Vitriolic Chinese reactions to the Dalai lama’s visit to Tawang and other monasteries in Arunachal Pradesh have attracted astounded adverse attention in the country, and rightly so. But it would not be prudent to sit back with their dismissal as quirks of the inscrutable Chinese. Unreasonable and unpredictable or whatever, this is the neighbour India has to live with. An all-out effort to understand the Chinese stance — in the sense of being able to fathom what is on their mind — is called for, obviously, in order to enable crafting of a fitting response to such bellowing. And not just at the level of the Government’s diplomatic machinery, which has had a long tradition of assigning some of the country’s finest diplomats to grapple with the dragon’s fire-spewing moves, but also at the “people to people” level if negative public opinion feedback loops and spiraling vicious cycles that can lead to things getting out of hand are to be avoided.
A first — but vital — step in that direction, it seems to this student of the “Middle kingdom”, is to monitor how news about this and other such delicate matters is presented by the Chinese Government to its own citizenry. It is sometimes assumed that there is no such thing as public opinion in China, in the sense that public opinion is a crucial factor influencing decision-making in open societies. This is not true, and quite simplistic and naive in fact. No doubt there is a sharp asymmetry in the ruling dispensation’s capacity to control public opinion in India and China because of their vastly different, divergent, socio-political systems but that cannot be taken to mean that public opinion is not a factor to be reckoned with in the course of decision-making in the latter. And not just in recent years because of the digital media (though, of course, greatly accentuated by the advent of the I-net) but inherently so.
It is not commonly appreciated how insecure the leadership in China is because of the lack of (formal) legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CPC) rule. They are acutely conscious of that gaping hole and never ever take its permanence for granted, public projections of the Chinese State to the contrary notwithstanding. Everything that is done, or that the leadership refrains from doing, is governed by that overriding consideration. In particular, the “line” to be taken by the State-controlled propaganda organs which includes the media, above all, on anything and everything for it is that which shapes popular opinion.
Ever since the catacylsmic April 1989 events at Tiananmen, the nightmare scenario the CPC leadership seeks to avoid is a coincidence of discontent at the ground level over any issue on which there is, or can be, divergence/difference of opinion in the top echelons of the Party capable of resulting in a schism on the question of invocation of the ultimate source of power — the gun in the hands of the PlA — to deal with the situation. In 1989, there was a sharp split on that very question with the then Premier, Zhao Zi Yang, sympathetic to the student protesters at Tiananmen and, but for the prestige and influence of Deng Xiao Ping (who swung the decision to call in the PlA to deal with the protesters), the CPC could have been swept into the dust bin of history.
Providing suitable content for the State-controlled media, and propaganda machinery as a whole, therefore, is a key task — and perhaps the foremost challenge — for the top leadership of the CPC. It is anything but random or accidental. Especially in case of India, which has enjoyed high prestige among the Chinese people traditionally as the land of Buddhism. And that is what makes the exercise of monitoring the projection of India (or any country or any issue, for that matter) made in the official and quasi-official Chinese media for the Chinese people through selection of (and slant given to) news a most interesting and rewarding one.
It is in this context that the attention of readers is invited to the following translation of the editorial in the semi-official Global Times of April 6, 2017 on the Dalai lama’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh. It was also carried by the English version of the newspaper the same day but not in full. Both versions are presented below together, in one piece, through the italics/strike-through contrivance: Additional sentences/phrases in the Chinese version missing in the English version are put in italics, while sentences/phrases in the English version not carried in Chinese are shown by a strike-through.
Not all differences between the Chinese and English versions are substantive or significant, of course. Some stem from differences in the manner of translation, so fall in the category of the purely stylistic and linguistic. But overall, a reading of the editorial with a focus on the difference between the two versions is instructive. The photograph, unascribed to anyone and without a mention of whose picture it is, is as carried in the English version.
Why were some terms/phrases/assertions not used/included in ChineseIJ Conversely, why was a straightforward translation of the editorial not carried in English in full, instead of putting out an edited versionIJ These are unlikely to have been indeliberate decisions. If so, the reasons underlying the fine-tuning that has gone in to tailor each to their respective audience — the Chinese populace (domestic) and audiences in India and elsewhere (foreign) respectively — can tell us something about the considerations that are likely to have prevailed in the mind of the editors.
Of course, those reasons can only be surmised, not established beyond doubt. But it is not difficult to discern plausible patterns on the basis of contextualisation, against the background of the larger political environment prevailing within that intellectually challenging country and the baffling nature of its polity. This will be attempted in the succeeding part of the article next Saturday on this page.
India’s use of Dalai lama card crude and tactless
The 14th Dalai lama started his visit to the so-called “Arunachal Province” in India (South Tibet of China) on Tuesday. This is the South(ern) Tibet region of China. The Dalai lama has been facilitated to to the disputed region A-province before, but what makes this trip different is that he was received and accompanied by India’s junior Home Minister Kiren Rijiju all the way through. Also When China raised the concern over the visit, Rijiju the Minister, commenting with strange logic, commented demanded) that China shouldn’t intervene in their should respect India’s “internal affairs.” Rijiju is India’s Bharatiya Janta Party’s youngest Parliamentarian, youthful and aggressive with a proclivity to project a proud (hard-line) posture.
When the Dalai lama clique fled from Tibet, he sought shelter at Dharamsala of India, thus the Dalai question became one of the problems that upset Sino-Indian relationship, which became his base camp. New Delhi takes a stance that opposes the Dalai lama engaging in anti-China activities on the soil of India; however, it has long attempted to use the Dalai lama as a card.
When India emphasizes the relationship with China, it would place a tight control on the Dalai. When it has a grudge against China, it may prompt the Dalai to play certain tricks as a signal sent to China.
Recently, India has been strongly dissatisfied with China for not supporting its membership bid to the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Its request to name Masood Azhar, head of Pakistani terrorist group, to a UN Security Council blacklist was disapproved by China, resulting in some Indians calling for a boycott of Chinese goods. The Dalai’s high profile sponsored visit to Arunachal Pradesh this time is widely seen outside and within India as New Delhi using the monk as a diplomatic tool to put pressure on China.
But this is a clumsy and rude move. The Dalai is a highly politicised symbol in China’s diplomacy. For any country, its attitude toward the Dalai lama almost affects more or less determines the entire relationship with China. The West has fully recognised the nature of the Dalai as a diplomatic card and is extremely prudent in using it. When the Dalai travels to the capital of a Western country, who will meet him, when and where would be carefully weighed.
(It is surprising that) an Indian Minister accompanied the Dalai lama, and not long back he was received by Indian President Pranab Mukherjee. This has violated all conventions regarding treatment accorded to the Dalai lama by New Delhi in recent years. At a time when the Dalai has been given a cold shoulder in many places of the world, New Delhi is bucking the trend and treating him as a favorite (“hot potato”).
It is worth mentioning that India is dissatisfied with China mainly in the international multilateral field, while the Dalai lama question is purely a China’s domestic issue. India’s use of the Dalai card in order to vent spleen at its frustration in multilateral forums is like flying into a rage out of humiliation (or losing mental balance out of anger and paranoia)..
China also suffered setbacks when applying for the membership of international organisations. Its proposal to blacklist some terrorist group had also been refused. However, as dissatisfied as China was, it didn’t make an issue of them. The India of today comes out as a “tender faced but glass hearted” spoilt child (“over sensitive” and rather peevish). May be that Western public opinion, which never tires of directing fire at China in a bid to run it down, is coaxing India with a view to getting it to spoil everything (between China and India).
New Delhi probably overestimates its leverage in the bilateral ties with China. The two countries in recent years have continuously strived to improve their relationship and the peace on the border area has been maintained. India has benefited from the good momentum of bilateral relationship as much as China probably no less than China and its resulting dependence on peaceful cooperation between the two countries is likewise not as low as that of China. To tell the truth: If New Delhi ruins the Sino-India ties and the two countries turn into open rivals, can India afford the consequenceIJ
Indians must also consider how many “diplomatic tools” China could come up with if it were to (be inclined to) develop them against India! With a GDP several times higher than that of India, military capabilities that can reach the Indian Ocean and having good relations with India’s peripheral nations, coupled with the fact that India’s turbulent northeastern States border China, if China engages in a geopolitical game with India, will Beijing lose to New DelhiIJ
It is hoped that the Indian side will maintain calm and restraint and not pander to populist and nationalist public opinion. China considers India as a friendly neighbour and partner and wishes to patiently resolve some of the knotty problems between the two countries. China has never provoked bilateral disputes or made any pressing demand on India over the Dalai lama. New Delhi should be reasonable; it should not make capricious demands upon the Chinese side and should respond to Beijing’s goodwill with goodwill.
(Ambassador Saurabh Kumar is a former diplomat with a background in Chinese affairs. Currently he is associated with the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru, where he anchors the “India in the Chinese Media” project.