Dealing with China: Why India should rethink strategy

Signage or pictographic characters of the Mandarin language, the psyche of the Communist dictator as well as actions on the ground by China’s highly “controlled state” must be linked together to understand, analyse, anticipate and then deal with the Sons of Heaven, eternally ensconced in the Forbidden City — Beijing.

Let’s face it, the Communist Party of China (CPC), founded by Mao Zedong, is no run-of-the-mill 1648 Treaty of Westphalia-origin nation state or the so-called model democracy of the West. Since 1949, the CPC is the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the PRC is the CPC. And the primary instrument of the party-state or the state-party is the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). All other organs are either subservient to the Communist High Command or owe their influence to the hereditary connect with the CPC.

Hence, the imperial tradition of the Chinese Emperor who insisted on the supremacy of the Han, has been continued by the Communist dictator these past several decades. A Communist in name only, the dictator of the CPC state has not even changed the official name of the country, Zhong Guo (Middle Kingdom). Mao was the king, so is his successor Xi Jinping, who claims to be the reincarnation of Mao.

However, Xi’s task is more than what Mao dealt with — a backward, poverty-stricken and famine-afflicted country, in which he chased his utopian projects of the Great Leap Forward, followed by a demonic Cultural Revolution from the 1950s to 1960s. Xi, however, cannot afford to do the same, being Deng Xiaoping’s successor, with a legacy to make China number one in the world.

China has to feed, finance and fulfil the desire of her 1.5 billion people so that the dictatorship can maintain its pomp, power, prestige and position. However, the CPC must constantly do something out of the box to keep outsiders as well as all non-Chinese, especially India, on tenterhooks, by creating chaos, confusion and confrontation all the time.

And that’s exactly what the world is facing now, in the form of the BRI (the Belt and Road Initiative), CPEC (China–Pakistan Economic Corridor), RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership), and a host of other China-sponsored projects that bear the Chinese brand of imperialism in an effort to influence and imperil five targeted continents — Asia’s landlocked terrain and the waterways surrounding Beijing; Africa’s mineral and agriculture belts; ports of South America, Europe, South Asia and Australia’s raw material and consumer market.

Interestingly, India, since the beginning, has been a steady and standout target of China, whether it is Tibet, territory, trade, terror and now telecom, transport, technology domination as well as its billion-plus consumer market.

Moreover, the dragon dictator Mao would feel uncomfortable when compared to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, who was much more widely known, acceptable and affable and democratic. Mao, on the other hand was often seen as a Communist warlord.

Unfortunately, over the past 75 years India’s political leaders and diplomats have never effectively read the mind of the CPC dictator. Successive Indian leaders have offered him an olive branch, their efforts often ending in a fiasco.

What was a mere border and territorial issue of a common Himalayan frontier between India and Tibet for hundreds of years, has become a boundary issue between Bharat and Beijing. Territory expansion has been one of the core issues of the dictator.

The CPC’s psyche needs to be analysed because China will never accept India as an equal sovereign, just like the West has never recognised Russia as a European state, as was stated by then German naval chief in February 2022 in New Delhi. Of course, the German navy chief was sacked the moment he reached home for making such a politically incorrect statement.

For India, China is a multidimensional threat today in every possible area — economy, politics, commerce, industry, telecommunication, frontier issues, terror and diplomatic ties. There are too many Chinese lobbyists inside India who, wittingly or unwittingly, may undermine the national interest. Perhaps, one can accuse Indians of being far too naive and gullible. For example, this is how the Chinese want to be perceived by India — that they (Chinese) have never wished to resort to conflict. It is their opponent (India), which is solely responsible for starting any dispute whether on the Himalayan frontier, Ladakh, Tawang and Arunachal, which all belong to China anyway. Indians, on the other hand, instigated by British imperialists, captured these through unequal treaties.

That’s why today, India needs to re-think its relationship with China and not blame Nehru for everything. Nehru certainly was not “solely responsible” for the 1962 fiasco in the battlefield as well as foreign office diplomacy.

It is, therefore, clear that the demarcation of territory along the Line of Actual Control has been pushed by the dictator from Far East. No invasion has ever taken place across the Himalayas in Indian history. India and China have hardly known each other the way two big contiguous neighbours should have. The aggression of Han against Hindustan has upset the applecart in the future.