Column

Here we go again. The uneasy and artificial calm in Sino-Indian relations of the past few months has given way to tit-for-tat visa cancellations and testy exchanges that more truly represent the unresolved tensions between them.

So beguilingly calm were matters all this while that environment minister Jairam Ramesh even claimed, somewhat fancifully in May, that the ‘Chindian’ cooperation he forged at the Copenhagen climate change conference last year had fortified the two countries’ “strategic” relationship. It now appears that the thin ice on which that exaggerated claim rested has melted away in the heat of a cruel summer.

China’s brazen challenge to India’s sovereignty over J&K and the presence of Chinese troops in large swathes of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, ostensibly to secure Chinese commercial interests in the disputed territory, are more than a little disquieting.

Taken along with increasing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea, which faced a concerted pushback by countries in the region and even a US challenge, they appear to point to a China that’s signalling the rise of the Chinese Empire.

But in fact China’s recent ‘iron fist’ approach is as much a manifestation of a security paranoia as of the artless outreach of an empire that believes it’s time is at hand. Despite the heavy-handed crackdown on Tibetan and Uighur disaffection in recent years, China remains unsure about the firmness of its hold on Tibet and Xinjiang. Its needling of India, and its security cover for an imploding Pakistan — the global hotbed of jihadism, which spills over into Xinjiang — are motivated by this sense of insecurity.

That sense of perceived infirmity extends beyond just the security space in China: today conspiracy theories — about China being the ‘target’ of hostile forces — are being peddled with disturbing frequency. For instance, at least three such conspiracy theories are currently gaining traction. The first of these, articulated by financial journalist Li Delin, author of the best-selling book Goldman Sachs Conspiracy, claims that the Wall Street investment bank’s “ultimate goal” is to “hunt and kill China”.

The jingoistic and borderline anti-Semitic tone of the book, which has been well received, feeds the prevailing “they’re out to get us” mindset in China.

Similarly, a second book, Low-carbon Plot: The Life and Death War Between China and the West, advances the climate-change skeptics’ view that the developed countries’ campaign for a low-carbon economy globally is a “sinister attempt” to deny developing countries their right to development. And a third book,
Who is Auctioning China?, peddles the line that international auction houses are colluding with wealthy collectors in the West to exploit China’s treasures, and are creating an enabling environment for the smuggling of Chinese artefacts.

More bizarrely, in recent days sensational (and completely discredited) rumours began circulating that the governor of China’s central bank had defected overseas ostensibly after the bank lost nearly half a trillion dollars on its US Treasury investments. They were easily disproved, but they nevertheless served to feed the paranoid narrative — that “Western traders” were out to sink China’s investments.

Taken together these point to the prevalence of a societal ‘siege mentality’ that is at variance from outside-in perceptions of a confident,assertive China. For anyone who deals with China, it makes for a rather more disturbing narrative.