The re-election of Xi Jinping for a third term to the multiple positions he holds in the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the government has put at rest all Western hopes and speculation about an impending crisis to his leadership. Independent of the persona, continuity of the kind implies that there won’t be disruptions and disturbances to Xi’s prevailing policy, both nearer home and overseas.
By directing partymen to accept Xi’s ‘core’ leadership, the CPC has sought to re-introduce the kind of personal loyalty that only Mao Zedong, the ‘Father of Communist China’, had commanded in his time. What Mao had achieved with his leading the ‘Long March’ that created Communist China, Xi has now done it with what could tantamount to a sleet of hand.
It’s true that his predecessor Hu Jintao was due for retirement, given his age and health condition. But the way he was guided out of the head table, seated next to Xi, to the glare of the global media, seemed to be deliberate, to send out a stronger message than might have been expected in global capitals, especially Washington and New Delhi. With this one instance, Xi has reaffirmed his clout and position in the CPC hierarchy.
Between the two, the US is the lone superpower, a status which China under Xi wants to acquire for itself, and is also the leader of the ‘free world’. Washington recently demonstrated its political will to thwart Xi China’s recent initiatives to annexe Taiwan. The US also sent out its naval vessels to the Taiwanese waters, to tell China that it could not have its way, if attempted. To India, Xi has sent out a clear and strong message across the long, shared land border.
Even during the course of the five-day conference that is held once in five years, Western media reported how anti-Xi banners had appeared in capital Beijing, though they too did not dare talking about an open rebellion that would have been difficult for him to put down. In its place, they have now painted the forced exit of Hu Jintao, and the outgoing Premier Li Keqiang, whom Hu patted before being escorted out, as moderates, whom Xi Jingping has replaced with his loyalists.
Explanations apart, the simple fact is that Xi has acquired more powers than already. Rather, these powers were already with him, but the unanimous clearance for an unprecedented third five-year term means that his hold on the party, government and military machinery has not waned. Xi Jinping today is the master of all that he surveys in China and all that he surveys for China.
Keeping Galwan in glare
On India, Xi has continued to keep Galwan in his glare. At the end of the CPC Congress, he elevated three generals who headed the Western Theatre Command (WTC) along the Indian border, in the past years. One of them, Gen He Weidong, has been given a ‘double promotion’ and made one of the two vice-chairmen of the Central Military Commission (CMC) without being a member, earlier.
Military adversity with India in June 2020 was in focus when PLA commander Qi Fabao’s verbal exchange with the Indian troops was in the video footage ahead of the Congress’ inaugural. He was also among the 2,296 delegates chosen for the Congress, and the local media (was made to) attest to his presence. Earlier, in February, Qi Fabao was among the 1,200 athletes who were torch-bearers at the Beijing Winter Olympics. Earlier, the military had honoured him after he had suffered a head injury in Galwan.
The question is not if Xi in his third term would choose India or Taiwan as the immediate target for Chinese military aggression. Indications are that India may have been short-listed already as the CPC conference did not have any visual display of the kind from the Taiwan front. However, both Xi and the conference papers and resolutions did extensively talk about Taiwan.
Negotiable, non-negotiable
For all this however, Xi in the past years, especially in his second term, had sent out irritants, to India and Taiwan, though with a difference: With India, the border disputes seem to be negotiable, after all. With Taiwan, China’s re-merger demand is non-negotiable.
Though there were signs of thawing of the post-Galwan chill in bilateral relations in the days and weeks ahead of the CPC conference, it remains to be seen how Beijing is going to move forward — or backward — in the coming weeks and months. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar was cautious while reacting to a softening of the Chinese position on the ground, and mutual withdrawal of troops to original positions.
The question also remains that China cannot open two fronts at the same time, and hope to win both even politically, if not militarily. Xi understands that the whole world is against it, already. The UNSC and UNGA resolutions on the Ukraine War would have shown him that if it came to issues of Chinese aggression viz India or Taiwan, the world would react the same way as it has done in the case of Russia for the Ukraine War.
‘Free world’ more united
Maybe, the biennial shake-up of the UNSC, where India would be demitting its place as an elected member by the year-end, may or may not change the way it would vote in the New Year. It is more than likely that China’s own veto vote, as in the case of Russia viz Ukraine War, alone could save the day. Having abstained from Ukraine votes in the UNSC, without voting in Russia’s favour, China too cannot expect the other to vote in its favour in the UNSC and the UNGA.
Thus, when it comes to dealing with the two communist nations, namely, China and Russia, the ‘free world’ is more united against the two than the other way round. This could also mean that the possibility of China and Russia forming an alliance/front against the global West, in political, economic and military terms cannot be taken for granted. So would possibility of nations like Iran, Afghanistan and Myanmar — all in India’s neighbourhood — signing in for an anti-West combine.
At least China, thus far, has been doing its numbers, possibly in terms of losing out Western business in the coming months and years, more than already in the post-Covid scenario. It remains to be seen if there would be a change of Chinese heart at the UN, now that the US has come up with sanctions on China, too, barring American citizens from working in semiconductor units in that country.
Wooing Pakistan
In every equation in which India is involved, Pakistan cannot be far away. In recent years, China has sort of ignored Pakistan and has reacted not as cheerfully as before when Islamabad approached it for assistance and credit-rescheduling in the face of a mounting economic crisis. This was more so after Xi China’s prestigious BRI was said to be among the reasons for the downturn in Pakistan’s economy.
On the political front, though, China has continued to back Pakistan at UN fora especially on vetoing India-initiated moves to black-list terror leaders based in Pakistan. Independent of backing Indian moves on this score, the US-led West seems to be looking at the larger picture of wooing Pakistan away from China, in recent weeks.
At a time when India was hosting the UN Counter-terrorism conference in the country, with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ participation, Pakistan’s name was removed from the Paris-based FATF’s ‘grey list’ on terror-funding. If this was to facilitate IMF funding for Pakistan at a critical juncture, the US went a step further to irritate India when it announced a $450-m redux of Pakistan’s F-16 fighter-fleet, the American envoy visited PoK and the US defence secretary Lloyd Austin received Pakistan army chief, Gen Omar Javed Bajwa, at the Pentagon, a week after a ‘honour curtain’ for Jaishankar.
Germany, which also joined in, with Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock attesting to visiting Pakistan counterpart Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s views on the ‘Kashmir issue’, since seems to have made amends. The German envoy to India, Philipp Ackermann, has since said that the UN had a limited role in resolving the Kashmir issue, and bilateral talks were the way forward. The US has not come up with any such clarification, indicating that Washington is still upset with India’s Russia vote, or abstention, at the UN, and New Delhi continuing to import Russian oil, despite the unilateral western sanctions against Moscow, in the face of the Ukraine War.
What China alone can do
It is here that the Chinese conduct in the coming years at competitive wooing of Pakistan needs to be watched. There is one thing that China can do for Pakistan vis-?-vis India, which the US or the rest of the West cannot and will not do. China can irritate India militarily along the border, playing the Pakistani game for Pakistan, after notifying Islamabad, as the world needs to see the latter as a ‘prodigal son’ if not a ‘good boy’ all along, for funding from the IMF-World Bank Inc, and also third nations.
In the same way, Chinese intelligence agencies can take over anti-India terror funding and handling, even if through third parties, from the Pakistani ISI, which has seen it as a proprietorial initiative. Indian agencies have often held that China was behind the large-scale distribution of counterfeit Indian currency inside the country.
This again may find a revival, or redoubled effort, if China decides to defend its hold over Pakistan against the US. This, and even without the Pakistan angle, China may also re-strategise its priorities for other Indian neighbours, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Myanmar.
These are all the messages for India at the end of the CPC conference as Xi seemed to have made the 2020 aggression against India a personal affair going beyond his nation making it a geo-political and geo-strategic priority alongside Taiwan. The way he shifted from India to Taiwan almost overnight also implies that he was only seeking to irritate both nations and their global backers, without actually wanting to go in for an all-out war against either!
The writer is a Chennai-based policy analyst and commentator. Views expressed are personal.
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