On July 31, military delegates from India and China held a nine-hour long inconclusive meeting at Moldo on the Chinese side in the Ladakh region and no official statement was released by either party after the meeting. Some Indian media outlets known for their fair reporting indicate frozen high altitude Himalayan borders between India and China are getting hot.
Military delegations of both countries met with a pause of three months and it was a top military leadership where the Indian delegation was led by Leh-based XIV Corps chief Lt Gen P.G.K. Menon and Additional Secretary (East Asia) in the Ministry of External Affairs, Naveen Srivastava, and the Chinese military delegation was led by the Commander of the PLA’s Western Theatre Command, Xu Qiling.
Did this meeting have any connection with the meeting of the U.S Secretary of State Antony Blinken with a representative of the Dalai Lama in New Delhi that took place on July 28? This is an appropriate question one should think about.
Asian News International reported that after face-off at Pangong Lake, India and China eased out the situation and they disengaged from the banks of Pangong lake but Gogra Heights and Hot Springs areas are left to be resolved as these friction points were created last year. Chinese Media saw this meeting as “important” while Indian media portrayed this meeting as a part of ongoing military deliberations. What is going on at the Indo-Sino Line of Actual Control (LAC) is another question because reports coming from both countries cannot be considered neutral or authentic as stakes are high on both sides.
Understanding the real situation of the Indo-Sino relationship needs a functional approach as well as to look it from an international perspective. Blinken’s meeting with a representative of the 14th Dalai Lama has been taken by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a serious interference in China’s internal affairs. Meeting of top military leadership just after three days of Blinken’s meeting in New Delhi look interlinked and interconnected because Indian media indicated that this border meeting was not scheduled. Nevertheless, Indian media is silent about who called this meeting to begin with.
European Think Tanks are of the view that India must be logical logical because it can be collateral damage to the forecasted rough weather engulfing the US-China relationship.
The United States has placed Tibetan Policy and Support Act to twist the arm of China diplomatically because this Act can put sanctions on any Chinese individual or group under the Global Magnitsky Act, including denial of entry into the United States of any individual or group if found involved in meddling with the Dalai Lama and his government in exile. US President Joe Biden is very clear in curtailing China through his Strategic Partner in South Asia—India. Any Cold War-like situation between the United States and China will influence all regional stakeholders, particularly Pakistan and India. On the one hand, Pakistan is captaining the Belt and Road Initiative in the form of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and on the other, India is hosting the Tibetan conflict in the shape of the Dalai Lama.
China and the United States had never been in a face off situation in the past. However, now a Cold War-like situation has arisen between the two nations. Now, things are altogether different for China, Pakistan, and India in South Asia. In the past, the US never placed China as its immediate concern but today, the US considers China an immediate threat. The US has never been contested by anyone in past, not even by the former Soviet Union in the manner it is contested by the Chinese economy. China has threatened the core of US Capitalism by taking away sources of money from the western world.
According to the list of countries by merchandise exports, based on UN COMTRADE and ITC statistics for the year 2020, China is at the top doing 13.3 percent of total global exports while the US stands second with 8.8 percent of the total share of global exports. Germany is third on the list with a 7.9 share of global exports. Data indicates that the difference between Germany and United States is very thin while the difference between China and the US is quite significant, that is 4.5 percent. This situation has made the US restless and its Capitalism-driven Foreign Policy has been defeated so far by the Chinese vision of development. Will the US let China move at the same pace economically? The logical answer is “no”.
I take the United States as the ‘Mass Man’ of Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset, who says that technological and political advances in society are caused by the unusual individual who is separated from the “mass” of humanity by his “interior necessity…to appeal from himself to some standard beyond himself, superior to himself.” Ortega clarifies that the “mass man” is not synonymous with the common man. He is not a member of any particular socio-economic class, but rather, is an individual who “regards himself as perfect.” The mass man “feels the lack of nothing outside himself.” He feels no compulsion to follow principles of legality when they are not in his self-interest. He regards the benefits of civilization as his natural right rather than as the result of a complex chain of social interactions. The mass-man believes in “direct action.” When he rules “the homogeneous mass weighs down on the public authority and crashes down, annihilates every opposing group,” because the mass “has a deadly hatred of all that is not itself.”
The US as a mass man of Ortega cannot accept Chinese economic advances and will use all its force to curtail China while China, having a philosophical history of thousands of years, knows the art of survival. The US-China Cold War will be altogether different than the Russian-US Cold War because that war was between two ideologies — Capitalism and Communism. However, the US-Sino emerging Cold War will be between economic opportunities offered by China to developing countries and threats the US can pass to them.
One of the most popular ancient Chinese proverbs is:
“If you want one year of prosperity, grow grain. If you want 10 years of prosperity, grow trees. If you want 100 years of prosperity, grow people.”
This is what China did in the last 20 years when the United States was busy inflicting conflicts in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and other places.
*The writer is an analyst writing for international media outlets. She heads the DND Thought Center. She did her MA in Cognitive Semiotics from Aarhus University in Denmark and is currently registered as a Ph.D. Scholar of Semiotics and Philosophy of Communication at Charles University in Prague.
August 3, 2021
The viewpoints expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints and editorial policies of Aequitas Review.
