rudraprasanna posted: " 24 December 2021 Reuters Image of Chinese health officials outside a university in Xian, Shaanxi province where a lock down has been imposed ahead of holidays and Winter Olympics. China has had a very exciting year. On the face of it, she finally m"
Reuters Image of Chinese health officials outside a university in Xian, Shaanxi province where a lock down has been imposed ahead of holidays and Winter Olympics.
China has had a very exciting year. On the face of it, she finally managed all the markers for her ascendency to the Summit of Global Affairs, where she is now Equal with the reigning power, USA.
Consider these events- 1 Anchorage Summit at Alaska 2. Exchange of 'prisoners' over the Huawei row, 3. The boycott of Winter Olympics hosted by China this coming February 4. Trade sanctions against Australia, Taiwan and counter measures against EU, USA for their actions on Uighur 5. The Lithuanian challenge. These are all indications of how China has officially defined her Year of the Ox so far. This is how President Xi has sought to catapult himself to the fore of international arena, as he tries to maximise the gains from a world still reeling under the waves of Covid19 and one still in transition from Trump Presidency which is now compounded by the departure of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. That President Xi was more than prepared for all this is clear from how he approached it, still his absence on the stage at G20, his absence from the international stage, preferring to do only through Video all his participation at ASEAN, BRICS and other International conferences, was pronounced. The series of measures that the Biden Administration took this year were unmistakably China specific, which must be the heaviest left handed compliment to the leadership of President Xi, even going so far as to announce an AUKUS pact, which potentially could unravel the trans Atlantic coalition that has stood the test of WW2, Cold War and Post Cold War era till now.
The question does surface about if President Xi and China have bitten off more than they could chew, especially in his personal quest for overlordship in Chinese Communist Pantheon with the CCP this year declaring that China is undergoing "tremendous transformation from standing up and growing prosperous to becoming strong". Through repeated statements bristling aggression with revisionism as the theme, President Xi has tried to talk up his own stature, however as events panned out, he had to water down his tone and his rhetoric, by first stating that Taiwan reunification was going to be done peacefully, then over SCS claims in the special ASEAN China Summit to mark 3 decades of their partnership. His diplomatic corps has more or less given up their Wolf Warrior Diplomacy, which was employed vociferously against Australia. Of course, in India the tone is decisively more certain than in the West. However the most prescient was from Japan, that this was a decisively diminishing return effort from the Chinese and it has a whole lot of domestic factors that were at play. My own understanding is that China has no principled approach, rather it will use tools or language that suits its requirement. A classic example is how China woos the Sri Lankan Tamil community and the wider Tamil ethnic diaspora in ASEAN, when Sri Lanka itself is suffering debts on account of Chinese investments in its ports and other infrastructure spends as part of BRI/OBOR. There is not just the domestic Sri Lankan angle here, there is signalling to India too, as North Eastern Lankan Tamil majority provinces have been long seen as areas of Indian influence due to ethnic linkages across the Palk Straits. The Ambassador's gift of Covid Gear to Sri Lankan Tamil fisherfolk during the visit can be contrasted with the arrests of Indian fisherfolk by Sri Lankan Navy around the same time. This is a classic case of how the Chinese need to do precious little to muddy waters, an indication of their current position in India's backyard.
On domestic side, President Xi has managed to consolidate by passage of new border law, by enforcement of the security laws in Hong Kong and conduct of elections for 'patriots' which ended with one of the lowest polling percentages ever for the island territory in its electoral history. The removal of the monument to commemorate the Tianenman Square Massacre overnight also indicated a certain urge to accomplish this transition of HK from being a former British territory to an entirely CCP China territory by a particular time line. The finesse is missing, there is more anxiety at play here. Why? Then we see how the campaign against tycoons, film stars, matinee idols and intellectuals all under the garb of campaign against corruption has gone. Few doubt outside China if her iconic Jack Ma was tamed for any actual economic discrepancies but for simply the reason to show him his place! Again, these happenings while having an economic down side approximately estimated at nearly 1.5 trillion $! Not just this, but consider how tech sector in China suffered in India after the Galwan Valley Clash. Now many Indian start ups are owned by 'Tata' and other Indian companies, after their Chinese financial exposure was reduced, which included companies like Alibaba & Tencent. While Chinese PLA continue with their salami slicing across the Himalayan borders along India, Bhutan and Nepal, the real estate gains it may attain will not compensate the loss of equity and economic share of a developing country and key market like India. Again the law of Diminishing Returns will start showing its face in 2022 onwards both with India and Taiwan, as the initial surprise and overwhelming military hand that appeared to have caught both countries in 2020 has led to their responding in a way and manner that now China has to keep a military force level and engagement pattern going if it simply wanted to avoid a loss of face even!
So 2022 may be China's Year of the Tiger and she may have wanted to ensure that President Xi is the lone tiger on the CCP party hill, and CCP China as the lone tiger in the lebensraum of Asia Pacific, however, 2021 is not panning out the way China intended. While she got recognised as a global challenger by USA, her diplomatic manoeuvring and debt based economic inroads has left her with fewer friends and fewer allies.
While it is too early to declare the winner of US versus China global joust, this much can be said clearly that 2022 will not be the Year of the 'Uncontested' Tiger, definitely not the crowning glory President Xi hoped for when he transitions from his current term into an extended one!
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