ominous
| Date :15-Sep-2020 |
IN HIS own inimitable style, Minister of External Affairs Dr. S. Jaishankar has stated so aptly in his book The India Way:Strategies For An Uncertain World that it is not just India, but each country of the world is refashioning its terms of engagement with China. That is only because China has set for itself an ominous agenda that attempts to push every country into a tight corner -- almost reminding the world of how Adolf Hitler’s perverse and mindset and negative ambition had posed a serious problem for the whole world. Because of its neurotic ways, China has been pushing the world towards a serious rethink on how to handle the uncalled for challenge to a harmonious world order. It is not without reasons, thus, that a seasoned diplomat and top-level intellectual like Dr. Jaishankar feels compelled by the truth of history to declare that China is a problem State.
There is no doubt that this view will get an immediate global endorsement. Such has been the method and manner of China’s way of thinking -- push the world into tight spots and then garner undue advantages based on a superior economic power and a trumpeted military might. There is not one single country in the world that has not repented for having opened its doors to China for whatever purposes. For, Beijing’s ominous agenda is to push the collaborating country into a tight spot and then glean undue advantage from its helplessness.
China tried to the same with India, as is common knowledge. It walked along merrily on what was billed as mutually-beneficial collaboration, making huge trade investments. And then came the Doka La stand-off of 2017 and now the current problem in Ladakh. Beijing had expected India to care more for a normal connect even as the border in Ladakh is on the boil. This is exactly where Beijing’s calculations went terribly wrong. India made it clear that no normal trade or economic relations would be possible when its territorial integrity is under threat. The latest underpinning of this came when Dr. Jaishankar had talks with Mr. Wang Yi, his Chinese counterpart, in Moscow. A development in the past few days is a good example of China is becoming a global threat. Responding to an American statement, Beijing described the United States as a threat to world peace. In its annual report on Chinese military development to the Congress, the Defence Department had talked of “serious implications for US national interests and the security of the international rule-based order”.
The Chinese response to the American reference was an extreme statement that the US is a threat to world peace. This extremism is Beijing’s way of adding to problems rather than sorting those out. That each country builds its own military capabilities, is perfectly in order of its own security perception. In Beijing’s case, however, the aggressive and expansionist elements cannot be missed. With this kind of ominous agenda is China pursuing its foreign policy objectives -- which the world takes as inimical to world order. Defence, thus, is a smaller element in China’s scheme of things; habitual offence is the bigger element. Dr. Jaishankar has pointed this out very correctly -- in a successful attempt to highlight India’s standpoint on the issue.
That is China’s biggest discomfiture. That is Beijing’s real trouble. For, when the current tensions began, India made a massive and well-argued case against China and the world agreed. Beijing had hardly expected India to extract such a huge diplomatic advantage out of the tensions in eastern Ladakh. India achieved that success so smoothly that China was absolutely non--plussed, to say the least. India’s case got so well publicised that the Chinese regime had to do a lot of domestic explaining as well, a problem it had not face in the recent decades. India’s case was so well presented that the common Chinese people also wondered if their country had blundered massively. Each Indian action only pushed Beijing to domestic compromises, the reason being its ominous agenda for the world.