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Roving Periscope: Is it China’s End-Game in South Asia?

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Slaying the Dragon: The New India.

New Delhi: India is a dangerous place for alien civilizations that sought to impose their way of life on it. In fact, South Asia’s polytheistic culture has been the cremation ground for monotheistic or atheistic civilizations—they did come here for some time but returned wearing a suicidal belt.

China in the 20th century

China is no different.

In the 13th and 14th centuries, the Mongols, who had created the world’s largest empire across Europe and Asia, launched intermittent invasions (1221-1337) on India as well. They were a greater menace than the ruling Delhi Sultanate which, despite its own crises, managed to push back the Mongols even after the destruction of the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad (1258) and disintegration of the Second Muslim Empire across Asia, Africa, and Europe. In particular, Sultan Ghiyas ud-Din Balban, who ruled Delhi from 1266 to 1287, terrorized the Mongols with such a ferocity that they never looked back at India—until 1962. He got thousands of Mongols hanged on poles specially erected from Delhi to Lahore!

The Mughal Empire, which followed the Delhi Sultanate, died of its own decay and was replaced by the British in the late 18th century.  The British decay began in the late 19th century when their soaring ambitions pushed them into Tibet, Myanmar and finally China. Within five decades, the British Empire, plagued with two World Wars, came to an end.

Next is Russia. After nursing ambition for 300 years to find a year-long warm-water port in the Arabian Sea, Moscow descended in Afghanistan in 1980 from where it planned to descend further into Baluchistan—to Gwadar Port! The costs of keeping Kabul being prohibitive, the Soviet Union itself went broke and disintegrated in 1991, creating 15 nations, including a revivified Russia.

Gwadar Port salivated China as well. Trying to punch above its diminutive height, Beijing revived the ancient Silk Route across Asia, and a sea route to Africa and Europe, naming it as Border Road Initiative (BRI). It tried to enrol a number of countries into the $200 billion ultra-ambitious project. Soon, however, many potential clients—Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Africa—saw through the debt-trap Beijing had carefully laid for them, and distanced themselves.

India, of course, did not join it: how could it, when the most important component of BRI—the $60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)—passed through India’s Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), whose Gilgit-Baltistan area Islamabad had illegally ‘gifted’ to China. To the utter surprise of China, India suddenly changed the ground reality by scrapping the alleged ‘special status’ of Jammu and Kashmir and made Ladakh a Union Territory in November 2019.

Also read: https://www.revoi.in/roving-periscope-china-jittery-as-india-prepares-to-reclaim-pok-bleed-beijing/

Also read: https://www.revoi.in/roving-periscope-is-fragile-pakistan-on-chinas-acquisition-menu/

It was India’s check-mate. Beijing was panicked about the future of its CPEC after Union Home Minister Amit Shah announced to retrieve PoK. Not only this, India also completed a number of roads and bridges along the 3,844-km-long Line of Actual Control (LAC), making movement of Indian troops smooth.

This is what brought China to Ladakh in May 2020. Beijing is trying to stop India in Ladakh itself to prevent it from retrieving PoK. But China did not factor in that India can stop it near Arunachal Pradesh itself. In this suicidal game, China has not only jeopardised its own massive trade with India (Rs. 700,000 crore per annum) but also emerged as a global villain. Energy-hungry China is desperately trying to secure Gwadar Port for a smoother flow of crude from the Middle East to Beijing, without realizing the costs involved.

Also read: https://www.revoi.in/roving-periscope-xi-jinping-may-become-chinas-gorbachev/

Back home, the anti-Xi Jinping factions of the Communist Party of China (CPC) are baying for the Chinese President’s blood who tried to distract attention from his local failures to the Indian borders. Many zombies buried locally—Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, Australia—have suddenly woken up against the Dragon…

China’s Indian misadventure could prove extremely expensive the way the USSR’s Afghanistan foray was. Xi Jinping may go down in history as China’s very own Mikhail Gorbachev who liberated nations from the stranglehold of Communism!

With international pressure building up against China for its dubious role in the spread of COVID-19, which has claimed nearly half-a-million lives and infected many more globally, the buffeted country is emerging as the next candidate for balkanization, supported by nearly 150 countries led by the USA.

So what could a balkanized China look like?

Here it is:

China in the 21st century: The Seven Horses, Successors of the Dragon