CHINAwatch

Battle of rhetoric in the India-China standoff

Live interview with CNN News18 of India on 9 September, 2020. 

China-India tensions: Neighbors engage in blame game over fresh border escalation

Live interview with Press TV on 8 September, 2020

China says Czech Senate speaker to pay heavy price for making visit to Taiwan

Live TV interview with Press TV on 31 August, 2020

US Tick Tok ban: what's next?

Live TV interview with Indus News on 18 August, 2020 (The relevant segment starts from time counter 30:33)

China opposes US official's Taiwan visit

Live TV interview with Press TV on 7 August, 2020 (My intervention starts from time counter 04:30) 

Pompeo: Chinese trade deal with Iran will destabilize Middle East

Live interview  on 3 August, 2020 with Press TV. 

China Is Done Biding Its Time? But what is America's end-game?

The End of Beijing’s Foreign Policy Restraint? poses the above question in Foreign Policy on 15 July, 2020. The piece is penned by Kurt Campbell, Chair and CEO of The Asia Group and former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs, with Mira Rapp-Hooper, Senior Fellow for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The tour d'horizon summarizes a dramatic about-face of China's foreign policy, in rhetoric and action, from Deng Xiaoping's earlier "hide-and-bide" admonition. China's assertiveness on all fronts is thought to be exploiting the Trump Administration's AWOL on global leadership. The worldwide chaos resulting from the Coronavirus pandemic has created opportunities for a much more powerful China to overreach, thinking that its time has come as a Great Power. 

The authors conclude with the following observation: 

"Fortunately for the next U.S. president, the contours of a better American approach to China have been evident for some time. The United States must reject the punitive unilateralism that has become the norm in recent years and that has produced no trade or national security gains whatsoever. It must rejigger its relationship with allies in Europe and Asia, who provide its only remaining chance at balancing China in the decades ahead. It must reinvest in international institutions, such as the UN, the G-7, and the WHO, which are indispensable for crisis management and which China is all too happy to lead in the United States’ absence. And it must restore its own domestic health and prosperity to remain a viable competitor on the global stage."

Aside from the chances of a second-term Trump presidency, there is a robust bipartisan consensus in the United States that China has become an existential threat (or an "evil empire") with a totally different ideology. This is perceived to be eroding the America-led liberal global order, including American interests in trade, technology, the South China Sea, and ideology. There is widespread support for a robust all-of-government push-back on all fronts, with unilateral sanctions and decoupling where necessary, to exert maximum pressure in the hope of behavioral, if not regime change. It's no wonder that amid the Coronavirus outbreak, American negative views of China have jumped significantly, according to an April 21st PEW survey. 

As for traditional US allies, while wanting to resist China's assertiveness, neither Europe nor Asia wishes to be forced to take sides. This also applies to the rest of the world, with a few exceptions. This is because China has become the largest trading partner of 124 countries, compared to US's 76. China is deeply imbedded in the global complex supply-and-value chains, strategic decoupling notwithstanding. The seven-year period needed for the UK to decouple from Huawei is a case in point. So is the fact that some 90% of India's pharmaceutical industry depends on inputs of China's ingredients.

Another example showing how integrated China remains is the proposed launch in a year or so of the world's largest trading bloc, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), where China, as the world's second largest economy, is set to be a leading partner. This encompasses all ASEAN countries and each member's regional trading partners. With India, it would account for 50% of the world's population and 40% of world GDP. Without India, which has recently withdrawn from engagement, the percentages would be 30% in both cases. 

As for global institutions, the Trump administration has been flouting the UN, lording it over the G-7, and dishing the WHO. It would take time and concrete examples to rebuild America's leadership. 

At the end of the day, there is a growing risk of misreading China's real intentions. China would be foolish to displace the United States as global leader as it remains unable and unwilling to shoulder the responsibilities. Nor would the world be prepared to accept this in view of China's ideology.

However, the Chinese Communist Party has been enjoying increasing support by the people across the board, according to a July 2020 Harvard Kenney School Ash Center survey Understanding CCP Resilience: Surveying Chinese Public Opinion Through Time. It's only rightful for China to realize its China Dream of historic renaissance as a Great Power, bringing better and more dignified lives for its people, provided its trajectory is not seen to be at other countries' expense.

What is more, absent a pragmatic and constructive end-game, a plethora of paranoiac, no-holds-barred, get-tough actions on China could well end up with the very opposite of what these maximum-pressure tactics are meant to achieve, warns Jude Blanchette, Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., in his July 17 commentary The United States Has Gotten Tough on China. When Will It Get Strategic? 

A World Politics Review of May 2020, US-China Rivalry in the Trump Era offers a panoply of analyses of multiple responses to the perceived China challenge. As one of the Review's leading authors Howard French wily observes, "Nonetheless, beyond vague calls for the U.S. to get its own house in order and reinvigorate its partnerships, which few sensible people can argue with, it is far from obvious what else Americans should do about the across-the-board challenge that China presents." The absence of a clear-eyed endgame is conspicuous. 

A Rand Corporation 2020 study China’s Grand Strategy: Trends, Trajectories and Long-Term Competition examines how successful China would be in realizing its China Dream of becoming a fully-developed nation by 2049. It outlines four scenarios: "triumphant", "ascendant", "stagnant" and "imploding", concluding that the middle scenarios are much more likely.

While generally balanced, the study quotes statistics no later than 2015. It somewhat under-estimates China's explosive consumption growth (38.8% of GDP in 2019, contributing 60% to economic growth), overplaying the importance of exports (only 17.4% of GDP (5% for net-exports) in 2019). It doesn't seem to do justice to China's rapid advances in e-commerce, 5G, big data, quantum computing, internet-of-things (IoT), its recently-completed global BaiDou Navigation Satellite System, and Tianwen-1, China's first Mars Probe Mission. It also seems oblivious to the above-mentioned Harvard Kennedy School's study on CCP resilience. In any case, its overarching response is America's military.

A Brookings Institution April 2020 study Preparing the United States for the Superpower Marathon with China underscores the imperative of geo-economic competition, defined by 21st century game-changing technologies like 5G and quantum computing. Apparently borrowing the competitive terminology from Michael Pillsbury's much-admired 2016 tome The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower , it argues that " If we are to prevail, we must  compete rather than contain China." It concludes that "The outcome of this geo-economic competition is by no means certain. .... If the U.S. fails to prepare for this superpower marathon, we will resign ourselves to becoming a second-rate power while the world looks up to a new global leader with strikingly different values and views." This gives some credence to the possibility of the China "triumphant" scenario in the above-mentioned Rand Corporation study.

With American hawks in the ascendant, a new US-China Cold War seems inevitable. Nevertheless, de-risking  it would be in everyone's interests. What is more, President Trump will never win his New Cold War with China , according to columnist Robin Wright of The New Yorker on 29 July, 2020, suggesting that principled engagement on areas of concern coupled with partnership on global issues like Climate Change is likely to be more productive.

China takes possession of closed US consulate in Chengdu

Live interview with Press TV on 27 July 2020.

Why UK now bans Huawei

Live TV interview with RT International on 14 July, 2020

US weaponizes everything from Hong Kong to Huawei to exert pressure on Beijing

Op-ed in Sputnik International on 14 July, 2020. Headquartered in Moscow, the international online news channel broadcasts in 32 languages with offices in Washington DC, Cairo, Beijing, Paris, Berlin, London, India and Edinburgh.