On June 15, 2020, a no-holds-barred brawl reminiscent of Daniel Day Lewis in the Gangs of New York took place in the Galwan Valley between Indian and Chinese troops armed with batons wrapped in barbed wire. It was a well-planned ambush by Chinese soldiers who vastly outnumbered their Indian counterparts.
Twenty Indian soldiers including a colonel were killed in the hand-to-hand combat. Yet, one cannot fail to note the irony in the scrupulous care that both sides took, even at the height of their bloodlust, to keep guns lowered to avoid that massacre which a burst of automatic fire would have inevitably provoked.
This was the culmination of a series of skirmishes from the beginning of May between the rival powers along the various promontories (or “fingers”) of the picturesque Pangong Tso Lake, situated 13,900 feet above sea level in Ladakh, along the Sikkim-Tibet border and based, primarily, on the Chinese objections to increased Indian road-building in the Galwan Valley and their military buildup in response within stretches of border that India recognizes as sovereign.
Unprecedented talks
Significantly, this violent option was resorted to by the Chinese even after a series of unprecedented military commander-level talks held for the purpose of diffusing tension in the picturesque valley. Also, the fatalities, which now according to local bloggers under the radar in China include about 40 members of the PLA, were in themselves unprecedented and, actually, unprovoked in the backdrop of the continuing dialogue.
Because, it must be recalled that the last shots fired with intent to kill took the lives of four Indian soldiers when a patrol of the Assam Rifles was ambushed at Tulung La in Arunachal Pradesh in 1975. A slurry of treaties between the countries for managing relations at the line of actual control, from the 1993 agreement of maintenance of peace and tranquility along the LAC to the 2013 border defense cooperation agreement, had till date ensured that a firearm would not be raised with lethal intent.
Since the bloody fracas, 14 rounds of Corps Commander-level talks have been held, the latest to be concluded on January 12th at the Chushul-Moldo border along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh. The avowed intention of the communication and dialogue is the restoration of peace and tranquility along the LAC in the Western Sector, as well as improvement in bilateral ties. Lofty objectives but, unfortunately, suspect in the backdrop of modern China’s world-embracing program.
A jagged relationship
The above represents a significant incident in a jagged relationship, but remains merely illustrative of the low-level conflict that simmers and froths continuously at the un-reconciled border between two large polities who even after 70 years are reluctant to arrive at a realistic assessment of their proportional importance in the Comity of Nations. What is of concern is that the cumulative experience of the past decades has, rather than serve as critical mass for the study of a possible rapprochement, been converted to the dry powder and tinder for the igniting of further conflict.
And for a better understanding of China’s modern forward policy and creeping appropriation of territory through the technique of “salami slicing,” in the quaint expression of an American lawmaker, we need to look at the persona and phenomenon of Xi Jinping.
Son of Xi Zhongxun, veteran Chinese Communist leader and senior party apparatchik, perhaps it was this fortunate accident of birth that jumpstarted Xi Jinping’s subsequent meteoric rise to power. However, there is little doubt that Xi shaped his destiny. Sent to the countryside as a teenager to do penance for his father’s sins in the terrible wake of the Cultural Revolution, the young man persevered, never losing faith in the new religion and a paranoid Chairman fighting for survival regardless of the colossal cost to the citizens and the nation’s foundational structures.
Applying for membership of the Chinese Communist Party a number of times between 1973 and 1974, his efforts were rewarded on his tenth attempt. Xi’s enemies would do well to understand and appreciate the young man’s ability to sustain, survive and, crucially, master the art and mechanics of politics. In the space of 30 short years, Xi built the staircase brick by brick which he ascended to attain the rarefied reaches of high politics. On being elected to the nine-man Politburo Standing Committee of the CCP at the 17th Party Congress in October 2007, that he was being primed for supreme leadership was now a foregone conclusion.
On November 15, 2012, Xi was elected to the posts of general secretary of the Communist Party and chairman of the CCP Central Military Commission by the 18th Central Committee of the CCP. On March 14, 2013, he was elected president of the People’s Republic of China. Still a relatively young man, this was the first paramount leader to be born after the founding of the People’s Republic. On March 17, 2018, the National People’s Congress reappointed Xi as president, significantly, without a limit on term. The consolidation of power and responsibility in one individual, something that perhaps only Chairman Mao had enjoyed, was unprecedented and absolute.
Xi Jinping is contemplative and thoughtful, a leader who has optimized and combined politics with work to perfection. He is his own man, independent of the party ideology which validated and sanctified his rise to total power, and runs government and law-making through strategic and core groups of experienced individuals.
He is devoid of socialist jargon and remains constantly impatient for results. If the vast country of his birth and destiny has taught him anything, it is that one must think and act not on a large but, rather, on a gargantuan scale.
We are today on the receiving end of the grand global design of the neo-Confucian imperialists. In the Middle Kingdom’s quest for world domination, we are compelled to at least a measure of introspection.
Do we as inhabitants of the region known as South Asia really matter in the grand scheme of the Han people? Do we even qualify as a stepping stone or are we just an irritating thorn to be plucked when the time is right? What is the role and measure of the different constituents of the subcontinent in the eyes of power in Beijing, from a hapless Pakistan to proud Nepal and Bhutan, to India which straddles the mass of the subcontinent, and to the rapidly emerging powerhouse as represented by vibrant Bangladesh?
What does Chinese hegemony portend for us? What are the elements of world opinion, especially in the sensitive realm of human rights that the dragon must sullenly and unavoidably confront and take in its stride on the road to world conquest? President Xi’s resilience underpins all his actions, but does China similarly possess the collective wherewithal for sustained success?
Reports come in of fighter planes of the PLA Air Force screaming impudently through Taiwanese airspace. Mainland China is spoiling for a fight, but where and when is the question. Dear reader, will the blanket of conflict spread to engulf other areas of a suddenly helpless world? Let us examine the options that dangle tantalizingly before the seething dragon.
Sumit Basu is a freelance contributor based in India.
