 "Why China should fix its own house before commenting on Jaishankar")
Recently, Wang Daming, a Chinese so-called expert, wrote in The Global Times that “India’s diplomacy has a Jaishankar problem.”
After listing some positive signs in the relationship between China and India, in particular the high-level diplomatic dialogues and several bilateral meetings, for example the 30th and 31st meetings of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on China-India Border Affairs when New Delhi and Beijing tried to “further narrow differences and expand consensus … [and] reach a mutually acceptable solution at an early date,” the author writes: “However, against this backdrop, Jaishankar made some rather shocking remarks.”
Wang quotes from a speech of the Indian External Affairs Minister during the World Leaders Forum hosted by The Economic Times, where Jaishankar said: “There is a general China problem. We are not the only country in the world which is having a debate about China.” He further noted: “India has a China problem… a special China problem that is over and above the world’s general China problem.”
Wang asserts that Jaishankar’s remarks follow India’s internal logic: “China is a bad guy, [which] has created a ‘China problem’ for all countries, and India’s China problem is no exception. Consequently, India has adopted a series of anti-China policies … in recent years.”
Wang’s column on the ‘Jaishankar’s problem’ soon disappeared from the site of The Global Times (though the Chinese version remained).
One could, however, ask Wang: who started the confrontation in Ladakh in May 2020? Despite the euphoria of the ‘Wuhan Spirit’ and the ‘Chennai Connect’, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) marched into Ladakh; this came as a shock to the government in Delhi; the Indian Army had to scramble to stop the PLA onslaught in five different places. Three years earlier, China had already tried to change the status quo in the Batang-la and Doka-la areas in Southern Sikkim. Was it also Jaishankar’s problem?
Impact Shorts
More ShortsWang continues in The Global Times: “Jaishankar’s diplomatic wrangling has won him some fans. However, the diplomatic strategies and tactics he led were full of tricks—they had neither the moral sense of Jawaharlal Nehru’s diplomacy nor the ethic sense of Indira Gandhi’s diplomacy.”
Does it mean that Wang or his mentors in Beijing would like India to accept the changes in Ladakh as if nothing had happened?
Unabated development
Just a few days back, Open Source (OS) information mentioned the ‘consolidation’ of the Chinese positions in Ladakh, particularly in the north bank of the Spangur tso (lake) near the Panggong tso.
Post-2020 standoff, the quick development of the infrastructure close to the Line of Action Control (LAC) in Tibet has been going on unabated.
A large army camp with double-story buildings and other structures, including a helipad strip, has now come up.
Does The Global Times mean that all this should be ignored and ‘normalisation’ should take place?
This aggressive attitude towards India and its foreign minister may hide more serious issues within China. We shall look at a few of them.
Has China demoted its defence ministry?
Shanshan Mei and Dennis J Blasko point to another issue in Defence One, a site providing military analysis: China does not have a functional defence minister.
The authors explain: “Among the most significant personnel changes of the Chinese Communist Party’s recent Third Plenum meeting are two that didn’t happen: Adm Dong Jun, the country’s defence minister, was neither added to the Central Military Commission (CMC) nor appointed a State Councillor. This is an apparent demotion for the defence ministry and could complicate the military-to-military relationship between China and the United States.”
The head of the Ministry of National Defence is always a member of the CMC, giving him direct access to Xi Jinping, the CMC chairman. The defence minister is also a State Councillor, allowing him to regularly meet the Chinese premier. Adm Dong does not have these privileges.
Adm Dong became minister in December 2022, two months after Gen Li Shangfu, the former defence minister, was removed from office: “Leaving Dong off the powerful CMC puts a question mark on the admiral’s access to Xi. … Further, Xi has removed Dong’s two immediate predecessors: Li and Gen Wei Fenghe. That makes Dong’s status appear to be an intentional effort to downgrade the defence minister’s role in the party-state bureaucracy,” conclude the authors.
Is PLA ready?
In the meantime, the war on corruption in the military, which has brought down more than a hundred generals, is continuing.
According to The South China Morning Post, Beijing has declared “an overwhelming victory in the fight against graft, while PLA generals have praised Xi’s command over the campaign as having saved the military at a critical time. But there are many cases still unresolved—many of which involve military officers who were promoted when Xi was at the helm.”
The Hong Kong newspaper clarified: “Analysts say the campaign is far from over, pointing to factors such as the rampant corruption in the military before Xi took over, the vast amount of money being spent on modernising weapons, and the insular culture of the PLA as the armed wing of the party.”
With no effective defence minister and many generals still under threat to be sacked, China is clearly not ready.
Jake Sullivan’s visit to China
The US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan recently paid a three-day visit to Beijing. He first met Wang Yi, the Chinese Foreign Minister, and then President Xi Jinping on August 29. The White House said: “The meeting was part of ongoing efforts to maintain channels of communication and responsibly manage the relationship between the United States and the People’s Republic of China”. Later, Sullivan met General Zhang Youxia, CMC vice chairman; he did not meet Adm Dong.
According to Aljazeera, Sullivan “has held wide-ranging talks with a top Chinese military official in Beijing, wrapping up a three-day trip aimed at strengthening communication between the world powers on a range of issues”.
A White House statement said that the NSA raised issues such as “stability in the Taiwan Strait, US commitment to freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, China’s support for Russia’s defence industrial base, and ongoing efforts to reach a ceasefire deal in the Gaza Strip.”
Gen Zhang spoke of Taiwan as the ‘red line’.
According to a recent Taiwanese estimate, in 2023, China spent about US $15 billion, or 7 percent of its defence budget or nearly 80 per cent of Taiwan’s total defence budget, on military drills in the Western Pacific. This is huge.
The Global Times column attacking India’s External Affairs Minister is probably a way for China to divert India’s attention.
During his meeting with Sullivan, Zhang Youxia is said to have stressed that China must resolutely implement “the strategy of building the army politically in the new era, carry forward the spirit of thorough self-revolution, continue to deepen political training, strive to create a new situation of building the army politically.”
Self revolution
What is this self-revolution Gen Zhang is speaking about?
It seems to be a return to the darkest days of Maoism.
The China Media Project, monitoring the Chinese press, explains: “[It] refers to a process by which the Chinese Communist Party under Xi Jinping proposes to remain ‘pure’ by rooting out corrupt and ineffectual cadres from their own ranks… Posited as Xi Jinping’s answer to the historical problem of dynastic rise and fall, it promises to confer the Party with an indefinite mandate to rule or continued political legitimacy—all without having to stand up to external supervision or seek popular support through competitive elections.”
Xi first used the slogan in 2015 in a speech to the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms, asking the members to “dare to self-revolutionise”.
A year later, in a speech for the 95th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party’s founding, Xi elaborated on “the goal and tasks of the Party’s self-revolution, and discussed the requirements for realising self-purification, self-innovation, and self-improvement. If the Party is as pure, selfless, and capable of self-correction …it needs to answer to no one.”
China seems to be back in Mao’s days.
Wang Junwei, a scholar at the CCP’s Institute of Party History and Literature, believes that it is the only way to “save the People’s Republic from the same fate that befell the Qing, the Ming, and every other dynasty before them. It is a difficult problem that has not been solved by China’s feudal dynasties for thousands of years,” adding that Xi’s political thinking has been forged in the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
That is why the Ladakh confrontation is a minor issue compared to Xi’s other headaches; the column of an ‘expert’ may temporarily (or not) help Beijing to tackle India. But it remains that China has many unsolvable problems.
The writer is Distinguished Fellow, Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence (Delhi). Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
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