Major Priyadarshi Chowdhury
China known historically as the middle kingdom is an ancient land like India. A cradle of civilization that gave the world the wisdom of Confucius and Lao Tzu, China historically was a peace-loving, inward-looking country ruled by dynasties with thriving trade relations with the rest of the world. Its scholars travelled far and wide. It built historic world heritage monuments like the Great Wall and the Forbidden City.
Not too long ago before the rise of Europe, India and China accounted for the bulk of world trade and wealth. Unfortunately, India lost its independence to the British, and China was humiliated repeatedly by losing out in the devious scheming of the Europeans, the Japanese and even the Russians. The nineteenth-century was a century of great shame and humiliation for a proud people during which it lost much of its prestige and even territory such as having to give Hong Kong to the British to buy peace. At the beginning of the twentieth century, there was a nationalist re-awakening led by western educated scholar Sun Yat-Sen which resulted in the end of the last ruling dynasty and establishment of the Republic of China.
Unfortunately, Yat-Sen’s premature demise plunged the country into a civil war. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led by its chairman Mao Tse-tung won the bloody civil war against nationalists led by General Chiang Kai Shek. Soviet Russia under Stalin helped Communists. Subsequently, the Communists took over Tibet driving the Dalai Lama to India, fought a war in the Korean peninsula, captured vast territories of East Turkmenistan (now known as Xinjiang, where a crackdown on the ethnic Muslim Uighur population is underway).
In the eighties, China took over Hong Kong which was a British colony since 1840. In 1962, China fought a short bloody war with India. It fought a war with Vietnam in the seventies and even threatened to go to war against the Soviets once the former allies fell out in their competition to dominate the Communist world. China enabled the infamous Khmer Rouge regime led by Pol Pot in Cambodia. Mao in his zeal to develop China into a superpower implemented plans such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution which saw terrible human tragedies. All in all, the death of some seventy million Chinese citizens during peacetime far exceeds the casualties caused by Stalin and Hitler.
In early seventies, a meeting between President Nixon and Mao opened China’s door to the western world. But it was only after Mao’s death and accession of Deng Xiaoping to the leadership that China started to reverse its Communist economic policies. While it favoured trade, enterprise and private capital, it retained strict control over speech, information, and security. It forced foreign companies to share their intellectual property and technology in order to set up shop in China. It didn’t allow companies like Google, Facebook or Twitter to operate in the country, but developed its own alternative social media platforms.
Chinese products were made cheap by hidden government subsidies. It manipulated its currency to get trade advantage. Its practice of dumping of goods in overseas markets drove competitors to bankruptcy. While these anomalies have been well known for long, the world – especially its major trading partner, the USA expected China to gradually reform itself. However, China proceeded in the opposite direction under the leadership of Xi Jinping.
As China prospered economically, it simultaneously suppressed any voice for freedom and democracy. The most egregious being the crushing of the 1989 democracy movement by its violent actions against student protesters at Tiananmen Square. It jailed Nobel laureate and widely respected peaceful dissident Liu Xiaobo, who died in custody. CCP’s one-China policy has been its cornerstone of diplomacy. China claims Taiwan to be part of its territory and threatens to take it over. In Hong Kong, as we write, CCP is ready to crush the demand for full-fledged democracy by implementing a draconian national security law July 1.
In context of the recent conflict in eastern Ladakh, India has its task cut out to hold the formidable Chinese back and not add to the lost territory of Aksai Chin that China has occupied since 1962. The unfortunate incidents of Galwan valley have given rise to unprecedented anti-Chinese feelings among Indians in spite of the surprisingly subdued tone of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. With a trade deficit of around 50 billion US dollars, China has a lot more to lose than India as public sentiment demands that Chinese goods, services, software, and capital be replaced by alternatives.
The CCP’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic has given rise to worldwide suspicion that the regime and the WHO could have done more to prevent its spread. There are calls for probe, fixing of accountability, and even reparation. With the regime under pressure from the USA, Australia, and the EU, one would have thought it would be prudent for them to lie low and bide their time. But true to Sun Tzu’s advice in the ‘The Art of War’, deception is the key to CCP’s game plan and they seem to have adopted the principle that ‘attack is the best form of defence’. Thus the regime is hitting out at once in all directions at the same time projecting a dangerous muscular power. With India despite being an equally populous country and a potential future rival not possibly able to match the PLA’s might, it’s important for Indians to think of alternative ways to hit the CCP where it would hurt it the most.
It is high time Indians attacked the CCP using social media in a way that exposes the regime. Indians need to come together to highlight each of the issues discussed above in a way, that in spite of its huge propaganda machinery, China will have nowhere to hide its deeds. Indians can counter the propaganda by making common cause with all those that are fighting for just demands against the CCP, be it the Uighurs or Hong Kong’s protesters. India needs to mobilise all liberal democracies to stop trading with the CCP regime until it agrees to reform itself. Only by ostracising the regime, the world can tame the beast which otherwise may lead humanity to the next world war. Given India’s vast power in social media space and the soft power it enjoys in the world, Indians can play a vital role in winning the war even without fighting.
The hapless people of China deserve to be told the truth about the heinous crimes of their ruling regime. It’s time the CCP regime is dismantled to make way for a liberal democratic and happily united China that can truly fulfil its historic destiny to lead the world.
The author is a retired officer of the Indian Army decorated with Saurya Chakra for his valour fighting terrorists on the border.