There's unanimity in the international community on the Chinese fascist, expansionist and exploitative behavior. It doesn't recognize regular rules of engagement. The 2020's will mark for the first time in world history when an Asian aspiring super power was found picking up unprovoked fights with every country surrounding it and beyond. And it went unchallenged.
The authoritarian Chinese leader Xi Jinping is reported to have told the US Defense Secretary that China wouldn't yield "an inch" of the land their "ancestors" had left for them.
This is an acknowledgement of the fact that the land his ancestors left didn't belong to them. Once fortified by its Great Wall, any land acquired West to it was forcibly usurped by the successive Chinese rulers. In 1959, the Communist regime annexed Tibet and by 1962 it came upon the Himalayas. The Chinese leaders stabbed India in the back when its Prime Minister was helping them secure recognition on the World Forum. The Chinese ambition during Xi's period has grown by leaps and bounds.
They have consistently been successful in lying their ways through, they have violated their own words multiple times. Much before their misleading information on Coronavirus, the Chinese had assured President Obama that they wouldn't militarize the artificial islands they built up in the South China sea, but they did it. China flouted international laws and norms at will.
In addition to Taiwan and Hong Kong, they have (territorial) disputes with practically every country around. They claim a string of Japanese islands as their own. Every major country -- Communist or Non-Communist -- has had bitter experience dealing with China.
According to a PEW survey, the likability of the Chinese in the Asian region was very low. Not only Hong Kong, but the Japanese, the Vietnamese or the Malaysians fear the Chinese government as bullies, even the diaspora Chinese also loathe the mainland Chinese authoritarian rule.
China has been ahead of all in stealing patented technologies by ‘reverse engineering’, hacking and in cyber-espionage. According to some estimates, it has surpassed the USA in cyber-warfare. It’s astonishing how the West, including the USA, made China the destination to have their workshop, sweatshop and warehouse all at one place. This was all for cheap labor, but handed the Chinese considerable economic leverage. The audacity in the Chinese dishonesty was observed during the Coronavirus pandemic in the United States when they supplied medical equipment and ventilators at arbitrarily inflated prices.
Now, this morphing of a dragon into a colossal monster didn’t happen in one day or in one calendar year. Propped up internationally for a number of years since it turned from a Communist-Socialist economy to the Capitalist one and the international-American capital pouring in, China has now become an insidious power capable of rivalling or surpassing the USA in many ways.
Therefore, China can't be tamed by one country alone. It can be cut down to size only through a concerted international effort. An international coalition will have to be formed -- much along the way Bush the senior did against Saddam Hussein in 1990 -- to defeat China. Countries like the USA, Australia, Japan, Vietnam, India and others who have recently been bitten by China will have to pool their resources and swing into action against China.
Regardless of ceaseless negotiations at the diplomatic or military level, India will have to eventually lead the international coalition ready to confront China to reclaim its stolen land and firm up its boundaries against any transgression. India will not make the mistake of going alone against China: The world's fifth largest economy should ideally not go after the second largest; the Chinese military budget is also estimated to be eight times higher than that of India.
As a benefactor of a rogue country like Pakistan and with its boundless ambition, China can never be a friend of India. Historically, when a nation becomes powerful, it bullies other nations. From that angle, China's current behavior with other countries was no surprise.
With a qualitative change in the leadership of India and its increasing assertiveness in the region, particularly on India’s borders with countries in the northern sector, China has naturally become alarmed. Since there’s no democracy in China, Xi Jinping has to convince the Chinese military and party elites that he can project Chinese power around the world; he has also to divert international attention from the malignant contribution his country made to the international Coronavirus pandemic.
Therefore, it seems the battle line is drawn, and history will once again witness how an erratic rising imperial power comes crashing down.
Dr. Binoy Shanker Prasad hails from Darbhanga and currently resides with his family in Dundas, Ontario (Canada). A former UGC teacher fellow (at JNU) in India and Fulbright scholar in the USA, he has taught politics and authored conference papers, articles and chapters on Bihar in previously published books in the United States, India, and Canada.
Dr. Prasad administers a Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/OverseasBihari and has sponsored “Aware Citizenship Campaign” at a micro-level in his home-town.
