This was around September 2000, at the Chinese embassy in Chanakyapuri in Delhi. An informal interaction with the envoy for some of us in the media corps, followed by lunch—a rather well laid-out table. No, don’t get ideas, we were not in any anti-national activity. India’s relations with China were opening up under Prime Minister A B Vajpayee, the man whose initiative as foreign minister back in the ’70s had brought the first post-’62 thaw. So South Block wasn’t exactly frowning on this sort of thing. There was no Twitter to share the experience or get trolled either.
As I gorged on the glass noodles—frankly, that was the first time I was tasting real Chinese cuisine, not even encountered in the most ‘authentic’ Chinese restaurants—one of the younger members of Beijing’s diplomatic corps struck up a conversation with me. After the usual banter on where to get the best red snapper in town—yes, the humdrum INA Market!—the young diplomat tentatively asked me: “Is it true that, in India, people eat grass and leaves?!” (Er…as if the Chinese don’t eat bok choy!) We do make wonderful things with leafy vegetables, I said, and if one ventures east one can even get fish cooked with greens.
Yes, we do enjoy our greens and thank god we can make entire meals with them! Don’t get me wrong, I’m not on some surrogate campaign for vegetarianism here. (On this count at least, trust a Bengali.) Almost impossible varieties coexist in India, even if not always peacefully. Food sensitivities form a separate, morbid politics. In our younger days, we did believe the Chinese ate everything, including creepy crawlies. So what if they do? Those informal community stereotypes came back in full force after the present pandemic was alleged to have directly owed to their allegedly batty diet preferences. Not a lot of us have grown out of our childhood mental categories … or grown much fascination for facts.
But it’s not just the rest of us who are acting batty. ‘Corona’ literally means ‘crown’ in Latin, and a novel coronavirus seems to have struck China metaphorically too! It’s getting visions—and not of the visionary sort. Instead of being apologetic for messing up everything for the human race—from trade to normal life to basic livelihood—they are acting defiant and aggressive, getting into a brawl with just about everybody in the immediate and somewhat distant neighbourhood. While the world goes behind a mask to save itself from a breathless extinction, the pandemic seems to have unmasked a newer, mutant variant of Beijing’s imperial ambitions. It wants to mark territory on the high spurs of the Himalayas or out on the deep blue waters.
Sinking a Vietnamese fishing vessel, trawling for oil in the exclusive Malaysian economic zone, conducting sea trials by the PLA Navy and, to top it all, creating two administrative districts in the disputed South China Sea. And even as those fatal fistcuffs were being exchanged up in Ladakh, Senkaku saw some tinderbox action too. Since 1972, those islands have been administered by Japan—which has a mutual defence treaty with the US, not revoked by Trump yet!—but China lays a hereditary claim over it. Not to mention the plight of Hong Kong. Or indeed, the strange heat building up over Taiwan…
What’s bitten China really? Why does it want to spread itself so thin, at a moment when it could use alliance-making? Exacerbating old fights, reopening wounds, getting isolated in the process? Seeing a pandemic-struck world in a confused disarray, with no clear order in sight, is Beijing playing for glory? Or maybe, inspired by new friend Vladimir Putin’s Tsarist behaviour, does Xi Jinping too think this is the time to become the Next Last Emperor of the Qing dynasty? The point is, India isn’t brimming with economic (or democratic) robustness at this point, but the Chinese economy isn’t exactly in the pink of health either. Maybe its maritime adventurism is linked to anxiety over control of resources and access to them. That still leaves its Himalayan adventure unexplained. Experts like Salvatore Babones feel China’s dominance strategy based around the grand Belt and Road Initiative, which includes the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, is turning out to be a ‘white elephant’.
The all-weather Karakoram Highway can now take Shenzhen to Gwadar in the blink of an eye—but where’s the old galloping GDP to put goods on that gleaming highway? (Why then this nervousness over Indian infrastructure reaching near Karakoram?) The BRI lies there, suffering from the same attrition as those stunning rail lines that can bring goodies from Antwerp warehouses to Wuhan and Beijing. Wait, don’t forget Kathmandu. Chinese envoy Hou Yanqi is currently holding closed-door meetings with Nepalese politicians to save K P Sharma Oli’s government. (She hasn’t managed to net Prachanda yet. But who knows.) There’s at least rationally discernible geopolitics there.
No remote economic or strategic logic can explain why Beijing would want to lay claim on the 650 sq km Sakteng wildlife sanctuary in Bhutan, a swathe that has no common border with China and abuts Arunachal Pradesh. Unless Beijing thinks Arunachal is already in its pocket! This piece of astonishment was sprung by Beijing at the Global Environment Facility Council. All this Chinese hyperactivity, markedly high on chilli sauce for the six months, has left everyone on tenterhooks—not just India. That New Delhi has allowed an easier playfield for Beijing’s unadulterated ambitions by managing to unfriend most of its own immediate neighbourhood is of course logical. We are the world’s largest democracy. We are always busy fighting and winning elections. Pass the noodles, will you?
Santwana Bhattacharya
Resident Editor, Karnataka, The New Indian Express
(santwana@newindianexpress.com)