The story about the schoolyard is bully is well-known; he (or she) usually intimidates the other smaller children on the field due to heft. Invariably, some of the smaller children fall into the bully’s orbit subjugating their rights. But every once in a while, there is one child on the field who stands up to the bully. Most bullies are usually scared of actual confrontation because they know their bark is worse than their bite. And they also know that the principal and teachers might turn a blind eye to some light bullying — they will not condone a real fight. So the bully backs down. But there is an addendum to this story, backing down is seen as defeat by the bully. If you’ve seen the movies you know that the bully will confabulate with allies and come back to give the kid who stood up to them a fight. This parable applies to the India-China situation as well. China, clearly the regional bully, did not expect India to stand up for Bhutan. And also for India itself, because if the Chinese were allowed to ride roughshod into the Doklam plateau, their heavy guns would have been within the range of vital transportation links to India’s North-East. The announcement by the Ministry of External Affairs that both sides have climbed down from the confrontation is laudable and while both India and China will make attempts to spin the climbdown in their own ways, in India, we should not, even for a second, believe that this game is over. China, which believes that international treaties only apply if they are are ‘favourable’ to China, so happily talk of 19th century treaties while ignoring far more modern one, such as the deal signed with the United Kingdom in 1997 when Hong Kong was handed back has wilfully ignored sharing hydrological data with India. China is not only a schoolyard bully, they are also like that painful friend you knew in school who complained that the ‘world was unfair’ whenever they did not get their way.
There is no doubt that the economic reforms unleashed by Deng Xioping in the late-1970’s and accelerated in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations have done wonders to the Chinese economy. The fact that the People’s Republic of China recovered from the devastation of the Mao-era and lifted 500 million people out of poverty is remarkable. But China has used its new-found geo-political and geo-economic power to become a regional schoolyard bully and wants to correct what it sees as ‘historical’ wrongs. As such, the Chinese under Xi Jinping wants to reclaim their exalted ‘Middle Kingdom’ which places the Han Chinese empire between heaven and earth — thus ‘middle’. However, deft diplomacy, by India which despite the constant barking by China’s english language media which was a lapped up by some pretending to be ‘security experts’ has left China smarting. Their purpose of grabbing the Doklam Plateau to build a road in an attempt to threaten India has failed. Do not however expect that this will be the end of the issue. While Prime Minister Modi is expected to visit China next week for the BRICS summit and might even have a meeting with President Xi, things have only gone to simmer. Not only should India keep her guard up along the eastern border, our military preparedness and infrastructure development in the border areas has to keep up. Bullies never back down until taught a lesson and India has to remain wary.