Gaurie Dwivedi
Only multi-polar solidarity will counter the challenge that China poses, economically, politically, militarily, and in information and biological warfare
The hard-hitting statements and speeches that marked the centenary celebrations of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were in sync with Xi Jinping's domestic image. ‘Xi Dada' or ‘big uncle Xi' spoke about China's history like it was never a hegemonand about the repercussions if its sovereignty were ever to be threatened.
For President Xi Jinping, July 1, 2021, was an important milestone; one that he hoped would be commemorated for China becoming more powerful and less isolated. It is for this reason that he had advanced the deadline for China becoming a fully developed country from 2050 — set by Deng Xiaoping — to 2035. However, 18 months before the 2021 milestone, the coronavirus outbreak halted China's plans and ambitions as it exposed the country's faultlines the communist party had hitherto successfully exploited.
The pandemic exposed the extent of the world's vulnerabilities and its ‘China dependence'. China flexed its economic muscle against Australia by banning exports worth $3 billion after its legitimate request for an inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus. It was not the first time such a thing happened. In 2017, Seoul faced similar economic retribution for deploying the American missile defence system. So did Norway when Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
However, unlike previous instances, 2020 made nations fully cognizant of China's ability to wage economic warfare. And Beijing's response only deepened the world's mistrust against the CCP and its supreme leader Xi Jinping. Xi's strong-arm tactics were not just restricted to trade but manifested most in its aggressive military posturing against its traditional rivals and historical adversaries. In fact, China's belligerence grew as it faced an unprecedented global backlash. Beijing's response to this was intimidation of and thinly-veiled threats to India, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, and Vietnam.
As China dropped its carefully crafted image of being a benevolent savior via its mask diplomacy in the early days of the pandemic, its naked ambition to grab sovereign territory became clear. The façade of a ‘superpower willing to step up during a global crisis' fell. And with it fell all the romantic American assumptions that had, for decades, promoted closer ties with Beijing on the premise that prosperity will usher in political and social reforms in China.
After allowing China to successfully subvert the rules-based world order for at least two decades, the world is now in a precarious phase. The geopolitical headwinds – which became more pronounced post-pandemic – have manifested themselves in all aspects of the globalized world, namely, trade, military, cyberspace, and new-age technology like outer space.
China is a superpower in a hurry. It wants to ‘fundamentally revise the world order', both on land and on the sea, to serve ‘Beijing's authoritarian goals and hegemonic ambitions'. It is in a hurry to alter the global governance landscape by getting sweeping powers to formulate norms on vital issues like health, IPR, cybersecurity, and food security. These are matters that affect entire humanity and overtime, China gained disproportionate influence in global bodies to bend the rules. Beijing's strategy is not limited to planting its proxies in key UN organizations. Instead, it wants its own versions of human rights to be normalized by these international agencies. It is also in a hurry to get hold of as many natural resources as possible.
The hunger for mineral resources is one of the principal reasons for China's desire to be a modern-day colonial power. In the process, China pushed small, resource-rich, and strategically located nations into huge debt traps. China's acts to undermine the world order pose a greater global threat than the former USSR because due to its economic might, military capabilities, and vast influence across Asia, Europe, and Africa. China has amplified its clout also through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in terms of expanding the market for its tangible infrastructure and area of influence of intangible political influence. China's maritime infrastructure today spans from its military base in Djibouti in Africa to its civilian ports near Israel's Haifa and the Hambantota port in Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean providing it with the ability to create maritime chokepoints in times of conflict.
Wishing China away is neither possible nor desirable. What is needed is a clear plan of action to ensure China's imperialistic efforts are defeated and to identify a roadmap that is in sync with the challenges of the 21st Century. It is not enough to just match frigates and submarines but to defeat China's plans to weaponise trade, information and its global clout which has turned even UN bodies into its proxies.
The start of Biden's term coincided with the historic Alaska meet which saw tough posturing by America to back the world's Chinachallenge. However, the United States' current economic and geopolitical stature is not sufficient to continue with its hardened stance. In fact, the US is not as powerful as it was at the peak of the Cold War to handle the geo-strategic and geo-economic challenges that a rising China presents to the world. This means it is the collective response of the liberal world –the US and its allies — which will decide the fate of the post-pandemic world order. Besides having an exhaustive military and strategic infrastructure, Beijing is also economically much bigger than Moscow ever was. China's GDP is over 65 percent of the US GDP; in comparison,the USSR at its peak had 40 percent of the US GDP. Not only is the economic gap between the United States and China lesser than the gap between the US and the USSR, Beijing is also closing in militarily. China is expected to surpass the US as the world's largest economy possibly by 2028, ahead of earlier predictions.
Only multi-polar solidarity will counter the challenge that China poses,economically, politically, militarily, and in new domains like information and biological warfare. India and Japan, along with France, will play a vital role in checking President Xi Jinping and avert the consequences of China's ‘century of humiliation'. President Joe Biden does not have the luxury of his predecessor Barack Obama to respond to China's unprecedented island-building activity with mere public statements. Instead, Biden will have to act fast and in tandem with India's Narendra Modi and Japan's Yoshihide Suga.
Xi Jinping has whipped up the domestic sentiment on an ancient and vague concept of Tianxia, translated as ‘all under the heaven'. In Ancient China, this meant the world was divinely bestowed upon the emperor, who as the ‘son of heaven' had ‘heaven's decree' and was at the epicentre of the world. The rest of the world was divided into tributaries and vassal states. The CCP is trying to create the same imagery, with the BRI expected to create vassal states all over the globe, and Jinping as the ‘legitimate sovereign in the world'. The world map would be just one of the casualties for such a vision to be fulfilled.
The next decade will decide how far Xi Jinping will go to fulfill this imagery.
(The writer is a senior journalist and Visiting Fellow at the United Services Institution of India. The views expressed are personal.)
