Bharat Rakshak

GSFNetwork@GSFNetwork·15h

I think Doklam perhaps was the game-changer for them. I think post-Doklam, the Chinese started revising their strategy, and wrote that China now must reassess, re-examine and reformulate its India strategy, primarily because they thought that India is now becoming a bigger irritant as far as China’s overall national policy is concerned.

After Doklam, there were several commentaries that China was embarrassed during the crisis asking how could China let the Doklam crisis go on for so long? So that was seen as embarrassing and also kind of a failure for Chinese diplomacy or strategy. Now, post-15 June again, there is a divided opinion among China’s strategic affairs community whether to take problems with India, especially on the western border as a major contradiction for China’s national policy or strategy, or not.

But I think from the Chinese point of view, the strategy on India for a long time is that somehow India has to be kept under control. The discourse is much more than that, India has been under a very strong political party rule and a strong leader for the last several years and many commentators have written about it that, especially in democracies… [there is]…much more rhetoric, that they they try to project externally their image of the country’s status globally, etc, etc. And that is what many commentators have attributed to the current leadership in India.

In this context they have a short-term strategy and also a long-term strategy, specifically with India on the western border (Ladakh). The long term strategies are one, to prevent India from building or repairing roads, especially for the war purposes in Kashmir; two, to expedite construction of the China-Nepal rail-link, and three, to step up building naval and military bases in the Indian Ocean.

In the short-term tactics, they point out that China must have a focused approach and be patient, whether it is border conflicts with India and or Indian trade ban or sanctions against China, etc. They say China must not spare any effort to resolve a conflict like situation by working on political and diplomatic channels for China must not allow border conflict at hand to slip out of control and turn into an unavoidable war. What they mean is that they still continue to see the problems on the border as a strategic issue, which can be taken care of politically or diplomatically.

They also say China must ensure that the Sino-Indian border issue does not in any way influence or jeopardise the larger and crucial strategic ongoing struggle with the U.S., as well as in South China Sea. And that China has now reached a strategic implementation stage where they have to also send clear signals to Taiwan.

Pulikeshi wrote:This is super important - Power comes in one enforcing ones will on another and two enabling freedom of options for oneself.
History has been replete with powers that were rule givers as well as rule breakers simultaneously

Pulikeshi wrote:My two paisa - similar to the advice of the mother in the movie KGF to Rocky - go alone!
You can win the world if others stand behind you because you are in front of them.

More pragmatically, China, if they have strategmic thinking decided that it is better to have India as a US vassal.
There is no need for India to play into this card... As Luttwak was quoted in an earlier post this is what’s needed...
Indian response should be, as currently done by GoI, multispectral, asymmetric and unexpected...
many more options available not just economic.

Pulikeshi wrote:
What similar Chinese era authorship is recommended for the Chinese views? Especially of the Confucian mandarins?

Shanmukh wrote:China has apparently $2.34 billion invested in India. https://thediplomat.com/2020/05/indias- ... di-gamble/

If they decide to take that money out and back, how much do they stand to lose [I assume that not all of that money can be converted back to RMB/$ and moved out], according to current rules?

Anoop wrote:Suraj,

I enjoy reading your posts on economics and trade. Can you please explain what, if any effect, will Chinese firms withdrawing money from Indian start-ups will do. Is it wise and/or possible for them to do so?

Thanks
Anoop

Suraj wrote:Unlike China, which right down to the personal level implicitly gets the dynamics of power, Indians still have a hard time with this concept. We believe it's good to follow rules. That is fine at the personal level. It does not apply at the geopolitical level.

SSridhar wrote:That is something we have never realized. Even our leaders, forget people.

Statecraft is not for those who want to follow their personal beliefs of honesty, virtuousness and such other dharmic concepts in carrying out the activities of the State too. This fact that there is a divorce between Realpolitik and personal traits was never realized by the leaders of India or they were too conditioned to come out of the rut and that was our major problem. The concept of 'Vasudhaiva Khutumbakam' is all right provided it is used as a mask to hide our real intentions, like how China did and continues to do 'Panchsheel'.

arshyam wrote:

AshishAcharya wrote:And even if the palace coup happens, I don't think the next guy that will come will be any better than Eleven. He might be even worse than Eleven in terms of delusions about being Emperor of the world.

That's right - China, irrespective of who's ruling from Zhongnanhai, has steadfastly held on to its claims even if it did not have the power to enforce them. They'd simply wait it out for the time they can actually do something about it. It comes from their self-styled "middle kingdom" nonsense. So we should not think of Xi alone as the problem, but China itself.

AshishAcharya wrote:And even they might not want revenge, but they are sure to come back after they feel confident enough to beat us right?

Definitely. I'd rather deal with them right away and achieve some tactical goals while the momentum is with us, than be on the defensive for the next couple of decades - it's impossible to stay at the same level of alertness for such a long time, not to mention there will be a different govt in Delhi that may not adopt the same posture as the current one.

AshishAcharya wrote:So my point was, what must be done to remove this Chinese threat permanently? How can we defang the Chinese and make their country similar to a place the former Soviet Russia was in the 90s and early 2000s after their breakup.

The way I see it, even if war happens now, it will do nothing but delay the next conflict. So along with Military defeat of China, we must think about how to permanently remove the Chinese threat.

The only permanent solution as I see it is to make Tibet independent with India guaranteeing its security, and freeing up Xinjiang into an independent country. That would ensure buffer states which is restoring the historical state of things and cutting off China's ambitions and self-image for good. It's a tall order, but can't think of any other alternative.

But this solution is not possible today given that we don't have the power to shape the outcome of events like this. So, beyond aggressively enforcing our border security (i.e. to ensure the LAC is more defensible and pose a threat to their hold on Tibet without actually attacking), do nothing in the short/medium term. Such a severe external threat to the CPC's hold on to power is sure to escalate to nuclear exchanges, which no one wants. We should also bide our time for a bit - they have a tendency to tear at each other every 200 years or so, and that's the time to intervene and do the above.

But this means we need to stay focused on our long term threat so we don't lose sight of these goals when the opportunity presents itself. Towards that end, it is imperative that the current govt set the discourse to unambiguously define who the enemy is, and take all possible actions to reinforce it, while rapidly building up our economy and standard of living (the latter is all we want, really). So steps I can think of:

1. Designate China as our enemy nation (as of now, officially we only have George Fernandes' statement from two decades ago).
2. Make sure our economy is minimally dependent on them, wherever possible, get them to be dependent on us, etc.
3. Identify specific sectors where we can compete and back them to the hilt. If needed, consider borrowing from the keiretsu/chaebol concepts (many of our companies are already conglomerates anyway).
4. Aggressively build our military capabilities using local equipment. Where not available, start working on indigenous capabilities.
4a. Also, this 1.5% of GDP will not cut it - though defense gets a sizeable chunk in the govt's budgetary allocation, it is still not enough. Come up with a formula that ensures 3% GDP spend on defense, at least, while ensuring the remaining 1.5% over and above today's spend is spent entirely within the country. That's another $48B (₹3.6 lakh crores) to be spent within the country with all the good effect on the economy.
4b. Stop being squeamish about defense expense - Modi's statement about "Veera bhogya vasundhara" is the right template to build upon.
5. Clear-eyed diplomacy to get other countries to look at China the same way - we have a huge helping hand here, the CCP itself.
5a. But where needed, keep provoking China so they lash out at others and raise their hackles, maybe even get them to fight a war or two with a few others (why should we alone fight them?). Let others too feel the heat and re-align with us based on their own interests. Such a coalition is bound to be stronger than one simply based on shared rhetoric.
5b. This is important as we alone cannot ensure Tibet and Xinjiang stay viable, we'll need cooperation from other countries - US, Japan, Vietnam, of course, but also Russia, Mongolia, etc. In that sense, I welcome China poking the bear with claims over Vladivostok.
6. Basically, China has to replace Pakistan as our ever-present threat in the public discourse.

This policy should be so well-entrenched that a future congress/coalition govt finds it impossible to back down and fall prey to chinese manipulations. In that sense, Xi has provided us with a great opportunity. I really hope we seize it and make the best of it for ourselves, the stars are well aligned right now: a favourable external environment, an obliging and prickly China, a world pissed off by the Wuhan virus, a strong and stable and nationalist govt with little influence of the wolly-headed Nehruvian thinking that has been our bane. If we don't act now, then we'll never get this chance again.

Btw, if China gets taken care of like my wish above, the next focus will be on us, to be sure. Who's focus - it's rather obvious . But that's OT for this thread, so won't expound further.

Suraj wrote: I also think realpolitik is not lacking in dharma . In fact sama, dana, danda, bheda are fundamental realpolitik concepts that are also part of dharmic canon . There’s simply a distinction between personal morals and the imperatives of state policy .

The Chinese just happen to take this down to personal level , seeing rules as something they can break and see if the other party is strong enough to stop them and if not, it demonstrates their superiority. Even the west, with its rule based society , has never confused personal need to follow rules set for society, with the clear understanding that they are entitled to do anything they need in the pursuit of state policy .

Dan Okopnyi @d1rtydan · Jun 28

A guy on reddit reversed engineered #TikTok

Here’s what he found on the data it collects on you

It’s far worse than just stealing what’s on your clipboard:

Chinese President Xi Jinping has apparently decided that now is the time to assert dominance over an economically prostrate, post-pandemic world. But instead of just rolling over, a growing number of nations are fighting back.

India, for one, is clearly not intimidated. In response to China’s unprovoked attack, the largest democracy in the world has moved 30,000 troops to the Himalayan border. Many Indians are now boycotting “Made in China” products, a task made easier because online retailers like Amazon have been ordered by New Delhi to tell buyers where products are made.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also raised tariffs on Chinese goods, restricted Chinese investments and banned TikTok and 58 other Chinese apps from Indian phones.

The same story is being repeated around the globe. From Sweden to Japan to Czechia, more and more nations are coming to understand China’s mortal threat to the postwar democratic, capitalist world order.

Xi Jinping and the Communist Party that he leads have so badly overplayed their hand that they have, in a mere six months, accomplished what Donald Trump could not in almost four years: They have unified the world against China.

And communist leader Xi has only himself to blame.

AshishAcharya wrote:

RaviB wrote:All the ideas about Chinese rising up, demanding democracy are American propaganda. So long as they can hold on to wat they have, they won't raise their head.
What is actually likely in the case of Hanland is a palace coup. Eleven is GEISHA for life, which if you're an ambitious CCP guy means his neck is all that lies between you and the throne. The upper echelon of CCP got there by being extremely ambitious, cuthroats. Would the next generation just give away their rights? Remember their game has so far relied on a decadal transfer of power. These guys have spent 40 years fighting their way up the ladder, kicking people, backstabbing, changing loyalties and what not. And now the top is locked, the first whiff of a chance and there will be a move to get rid of Xi. Think of it like a queue of people outside a toilet waiting and waiting and waiting. How long before somebody gets annoyed enough to break the door and throw out the person sitting on the porcelain throne?

The uprisings I was talking about is in Xinjiang and Tibet. Not necessarily democratic movement. But a violent rebellion like what happened in Chechnya. Or Something that keeps their attention on internal affairs.

And even if the palace coup happens, I don't think the next guy that will come will be any better than Eleven. He might be even worse than Eleven in terms of delusions about being Emperor of the world.

And even they might not want revenge, but they are sure to come back after they feel confident enough to beat us right?

So my point was, what must be done to remove this Chinese threat permanently? How can we defang the Chinese and make their country similar to a place the former Soviet Russia was in the 90s and early 2000s after their breakup.

The way I see it, even if war happens now, it will do nothing but delay the next conflict. So along with Military defeat of China, we must think about how to permanently remove the Chinese threat.

Retired and hurt PLA veterans could become a force against the Chinese Communist Party regime
By Jianli Yang - - Monday, June 29, 2020

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, during a regular press conference on June 22, was asked to confirm the number of casualties China had suffered in the recent clash (with India) in the Galwan Valley. Far from giving out the exact figure, he did not even acknowledge that there were casualties on the Chinese side, saying “I have no information to offer.”

Yet again, when the question was posed the next day (June 23), Mr. Zhao avoided giving any details from the Chinese side, but was quick to retort that Indian media reports claiming that at least 40 Chinese soldiers were killed was “false information.”

Incidentally, it was the same spokesman who gave (June 19) a detailed “step-by-step account of the Galwan clash (the Chinese version, of course) and China’s position on settling this incident.”
Even a week after the incident China has refused to publicly admit that there had been casualties on its side, while India paid last homage to its martyrs with full state honors.

What country does not even acknowledge the martyrdom of its uniformed soldiers at its borders, let alone pay them a respectable last homage? It is China, which reels under the fear that the admittance that it had lost troops, that too more in number than its opponent, could lead to such major trouble and domestic unrest, that the very regime of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could be put at stake.

At the root of this fear is the simmering resentment running in the hearts and minds of 57 million veterans of China’s Superior Han Army (SHA).

If this is the treatment meted out by the CCP regime to the martyrs of today, imagine the plight of PLA veterans, many of whom had participated in the bloody 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War or the Korean War. They have been holding frequent mass protests across China for years now, hoping to shame the government into recognizing its obligation toward those who battled along the country’s borders in the past.

All they seek is better health care, pensions and jobs, as a mark of due gratitude for their service to the nation. Shockingly however, the country which has the world’s largest army, does not have a central agency to administer pensions and other benefits to its veterans. Resultantly, they are forced to depend on local governments for pensions, medical care and other basic benefits.

However, due to wide disparity in the financial standings of the local governments, there is no standard or uniformity in what the veterans receive. After having given their youth and shed blood for the country, the veterans find themselves left by the CCP to the mercy of often corrupt local officials, making them feel like “donkeys slaughtered after they are too old to work a grindstone.”

The ever-increasing veterans’ protests across the country alerted the CCP’s central leadership to take note and adopt corrective measures, lest it leads to widespread organized dissent and social unrest. In April 2018, the Chinese government inaugurated the first-ever Ministry of Veteran Affairs tasked with establishing a centralized system and policies on veteran affairs, including helping former military personnel find jobs.

However, there is still no clarity on who will pay them their benefits, and reemployment woes have only increased given PRC President Xi Jinping’s 2015 decision to majorly downsize and reorganize the army by cutting 300,000 posts.

In face of the potential of organized veteran protests to mobilize the current service men and women, in April of 2017, China’s Ministry of Defense, among its larger efforts of “military reform” orchestrated by Xi Jinping, terminated the old system of China’s army unit numbers and patches and adopted a new one. This change has made it more difficult for the protesting veterans to identify their affinities in the military forces and make appeals to them.

Separately, fearful of organized mass protests, the Chinese authorities have subjected those veterans found participating in protests to suppression, surveillance, detentions and even beatings. There have been several instances of mysterious deaths of veterans who have been actively petitioning the government for their dues. Media mentions of veteran issues are also strictly censored in the country.

All this is a far cry from the reverence these PLA veterans once elicited from the CCP, leading them to now even voice regret for having served the army. If such negative sentiments of the veterans is coupled with the rhetoric that the CCP leadership of today does not even acknowledge the lives laid by its soldiers at its borders, referring to the Galwan Valley causalities, the rank-and-file support for CCP leader President Xi Jinping, who is also chairman of the Central Military Commission, would be at grave threat.

It could also adversely impact Mr. Xi’s ambitious goal of modernizing the PLA by 2035 and to become a top-tier military by 2050, by failing to attract better qualified and highly motivated soldiers.

The PLA has long been a key pillar of the CCP’s power. If the sentiments of the serving PLA cadres are hurt and they get together with the millions of disgruntled veterans (which may be facilitated by those within the PLA who are already unhappy with Mr. Xi — and there are thousands of them, such as those who were hurt by Mr. Xi’s move to separate PLA from commercial activities), they could form a formidable force capable of challenging Mr. Xi’s leadership.

Significantly, the CCP leadership cannot afford to undermine the veterans’ potential to launch a collective and “armed” anti-regime action. Hence, the continuing incidence of veterans’ protests, despite significant coercive pressure and bureaucratic measures, is a source of intense anxiety for Xi Jinping and the CCP leadership.

• Jianli Yang is founder and president of Citizen Power Initiatives for China.

Xu Zhangrun: Outspoken professor detained in China
A professor who criticised China's handling of the coronavirus crisis has been detained by authorities.
Xu Zhangrun, who has been under house arrest, was taken away from his Beijing home on Monday, friends said.
The law professor has previously spoken out against the Mao-like cult of personality which has returned under China's current leader, Xi Jinping.
Police have not commented publicly on the arrest, and it is unclear what charges Mr Xu faces.
He had been barred from teaching at Tsinghua University - one of the country's top institutions - after he spoke out against the removal of presidential term limits, allowing Mr Xi to remain in post for life.

He was placed under house arrest earlier this year after publishing an article criticising the way President Xi and the government had handled the coronavirus outbreak. He suggested it might be the last one he ever wrote.

Paytm Set To Enter Insurance Space; Acquires Mumbai-Based Private Sector General Insurance Company Raheja QBE
https://swarajyamag.com/insta/paytm-set ... raheja-qbe

Rs_singh wrote:I suppose Xu is on the express train to I Mongolia never to be seen again. Field work might include road construction, rock cutting, digging trenches, etc. nothing like a good workout!

pankajs wrote:

India, for one, is clearly not intimidated. In response to China’s unprovoked attack, the largest democracy in the world has moved 30,000 troops to the Himalayan border. Many Indians are now boycotting “Made in China” products, a task made easier because online retailers like Amazon have been ordered by New Delhi to tell buyers where products are made.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also raised tariffs on Chinese goods, restricted Chinese investments and banned TikTok and 58 other Chinese apps from Indian phones.

Suraj wrote: I also think realpolitik is not lacking in dharma . In fact sama, dana, danda, bheda are fundamental realpolitik concepts that are also part of dharmic canon . There’s simply a distinction between personal morals and the imperatives of state policy .

...Even the west, with its rule based society , has never confused personal need to follow rules set for society, with the clear understanding that they are entitled to do anything they need in the pursuit of state policy .

Prof. Michael Tanchum @michaeltanchum

"But when the crisis is over, the United States will still be a global superpower. China may be forced to embrace a less-ambitious future."

The era of cooperation with China may be over soon. Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand are beginning to regret saying “yes” to China’s strategic overtures. The leaders, once eager to assert a little independence from their often-overbearing superpower ally, now find themselves aligning with the United States to oppose the use of Huawei equipment in 5G networks, universities accepting Chinese money to host Confucius Institutes, gross human rights violations in Xinjiang, government repression in Hong Kong, and the militarization of the South China Sea. They are wary of appearing to support a U.S. president who is anathema to many in their own countries, but they increasingly support Donald Trump’s actual policy stances with regard to China. Each country has its own reasons for confronting China, but all of them are, in effect, falling in line with U.S. China policy.

But if the United States—with an economy roughly 50 percent larger than China’s and a gross domestic product (GDP) per capita more than six times as great—can’t afford to remain a global superpower, how can China possibly afford to become one? Leaving aside the facts that China’s chief diplomatic allies are North Korea, Cambodia, and Ethiopia, that it is surrounded by potentially hostile nuclear-weapon states such as Russia and India, that its state-sponsored technology companies are widely distrusted outside China, and that Beijing has been widely blamed for allowing the coronavirus pandemic to spread to the rest of the world, how is it possible that a self-described developing country like China can finance a superpower rivalry with the United States?

The simple answer is it can’t. Even before the coronavirus hit, China’s economic growth had slowed from double-digit rates in the early 2000s to 6.1 percent in 2019—if you believe the official figures, that is. This figure is highly suspect, not least because the person who sets China’s annual GDP target, National Development and Reform Commission vice chairman Ning Jizhe, is the same person who, as director of the National Bureau of Statistics, is responsible for measuring GDP. Independent modeling published by the Brookings Institution suggests that China has historically overestimated GDP growth by an average of 1.7 percent per year.

China’s officially reported tax revenues confirm this picture, growing at just 3.8 percent in 2019, compared with 6.2 percent in 2018 and 7.4 percent in 2017. Yet as China’s financial means have become more restricted, its spending has continued on its old, profligate trajectory, growing 8.1 percent in 2019. The result has been a widening gap in China’s government budgets, with the officially reported budget deficit reaching 4.9 percent of GDP in 2019. The International Monetary Fund puts the true figure of the government’s shortfall at more than 12 percent of GDP. And this was before the coronavirus, during a period of supposedly healthy economic growth.

Hard figures for China are hard to come by, but it seems that the Chinese government was scaling back spending commitments even before the coronavirus hit.Hard figures for China are hard to come by, but it seems that the Chinese government was scaling back spending commitments even before the coronavirus hit. You would hardly know it from the glowing project announcements, but China’s BRI funding commitments have actually been falling since 2017. And even these falling numbers are just promises—the reality of China’s BRI spending is even more meager. Chinese banks have virtually disappeared from BRI financing, leaving the cash-strapped government to shoulder the burden alone. Meanwhile, projects have been shelved, scaled back, or delayed all across Asia.

Western critics of the BRI tend to interpret these problems in terms of the fear of indebtedness that these projects spark in recipient countries. They rarely mention the indebtedness they induce in China itself. So when Western media reported in December that China was pressuring a reluctant Pakistan to resume work on the stalled China–Pakistan Economic Corridor, they failed to mention that China is unwilling to finance the construction itself. Similarly, China wants to build a new port in Myanmar, but it is reluctant to pay for it. China signed a Transit and Transport Agreement with Nepal in 2015 but has yet to build a single mile of road or railway in the landlocked Himalayan country. It’s the same story in Africa and Eastern Europe: China continues to announce grand projects but has been unwilling to offer enough money to actually get them off the ground.

China’s financing problems are nowhere more apparent—and less acknowledged—than in its military budgets. Analyses from the Center for Strategic and International Studies suggest that Chinese defense spending may actually fall in real terms in 2020. Given China’s elevated pace of military operations on several borders, spending constraints must be putting serious pressure on acquisitions budgets. It is impossible for anyone outside China’s defense establishment to know what is really going on, but circumstantial evidence suggests that many of China’s big-ticket weapons programs have been put on go-slow.

Fighting India with sticks and stones on the high plateau of Ladakh comes cheap, but preparing to confront the United States in the Western Pacific is a very expensive proposition indeed. It is likely to prove a luxury that a slow-growth, post-coronavirus China will not be able to afford. Like a gangster flashing a wad of $100 bills, China makes a great show of its wealth and its willingness to spend it. In reality, Beijing’s bank balance doesn’t match its bling.

Having witnessed decades of double-digit growth in Chinese GDP and government spending, outsiders are conditioned to believe that China’s financial resources are unlimited. Having lived through China’s economic rise themselves, insiders are perhaps conditioned to believe it, too. But no budget is bottomless, and China seems to have hit the buffers just as the coronavirus struck. China’s leaders can at least save face by abandoning their GDP targets and blaming the virus for the inevitable austerity to follow. But when the crisis is over, the United States will still be a global superpower. China may be forced to embrace a less-ambitious future.

amar_p wrote:What is Xi and the CCP most afraid of ? The clue lies in Document No 9, which warns of the following: . . .

Ashokk wrote:Bullied by Beijing, America’s Closest Allies Regret Saying ‘Yes’ to China

The era of cooperation with China may be over soon. Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand are beginning to regret saying “yes” to China’s strategic overtures. The leaders, once eager to assert a little independence from their often-overbearing superpower ally, now find themselves aligning with the United States to oppose the use of Huawei equipment in 5G networks, universities accepting Chinese money to host Confucius Institutes, gross human rights violations in Xinjiang, government repression in Hong Kong, and the militarization of the South China Sea. They are wary of appearing to support a U.S. president who is anathema to many in their own countries, but they increasingly support Donald Trump’s actual policy stances with regard to China. Each country has its own reasons for confronting China, but all of them are, in effect, falling in line with U.S. China policy.

SSridhar wrote:Rsatchi, Dubya must [be made to] join this group. China must be isolated with only the two failed states as friends. The relationship between Russia and China has always been very fraught and this must be sharpened. The West must tone down on its anti-Russian rhetoric and India must play a big role ininfluencing both Russia and the West. Modi must play a very high stakes game. It is a long shot but needs to be done. Of course, China will be angered but we are more angry with China.

pankajs wrote:https://twitter.com/michaeltanchum/stat ... 6552231938

Prof. Michael Tanchum @michaeltanchum

"But when the crisis is over, the United States will still be a global superpower. China may be forced to embrace a less-ambitious future."

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/06/ch ... -spending/
China’s Superpower Dreams Are Running Out of Money