s grit.
India in the age of Narendra Modi is not the replica of the old ‘bhai-bhai’ double talk and people in leadership positions earlier like VK Krishna Menon who could perceive nothing wrong with China are long dead and gone.
Beijing’s Xi may be recently exalted by his country’s sole ruling party as the “core” of the polity there. But Indian leadership now neither wears Chinese goggles nor is unwilling to move the pieces on the international chess board in its favour. As against President Xi, Prime Minister Modi derives his strength from a mandate openly given by the people. Beijing has to decide what type of partnership it is willing to work with in India, with the leadership this nation has today.
(The writer is a Rajya Sabha MP and political commentator)