With China in overdrive, errors could follow

If a direct confrontation with the US is not desirable due to uncertain outcomes, the one way China perceives that it can indirectly dent US confidence is by targeting its allies.
Illustration: Sourav Roy
Illustration: Sourav Roy

Expansionist nations are usually calculative and deliberately lay out their milestones towards greater status. China is no different. It has ‘empire’ written over every move it makes and is obsessed with power. It is unclear today whether a leader such as Deng Xiaoping, considered the father of modern China, had similar ambitions as this. President Xi Jinping looks upon his nation as destined not just to lead but dominate the world. In this context, the recent visit of Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan has created a level of frustration for China rarely seen before, and its actions reflect both irrationality and dangerous brinkmanship. It is perceiving major threats to its rise to the ambitiously imagined status as the long march to 2049 in strategic terms has just about begun. Confrontation and conflict en route are inevitable.

China, in the post-pandemic phase, has been riding high geopolitically. It’s only the pandemic which is refusing to go away. The economy in 2020 had grown 2.2% and expanded 8.8% in 2021. In 2022, the figures are way below, even as low as 1% growth in a quarter. International economies across the world have not been doing well either. All this should have been a reason to withhold geopolitical differences and work towards stabilisation of the world economy. However, China has considered the ongoing conflicts as an opportunity to expand its influence. It supports Russia in the Russo-Ukraine war and is seeking means to expand its influence into Afghanistan. It has, however, been rattled by the renewed US strategy in the Indo-Pacific, realising that the American focus remains unwavering despite setbacks in Europe. China strongly believes in the theory of indirect approach. If a direct confrontation with the US is not desirable due to uncertain outcomes, the one way it perceives that it can indirectly dent US confidence is by targeting US allies and partners.

The Wolf Warrior strategy that China adopted in recent years is all about indirect messaging, whether it is through Australia, Vietnam or Japan. The intent is to employ coercive actions followed by doses of strategic communication to threaten, convey the inability of the target nation to respond and dent that nation’s self-confidence. This is exactly what was employed against India in April 2020 and onwards because India’s rising strategic confidence was giving it a status that could be perceived as potentially competitive; Doklam seemed to have unnerved Xi Jinping. The strategy went horribly wrong, with the Galwan incident and the Kailash Range riposte(or at least something close to a riposte), putting the PLA and China internationally on the backfoot.

Such bravado with calibration has since been its watchword but the execution of calibration has never been the PLA’s strength, inevitably placing it on a warpath that it is clearly not yet prepared for.

In this context, we need to see Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. First is the US perspective. What got into Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi to undertake a mission laden with risk seems to be their perception of a political make or break. Only something spectacular could retrieve the abysmally low presidential ratings, which started to plummet drastically after the retreat from Afghanistan. The Congressional elections due in Dec 2022 have been a promising disaster for the Democrats. In an earlier intervention in a discussion on television, I termed the Pelosi visit as ‘bold but foolish’. I have not changed that perception despite the seeming success in American terms.

For the Chinese, it was something not acceptable just when Hong Kong seemed to have cooled under the new laws, and the strength of Russia-China relations had exponentially increased. It did not expect the US to up the ante to the extent that the situation played out. It made every effort to project that a Pelosi visit meant war, and the demonstrations it executed were serious enough for anyone to believe that an accident could occur anytime.

The Americans appeared to have wargamed this well, giving China the benefit of high rhetoric and communication strategy. Beyond that, the American appreciation was correct; the PLA would not risk conflict because winnability was not a guarantee. To fight militarily at this stage, China can ill afford a setback; that would take it back many years and perhaps add to the ignominy of the defeat to the Vietnamese Army in 1979. Milestones 2035 and 2049, set for themselves, cannot afford China to commence with a military failure or even a perceived lack of success in any venture.

The Pelosi visit has been a visible embarrassment that has hurt Chinese pride, which is exactly why the near future may be a risky period for the world. Until the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) meets in the second half of Nov 2022, the PLA is likely to pull back from its aggressive stance or go even more ballistic; that is the unpredictability factor at work. In 2017, the PLA became less aggressive at Doklam before the 19th Congress of the CPC; the BRICS summit at Wuhan had also ensured that border tensions were placed on the back burner.

It’s only contextual that Singapore’s leading daily, The Strait Times, carries a long article by Zhou Bo, a retired PLA Colonel and a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University. The article specifically targets India and its policy towards its neighbours in the Indian Ocean region. It alleges that India’s perception of ‘Akhand Bharat’ gives it a misperception that the Indian Ocean is India’s ocean and that its position as the perceived net security provider gives it an idea that the neighbours can do business with none other.

It is obviously about Yuan Wang 5, the spy vessel masquerading as a research vessel that recently docked at Hambantota. Zhou Bo asks a relevant question—“It’s a matter of time before a Chinese aircraft carrier strike group shows up in the Indian Ocean; how will India react then?”

An aggressive China with a poorly calibrated strategy will likely be the spinoff from the Pelosi visit to Taiwan. Following China’s strategy of indirectly targeting the US, the unpredictability factor will be higher than ever, with India a likely target. Along the LAC and the Indian Ocean, heightened security with equal focus on fast-speed modernisation and cooperative security mechanisms with like-minded states continues to remain India’s best bet.

Former Commander, Srinagar-based 15 Corps. Now Chancellor, Central University

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