ANUSHKA SAXENA AND AMIT KUMAR
Worldview Weekly #1: China’s Views on India-Canada Spat
The diplomatic spat between India and Canada has escalated quickly in a week’s time ever since Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused the Government of India of being involved in the extra-judicial killing of the Sikh separatist leader Nijjar in Canada.
Canada followed up the accusation with the expulsion of an Indian diplomat and RAW officer to which New Delhi responded by sending back the Canadian Deputy High Commissioner in India. India rubbished Trudeau’s claims and demanded that Canada share evidence. India has since also suspended visa facilities and attached to the state properties of several Sikh separatists in India.
The issue also caught headlines in Chinese media, which saw it as an opportunity to highlight the faultlines underlying alliances centered around the US and its double standards with respect to treating India, although not in the manner the Indians have argued.
On the question of the US’s lukewarm or rather lackadaisical response to Canadian accusations of India’s involvement in the killing of a Canadian citizen (recall the Kashoggi incident), Li Haidong, a professor at the Chinese Foreign Affairs University, agreed with the general consensus that “India occupies an absolutely leading position in the overall Asia-Pacific strategy of the US” and that “this move shows the US’s desire to woo India to serve its geopolitical interests in the Asia-Pacific region.”
Allies are also well aware of this imbalance and understand that they will eventually become expendable to the US when their interests collide, Li noted. As a result, he added, deep-seated rifts persist within the Western alliance system, and its morals and rules are only meaningful when they serve the US’s needs.
A Global Times piece also argued that the US and its allies’ response to Canada’s accusation exposes their commitment to democracy and human rights.
Qian Feng, director of the research department at the National Strategy Institute of Tsinghua University, told the Global Times that the West, especially the US, in recent years has been waving the banner of common values of democracy and freedom, attempting to develop comprehensive cooperation with India in order to contain China. Qian argues that they [the US and its allies] are willing to turn a blind eye to what he thinks are India’s human rights abuses and infringement on the rights of domestic ethnic minorities, which exposes the hypocrisy of the Western alliance with India based on their so-called “common values.”
The US finds itself in a difficult position and has been reacting cautiously after Canada’s accusation that India may have been involved in the assassination of a Sikh activist on its soil.
Another GT piece sought to highlight the dilemma facing the US and the unequal nature of the US-centred alliance. It said, “The diplomatic row between Canada and India over the alleged assassination of a Sikh activist has served as a perfect example of the West's double standards,” for it would not call out India as it would if it were any other country not friendly to them. Furthermore, it said, “The collective silence of the West also reflected the deep imbalance of the alliance…where morality and rules hold no value unless it serves the US' strategic interests.”
Thoughts: Strategic circles in India express concern that the spat with Canada and the “hard intel” Trudeau has cited to prove Nijjar’s extrajudicial killing by India will sour India-US relations (given the US has a role in the sharing of some of this intel, and is Canada’s ‘Five Eyes’ ally).
However, contrary to this perception, the Chinese narrative on the issue says that the US hasn’t reacted harshly enough, and India has been let off easily. There are three key takeaways from what Chinese scholars argue:
- The US will undermine its allies if their interests at a given time don’t converge, highlighting the vulnerabilities in the US-led alliance system.
- US’s commitment to human rights and “shared values” is only good for lip-service. Drum-beating of India’s democracy in the US is merely to appease it to act as a pawn in US’s China containment strategy.
- US maintains double-standards, because if a non-friendly country (read: China) would have been accused of extrajudicial killing on the soil of a US-ally, the treatment would be much different and harsher.
Guarding the Great Wall #1: Show me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are!
‘Purify your Social Circle, Life Circle, and Friend Circle’, a commentary in the PLA Daily warned military cadres.
The commentary, authored by Chen Qinghua of the Reform and Establishment Office of the Central Military Commission in the September 22 edition of the PLA’s mouthpiece, begins by discussing a rather short story from the Chinese novel ‘Journey to the West’, that Xi Jinping once narrated in May 2014, during an inspection of the General Office of the CPC Central Committee. It goes like this:
Back then, Chinese state media referred to this idea as “Xi’s ‘Circle’ theory,” and today, the idea has truly evolved as a pillar of the Chinese state’s anti-corruption corpus.
And what is this idea? It is that all cadres, especially military cadres, live in an environment where interpersonal interactions are unavoidable. But they must keep their social and personal circles clean and tidy. As Chen puts it in his commentary:
This is perhaps the best policy implementation of the saying: “Success or failure in life depends on the wisdom of your friends.”
And why is this especially significant for political and military cadres? Chen explains:
And what does Chen recommend cadres do when they begin attracting untidy company? He says:
The foundation of these recommendations is a ‘Code of Conduct for Social Interactions of Military Leading Cadres’ issued by the Political Work Department and the Discipline Inspection Commission of the CMC in June this year. Even though the text of the Code (as per my knowledge) isn’t publicly available, People’s Daily reported that the standards set therein govern military cadres’ interactions in eight spheres:
- Interactions between military leading cadres and local party and government organs and their personnel;
- Interactions with enterprises (institutions) and their relevant personnel;
- Interactions with social organizations;
- Interactions with news media, theoretical research and academic exchange institutions and their personnel;
- Interactions with ethnic and religious organizations and religious believers;
- Interactions with various foreign organizations, institutions, and personnel; and
- Interactions with family and friends, as well as virtual interactions on internet social platforms.
But the specific excerpt from Chen’s commentary, that has also caught the attention of the Western media, is this:
The Chinese military apparatus is witnessing a shake-up, amidst the dismissals of and the ongoing anti-corruption investigations against military leaders in the Rocket Force since August 2023, and most recently, the disappearance and reported removal of Chinese National Defense Minister and State Councillor Li Shangfu. Speculations surrounding the whereabouts of other CMC leaders such as Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, who were missing from a crucial meeting on ‘Military Study’ and the implementation of Xi’s Socialist Ideology on September 15, are running amok.
In this regard, many Western media platforms are looking at the publication of the commentary as a sign that these disappearances and removals are all linked to the responsible military cadres’ inability to “purify” their social and friend circles. It may be so, but what is also important to note is that this message keeps on coming up time and time again.
Just last year, Study Times reported that at the opening ceremony of a Central Party School Young Cadres Training Programme, Xi Jinping emphasized that “[Young cadres’] Interactions must be guided by principles and rules, and continuous efforts are needed to purify one’s social circle, life circle, and friends circle. For young cadres, safeguarding their interpersonal relationships is not a personal matter; it is a matter of great importance concerning the party's integrity and political environment.”
Further, Xi had also added:
The emphasis on purification of the “three circles” has at its core the principle that cadres can never trust their willpower too much. As Chen wrote in his commentary:
As the Chinese “fight against corruption” rages on, more “tigers” are likely to fall for not having done enough to “purify their circles.”
Worldview Weekly #2: When Xi Meets Prachanda
Nepal’s Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dhumal (Prachanda) is on an official visit to China from 23 September to 30 September. During the visit, aside from Nepal-China relations, India-Nepal relations were also a subject of discussion within the Chinese media.
But first let’s look at what the Chinese Foreign Minister spokesperson, Mao Ning, had to say about the Nepal-China relations and the expectations from Prachanda’s visit during a regular press conference:
Moving on. This time, the two sides are flaunting the success of the China-Nepal Transit Transport Agreement, recently under the aegis of which, the first batch of imported goods – 15 tons of turmeric powder from Vietnam – arrived in Kathmandu via the Tianjin Port in northern China. However, even here, Global Times just couldn’t keep India out of the picture.
Wang Shida, the deputy director of the South Asia Institute of the Contemporary International Relations Research Academy of China, in a piece for the Chinese media outlet, described the achievement as a step towards reduction of Nepal’s reliance on India.
He wrote: “In contrast to the substantial progress made by China and Nepal in areas such as cross-border transportation, Nepal has been facing ongoing issues with another neighboring country, India, recently.”
Alluding to the territorial dispute between India and Nepal and amplifying the concern by pointing to the newly unveiled mural painting in India’s new parliament, Wang said,
Wang continued that India has sought to control Nepal by leveraging the geography that has left Kathmandu “heavily reliant on India for economic and external communication, including the transit of essential goods such as food, medicine, and fuel through India.” This geographical dependence, he argues, has rendered Nepal “deeply influenced, and even controlled, by India in political, social and security domains.”
Explaining the reasoning behind Nepal’s decision to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Wang says:
He however acknowledges that an objective assessment of Nepal’s position vis-a-vis India requires Kathmandu to “continue to rely…on the transit routes provided by India…which means that Nepal cannot completely sever ties with India.” He concludes that to “handle relations with India without compromising national sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity while ensuring smooth communication between Nepal and the outside world, has always been the greatest challenge for Nepal's foreign policy.”
Guarding the Great Wall #2: Designing War
Explaining China’s outlook on designing a war based on technological superiority, another really interesting commentary appeared in the ‘Military Forum’ column in the PLA Daily’s September 21 edition.
The crux of the commentary’s arguments is this:
As the reforms of the PLA have been put in place since 2015, technological innovation and integration in the military domain have become key features.
From the Chinese perspective, there are three stages to the complete technological modernization of a military: mechanization (integrating machines to help humans), informatization (using the internet to connect machines and humans) and intelligentisation (making machines ‘intelligent’ and autonomous to relieve humans). These rather non-linear stages are critical to the making of a “world-class armed force” that can fight and win “short-duration, high-intensity, localized” wars. Clearly, technological advancement is at the center of each of these stages and war goals.
Accordingly, the commentary emphasizes three pillars of successfully designing future wars from a technological perspective – emphasizing foresight, highlighting asymmetry, and aiming for precision.
China has done a thorough job of emphasizing foresight by drawing lessons from any and all types of wars fought across the world. In another commentary published by the Chinese Ministry of National Defense in May 2023, scholars argued that “There are never two identical wars in the world. Innovation in tactics can be inherited and learned from, but cannot be copied.” Hence, China’s efforts are focused on “inheriting” warfighting lessons while focusing on self-innovation to build “distinctive” tactics.
On the aspect of highlighting and studying asymmetry, some scholars and commentators are elaborately pursuing the case study of the Russia-Ukraine war. For example, one of Guancha’s latest columns by military commentator Xi Ya Zhou had some keen insights on how the R-U war exemplifies asymmetric warfare. Some of his key arguments include:
- Currently, on the front lines, the biggest losses for both sides come from the opponent's asymmetric warfare capabilities.
- In such a confrontation, Ukraine, which receives NATO assistance and holds a slight technological advantage in many aspects over the Russian military, is facing off against the Russian military, which holds a significant advantage in firepower and a slight edge in troop numbers.
- Russia's economy, unexpectedly, has regained vitality under the nourishment of war. Perhaps this more pathological economic boom can only be sustained in the short term, but it's better than forever slumbering in endless decline.
- However, Russia's enormous war machine has been neglected and lacks technological updates for far too long. Now, the nature of warfare has changed compared to 1989, so even weapons and ammunition produced with outdated technology cannot be supplied indefinitely by Russia's military-industrial complex.
- Moreover, over the past thirty years, the technology and equipment related to the digital revolution are beyond their capacity to produce in sufficient quantities.
- With its own resources and two traditional strengths, "steamrollers" and "gray livestock," Russia has been engaged in a back-and-forth conflict with Ukraine, which also possesses the same traditions.
- As the war continues, Ukraine has leveraged its significant "asymmetric warfare" capabilities obtained through Western assistance to play an important role on the battlefield, and it has even held its ground against Russia.
These are the kind of precise lessons (pun-intended) China is drawing to make its own warfare tactics more precise.
In the coming years, it is likely that the focal endeavour to enable the achievement of precision warfare and technological integration would be mathematical simulations. As the PLA Daily commentary recommends:
In this backdrop, the PLA is already undertaking extensive combat scenario training exercises to put theoretical frameworks into action and test untested capabilities.
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