Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Keeping the attention of the people from domestic problems away to the borders and whipping up nationalist frenzy has been a favorite instrument of rulers. China is no exception.
Struggling to divert its citizens’ attention away from multiple domestic issues, including reverses in the economy, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has once again dusted off its favorite foreign policy tools: Taiwan and Arunachal Pradesh.
In his New Year address, President-for-Life Xi Jinping, whose regime boasts of Beijing being the capital of the world’s “largest democracy”, declared that “the complete reunification of our motherland is an aspiration shared by people” in both China and Taiwan.
Reacting sharply, Taipei advised China to stop “military adventurism.”
In the last week of December, Beijing also dispatched ‘robot soldiers’ to its eastern borders with India and “renamed” 15 places in Arunachal Pradesh to its Mandarin language, reiterating for an umpteenth time that the north-eastern Indian state was Chinese territory. But New Delhi has refused to react to such crude incitement and hectoring by China’s state-controlled media—these are inexpensive tools of Chinese foreign policy.
Why did it roll out robot soldiers? Because the Indian Army gave a bloody nose to the physical soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in Eastern Ladakh in 2020, so much so that Chinese parents urged their sons to quit the army and return home! Moreover, the Himalayan climate does not suit Beijing’s Terracotta Army!
Hot on Xi Jinping’s heels, his Taiwanese counterpart Tsai Ing-wen, in her own New Year address on Saturday, asked China to curb the spread of “military adventurism within their ranks”.
Tensions between the two sides soared in the recent past. A misogynist, Beijing has ramped up military and diplomatic pressure on Taiwan since Tsai Ing-wen came to power in 2016. But the strong woman that she is, Tsai has consistently rejected Beijing’s claims that Taiwan is Chinese territory.
To bully Taipei, Chinese warplanes made several incursions in Taiwan’s air defense zone in recent months, only prompting the US and Europe to beef up the island nation’s security.
Using military means is absolutely not an option for resolving the differences between the two sides”, she said, the media reported.
Beijing considers Taiwan, or the “Republic of China”, a part of its territory, and has vowed to seize it one day, by force, if necessary.
In October 2021, Taiwan’s defense ministry warned military tensions with China were at their highest in four decades after a record number of Chinese jets entered its air defense zone.
Beijing has also stepped up efforts in recent years to isolate Taiwan on the international stage. It deems any formal declaration of an “independent” Taiwan as a provocation and threatens consequences for countries that support Taipei’s right to self-determination.
Recently, Nicaragua recognized Beijing over Taipei. A ‘grateful’ China opened its embassy in the Central American nation on Friday.
But central and eastern European countries—Latvia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Slovenia—are cozying up to Taiwan.
The West, and many other countries, is boycotting the Winter Olympic Games in February 2022 in Beijing…
More cooking up in 2022…