The President of China, Hu Jintao’s visit to US has generated a lot of euphoria, some eddying on an impending US-Sino all-areas conflict, and some baulking at and pitying the meeting’s nothingness. It has indeed been a Chinese story in the world economy and polity, and now military also, for the last few years, and the world is struggling to evolve the right equation with China. What is common in all the rustle-bustle though is the general pre-conceived notion about China being the new naughty jingoistic nation aiming at world domination. Let’s see how?
Its political system of single-party rule is an aberration and affront to democracy, as it brooks no real representation of people through elections, and hence a genuine government. The ruling Communist Party, aided by its People’s Liberation Army (PLA), since 1949, has ruled with an iron hand suppressing every dissension. Tiananmen Square Tragedy (1989), when a group of protesters demanding more political say were murdered by the government, is a telling tale of its dictatorial dispensation.
China’s human rights records are appalling. If people show some political opinion, they are eliminated at the drop of a hat by implicating them in anti-national activities. Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize Winner of 2010, has been jailed for voicing his opinion against the Govt. Tibet has been brought under its forceful control, and the native Buddhist Tibetans continue to be abused under the authoritarian regime.
The world economic disorder is being arraigned on Chinese overt devaluation of its currency, Renminbi Yuan, which has lopsided the import-export balance of the world in its favour. Its huge holding of US Treasury bonds, its cheap-manufactured products of every conceivable ilk, its dumping strategy et al are an eyesore for the world.
China is expanding militarily faster than has been ever done by any nation. In its gall, it flaunted off J-20, the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft, just before the arrival of Defense Secretary of US, Robert Gates, for talks. Its plans are for induction of heavy new technology weapons into its military arsenal. It has started claiming areas ruled by other nations and got embroiled in disputes of military nature– Senkaku island with Japan, South China Sea with Philippines, Askai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh with India, Tibet with its natives.
China is not amiable to the idea of supporting global peace. It has no qualms against doing trade with the despotic regimes-Myanmar, Sudan, Niger etc. In fact, it has started investing in these countries to gorge and guzzle their raw resources, in turn endorsing and abetting these governments’ crimes.
With reference to India, nothing could be more betraying than the 1962 Indo-Chinese War when it flouted openly the Panchsheel Agreement, signed between Pandit Nehru and Zhou en Lai in 1954. It has illegally captured Askai Chin part of Indian Kashmir, and is putting its claim over Arunachal Pradesh of N-E India. To bruise more, it blindly supports Pakistan, India’s primary foe, over Kashmir.
The above list is only the preface. A book of tome quality can be easily written highlighting the various Chinese nefarious designs, as widely preached in print and electronic media alike.
As per me, all the above are true, but I can’t help feeling that history is being rewritten here. Also it is shortsighted. And in this Chinese bashing, no body can take the moral high-ground, as everyone wants to grind its own mill.
Doesn’t China have a right to follow its own political system? What was China before the Revolution of 1949? A puppet fiefdom of Western powers under the toady Chiang Kai Shek. Mao ZeDong policies were the response of the capitalistic play perpetrated on China for long. Read the Cutting of Chinese Melon theory. Mao’s policies (esp. The Great Leap (1956-59) and Cultural Revolution (1966-76) )didn’t alleviate the situation though. He put stringent political control over the nation, and the subsequent rulers too followed the suit. But China did release economic control in 1979, when Deng Xiaoping felt the need to do so. I hope or believe their rulers will realize they need to do something similar in their polity also.
Human rights violations are a universal crime, and like every defaulting country, China too should be lambasted, but not ostracized. I don’t agree with Chinese ultimatum given to several countries for skipping the 2010 Nobel Ceremony, but this incident shouldn’t be used to compare its govt. with the Nazi Regime highlighting a similar act done by Adolf Hitler when he barred Carl von Ossietzky from receiving the 1935 Awards. Such comparisons are hideous.
China’s military expansion is its right. US has got F-22s, supposedly the most advanced fighter aircrafts till now, but no hullabaloo was raised over their development. Are F-22s for peace and weapons developed by other nations only for war?
The world economic mess, in 2008, was created by the fall of the unscrupulous banks in US and various European nations, which had lost hold of both financial sagacity and morality in dishing out loans to sub-prime candidates. It is/was capitalism at its monstrous worst. The intentional currency devaluation by China is not financially prudent, for it will generate inflation, low-purchasing power, low productivity in the country in the long run. It is adopting this approach though to boost its exports and garner substantial positive trade balance. But are the Western powers responding to it positively? What about the US Federal Reserve’s decision to buy back bonds worth $600 billion in order to push the dollar down, despite knowing that dollar’s artificial fall in this way will cascade deep changes in the financial market worldwide? This aside, nothing could be more laughable than the US Treasury Secretary, Mr Timothy Geithner’s imploring in the recently held G-20 conference at Seoul, for all the countries to keep their trade surpluses within 5% of their total trade. Seriously, would US have done that, if switched places?
With respect to India’s, my own country, relations with China, I can only say that the pictures being portrayed by media and governments on both the sides are so hazy that it is impossible to gauge what is right. The 1962 Indo-Chinese War was a bad defeat for India, and a treachery by Chinese on the popularized Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai (India and China are brothers) slogan so enthusiastically brandished earlier. I abide by it, but invoking this time and again in every dealing with China is not going to solve the problem. Boundary disputes are never one-sided affair. If the Indians realize that current Arunachal Pradesh was never an Indian territory and was only a British annexation to expand the empire’s limit to the Tibetan borders, and if the Chinese realize that a legal Treaty was signed between British and Tibetan Govt in 1914 giving veracity to the boundary, then a lot of reconciliation can take place. One can’t go back to history to rewrite today, otherwise Adam and Eve would come back from heavens to lay claim on the Earth.
What I want to drive home is that this game of buck-stopping being played right now is both disgusting and defeating. As I said earlier that history is being repeated and it smacks me of the farce that was played during late1930s by the European countries towards Germany, which neither corralled nor cornered Germany.
If the countries seriously want to reign in suspected Chinese diabolical intentions, they need to get their own actions right first. They need to respect China as what it is, and not try to foist on it their ideas which themselves are warped and wrapped with importune leeching intentions. I am not a Chinese supporter, and I would like to see China being taken to task, if it ever dares cross the line of nationalistic autonomy. But till that time, I would also like to see other nations, including India, to treat stones as fire-lighters and scimitars as weapons, and not the other way around.
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