Armed with pretentious diplomacy China hopeful of a successful G-20 Summit

21^st century is termed as Asiatic century. Marking the resurgence of the Asian continent, Tiger economies of the South East Asia gave a head start to the economic aspirations. Emerging as burgeoning commodity markets with unsatiated appetite, Asian countries registered phenomenal growth and attracted investments from developed nations. Asiatic giants India and China because of its sheer size, huge demographic dividend and consistent growth rates began to make a mark on the global economic arena. Dynamics of these emerging countries began to evolve from extending cooperation and support to each other’s voices at various multilateral forums to strengthen the voice of developing countries to bolstering trade and economic ties. Over a period of time, these neighbors and aspiring regional powers began to reshape the regional geopolitics too. Despite disagreements over unresolved territorial border disputes, both countries buried the hatchet and revved business links. The three decade long two digit growth rates reinvigorated the “Chinese dreams”. This long cherished dream received a new lease for life under the President Xi Jinping who unlike his predecessors steered nation to unabashedly pursue hegemonic aspirations aggressively. China always secretly harbored sinister plans of extending its influence in the region, the sizeable economic clout built by years of enviable economic progress added much heft to its ambitious goal. Embarking on the abrasive nationalism mode, China began perpetuating contorted interpretations of historical legacies to serve its interests.

It unleashed a series of territorial claims and began pursuing them intently. To validate its untenable assertions, Beijing began fabricating the interpretations of history China. Its claims over 80% of the territorial aspects of the South China Sea typically falls into this category of calumny. To consolidate its claims and reap economic and military gains, China indulged in frenetic land reclamation of various features like atoll, reefs, barren islets, cays and shoals in SCS. Besides, to buttress its claims, China established a think-tank, Institute of China-American Studies, Arlington Virgina, a supposed outpost of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, Hainan and added academic gloss to its assertions. Philippines having suffered the excesses of Beijing with regards to its claims over the Spartly Islands launched an arbitration case against China. China’s ambitions suffered a jolt when Hague International Court in its verdict on July 12^th quashed the claims of the nine-dashed line based on an old map dated back to 1940.  Defying the verdict, China lashed back terming the panel’s findings to be motivated. Consequently, it opened a Pandora box by contesting the claims of its neighbors- Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia.

Miffed by debacle suffered through Hague arbitral panel verdict, China has upped its ante in the region. Just three days after verdict, China’s premier Li Keqiang issued warning to Japan to brace for similar kind of conflict in the East China Sea. In the first week of August, around 200-300 Chinese fishing vessels entered the disputed waters of the Senkaku Islands. China challenged the Japanese sovereignty over the eight uninhabited group of islets, Senkaku Islands referred as Diaoyu Islands by China after 1970’s when survey reports suggested probable presence of oil reserves. Since then China intensified its claims over the islands and established East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone (AIDZ) in 2013. As a result the standoff between China and Japan intensified and the recent aggressive disposition of Beijing has further deteriorated the situation in the region.

Obsessed with expansive geographical spread, in 2006 China officially resurrected its claims over entire Arunachal Pradesh terming it as Zangnan or the South Tibet and began issuing stapled visas to Indians resident of Arunachal Pradesh. China stepped up military pressure following India-US unveiled strategic partnership of 2005. Ever since there has been consistent rise in number of incursions by Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) of China in four sectors- along the LAC, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh and Uttaranchal. Since independence Aksai-Chin remained as a bone of contention between the both countries and India eventually lost it in 1962.  Energized by inept Indian foreign policy, Beijing began laying claims over additional Indian territories by blatantly linking them to Tibetan culture. It began asserting that Tawang Monastery, the leading center of Tibetan Buddhism in Arunachal Pradesh as the birth place of 6^th Dalai Lama in 17^th Century and by that extension a part of Tibet. By similar argument, China should lay claims over Mongolia which is birth place of 4^th Dalai Lama in 1589.

Notwithstanding the annexation of the Tibet, overwhelmed by the obsession of One China, Beijing huddled reinstatement of democratic process in Hong Kong and coerced pro-China parties of Taiwan to deepen ties with mainland China. To gain geographical mileage in North East Asia, China unabashedly, indulged in distorting the history of Korean Kingdoms under the banner of North Eastern Project. Under the ruse of restoring the historical facts and protecting stability of the North East region known as Manchuria, China conducted the project from 2002-2007.  Through this project, China began asserting that Korea was a part of Greater China State. In a calibrated attempt, China began to rewrite Korean history by denying Korean national identity to the Goguryeo (Koguryo) civilization. It approached UNESCO to register ancient tombs and cities of Koguryo Kingdom & renewed claims to Gojoseon, Goguryeo, Balhea kingdoms. This egregious distortion of history incensed Koreans who believed that China is laying claims over the North Korean region to sabotage the aspirations of a united Korea. Insidious misinterpretations of China eventually affected its strategic and diplomatic relations with South Korea. Seoul became wary of China’s expansionist tendencies and led to shifting of interests from pro-China and anti-America to Anti-China and Pro-America. Similarly, China created Southwest Project and Northwest Project to strengthen its assertions over Tibet and Xinjiang Province.

Besides territorial assertions, China has been steadily expanding its maritime domains by setting up a string of bases spreading across the globe. While China had no qualms about its deceptions, hypocrisies about its revisionist actions, Beijing is extremely condescending about its contenders. It vehemently derided Japan’s imperialistic past and popularized its orchestrated versions of historical legacies of various nations in the school text books under the ruse of imbibing nationalism. So far, China strove hard to strengthen its own historical interpretations and denounced the actions of opponents.

Over the past two decades, China has been whipping tensions in the region anachronistically while remaining intolerant to criticisms of aggressive expansionism. Recently, in response to Beijing’s attempts of bolstering defensive capabilities and incessant incursions, India deployed additional army divisions and beefed up military capabilities along the Indo-China border. China took serious note of this steady military buildup along the border and warned that there will be “no compromises in its border disputes with India”. Interestingly, Beijing believes that it is right in its own way to conveniently intrude into Indian waters and dock nuclear submarines in Indian Ocean, it is averse to Indo-Vietnamese joint oil exploration in the exclusive economic zone of the later. Beijing expects India to exercise restraint despite the Dragon transferring military and nuclear technology to India’s neighbor Pakistan and stationing armed soldiers in the disputed territories. On the contrary, Beijing castigates India for strengthening military cooperation with Vietnam. The list of China’s ironies and self-righteousness are endless. They reek of duplicity but unfortunately its diplomacy is afflicted with this very malady.

Mired in exigencies and afflicted by hypocrisies, China is now all set to host the premier G-20 summit on Sept 4-5^th has left no stone unturned to make it a spectacular success. Beijing already pumped over $10 billion to revamp the infrastructure of Hangzhou, capital city of Zhejiang ordered closure of factories for 10 days to ensure good air quality and readied 1 million volunteers for the summit. The Dragon is rolling dice and desperately making right noises to silence the voices of international community and frantically wooing the G-20nations. After blatantly admonishing the verdict of Permanent Court of Arbitration nations are distrustful of Beijing’s shibboleth of peaceful rise. With bigoted nationalism and reverential self-righteousness, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) facing the public wrath has slowly began to charge up the nation. The quick charade of diplomatic photo-ops and unheralded visits of Chinese foreign minister clearly recapitulates this logic. In run up to G-20 summit, Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister visited Africa, India, Laos (Guest invitee to the summit) and urgently convened a meeting of foreign ministers of Japan and South Korea. To appease Japan and South Korea, Yi condemned North Korea’s ballistic missile launch and publicized signing of a “conference summary” on Maritime cooperation with Vietnam coast guards. While the authenticity of such agreement with Vietnam coast guards has to be ascertained, it is an open secret that China has been transferring requited nuclear technology to North Korea and deliberately refrained from imposing sanctions despite UN’s recommendations. Thus, China tried all the tricks in the book to please the G-20 countries to avoid the escalation of discussions on China’s refusal to accept the PCA verdict.

 To smartly avoid discussions on issues contentious to China, Beijing has reiterated that G-20 Summit agenda would adhere to the global economic growth with a focus on the theme of “Towards an Innovative, Invigorated, Interconnected and Inclusive world economy”.  Ironically Chinese officials indicated that Beijing is keen on raising the issues of deployment of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense Anti-ballistic missile system (THAAD) by South Korea. Meanwhile China employed the ballistic of intellectual power pushing diplomats, researchers, media, and Chinese think-tanks to work overtime to eulogize China and stress the need for peaceful cooperation to work towards global developments. For all this loud talk, participating countries can rest be assured that China would renege on all the promises. The benevolent proclamations on regional stability, peaceful rise and mutual cooperation will eventually disappear in the clamor of the aggressive expansionism of President Xi. Indeed, nations must be cautious of ridiculous territorial claims exerted by China for there is every danger of the Dragon pursuing it resolutely.

 

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