By Ng Weng Hoong
OnePacificNews, July 20, 2020, Monday

“WHAT DOES IT mean to be a friend of China?”

On June 15, as University of British Columbia (UBC) professor Paul Evans pondered this question, Chinese and Indian soldiers were killing each other in a border clash that will do lasting damage to the bilateral relationship between the two Asian giants. On June 30, Hong Kong passed a new security law (1) that empowers Beijing to potentially arrest and detain anyone anywhere that it accuses of engaging in acts of subversion against the central government, promoting the secession of Chinese territories, or colluding with foreign forces.

The two disparate events add layers to Mr Evans’s basic question.

Today, Xi Jinping, in his eighth year as China’s president and seeking to expand his government’s global influence, has loaded all discussions on friendship with Beijing with complicated conditions and fine print.

What are the costs and benefits of friendship with an easily offended China? Who would want to be a friend of China today? Can countries live without China’s friendship? Do they have a choice not to be friends with China? If the Chinese government is not a friend, what is that relationship? Can bilateral ties with the world’s second-largest economy be reduced strictly to trade and investment, minus the warmth of friendship?

In his speech to the Canada-China Friendship Society of Ottawa (CCFS) (2), Mr Evans, an international relations expert in Vancouver, referenced the concepts of friendship with China according to the renowned American scholar John K. Fairbank, a former Canadian prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, and a former Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd. The three men, among others, contributed to the western world’s engagement with China over the past seven decades.

In Mr Evans’s description, Mr Fairbank was a hardnosed China historian who “never considered himself a friend of China, either in its Nationalist or Communist period.”

“As a scholar he valued detachment and often described how the Chinese Communist Party used outsiders for internal political purposes,” he said.

That detachment was crucial, as Mr Fairbank was a pioneer in the 1950s in advocating that the US and the newly independent China under the CCP find ways to live with each other. Still, his efforts weren’t enough to prevent him from being caught up in Senator Joseph McCarthy’s notorious witchhunt to “flush out” America’s alleged communist agents. But Fairbank survived the ordeal, and his legacy helped shape US engagement with the PRC while McCarthy died a tarnished fearmonger.

Mr Trudeau’s attraction to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), according to Mr Evans, was driven by pragmatism and intellectual curiosity.

“The logic behind recognising the PRC was based on the strategic view that world stability depended upon ending China’s isolation,” said Mr Evans. “It was never based on the idea that China would be expected or encouraged to evolve into a Western-style economy or democracy.”

There was also the matter of the Cold War, as the life-and-death struggle between the West and the Soviet Union was far from settled.

As Beijing’s fall-out with Moscow became starkly obvious in the 1970s, the West actively courted China’s defection from the Soviet Bloc. This was smart geopolitical play as it helped tilt the Cold War in favor of the West. It was probably no surprise that Pierre Trudeau’s Canada was the first major western country to establish full diplomatic ties with the PRC in 1970 either. The US followed suit nine years later.

With western support, China began to free up its economy. China became wildly richer over the next 40 years, growing 37 times to become an US$11.5 trillion economy by 2019, according to the World Bank. Last year, China accounted for 13.6% of the global GDP, up from 1.1% in 1979.

But China did not evolve into the liberal democracy that some proponents of engagement had hoped for. Instead, under Mr Xi, the PRC has returned to the totalitarian roots at its founding by Mao Zedong.

Kevin Rudd, the only living member of the three men mentioned in Mr Evans’s speech, now confronts the nightmare of a wealthier, powerful China pursuing an expansive, expansionist totalitarian agenda. Mr Rudd, 63, finds himself increasingly on the defensive for his pro-engagement position, amply displayed during his first term as Australia’s prime minister from 2007 to 2010.

How would he handle Australia’s relations with the PRC today?

Mr Evans said Mr Rudd is “at a moment of despair in the downward cycle in the US-China relationship. Things are worsening.”

He retains a degree of access to Beijing’s inner circle, thanks to his deep China knowledge, Mandarin language fluency, and unique “zhengyou” policy (3). Delivered in a landmark speech at Peking University in Beijing in 2008, zhengyou refers to a true and honest friend who would tell China “unpleasant truths… uncomfortable opinions and counsels caution.”

Zhengyou has not stood the test of time. Mr Xi has shown little patience for unpleasant truths and uncomfortable opinions.

But Mr Rudd can take consolation that he isn’t the only one feeling cast out by this new China.

The Special Case of India
CHINA AND INDIA have been more than friends and neighbors.

No two countries can match their civilisational ties going back thousands of years, soulmates to the extent that India supplied philosophy and religion to a receptive China long before Christianity and Islam existed. Home to over a third of humanity between them, India and China have lived remarkably peacefully with each other for a long time. Both suffered European colonial plunder for over a century. Following independence, their joint mission to help other newly decolonized states build a better world even came with a cheesy slogan, “Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai” (Indians and Chinese are brothers).

But that innocence died in the harsh winter of post-independence geopolitics.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) chose the Soviet path at birth in 1949. India became a democracy on independence in 1947. In 1979, the PRC switched camps to reap the benefits of a friendship with the West that propelled its economy to become the world’s second-largest by 2010. India grew too, but at a slower pace, such that its economy today is only a quarter of the size of China’s.

As they grew apart under the shadow of the Cold War, bilateral relations were marked by numerous but still manageable territorial showdowns, including three deadly battles in 1962, 1967, and 1975 (4,5, 6) and disputes regarding Kashmir. 

But the lingering goodwill between the two took a serious hit with the latest clash at the Galwan Valley in the disputed Himalayan territory of Ladakh. 20 Indian soldiers were killed while the Chinese suffered an unknown number of dead and injured.

Regardless of who was right or wrong, China may regret that it had not done more to prevent the unraveling of this crucial but underrated relationship. While India will suffer financial and economic losses, mostly from reduced Chinese investment and trade (7) China will be counting a new set of long-term strategic problems.

China’s ambassador to India appears to have been either clueless or disingenuous about the depth of the two countries’ estrangement just weeks before the Galwan clash. In a speech delivered in New Delhi on May 27, (8) Sun Weidong declared that “China and India pose no threat to each other” while promising to work with India to “elevate our bilateral relations to a new height.” 

“We should gradually seek understanding through communication and constantly resolve differences. China and India should be good neighbors of harmonious coexistence and good partners to move forward hand in hand.”

Instead of Mr Sun’s rosy scenario, India has now become the latest hurdle to China’s foreign policy moves.

Long committed to non-alignment, India will likely be more open to the US’s proposal for a “Quadrilateral Security Dialogue” that includes Japan and Australia to check China’s rise. Indian companies and consumers launched a spontaneous nationwide boycott of Chinese goods and businesses immediately after the Galwan clash. The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is looking to block Huawei and ZTE from participating in India’s 5G telecommunications plan after announcing a ban on 59 Chinese apps (9). India is the biggest international market for TikTok and UC Browser, and a fast-growing consumer for Helo, Shareit, Baidu, Weibo, and WeChat.

Mr Modi signaled a further hardening of India’s position with a surprise visit to Ladakh on July 3.

“I pay tribute to the soldiers who were martyred in the Galwan Valley,” he told a gathering of Indian soldiers. (10) “Peace can never be won by the weak. Bravery is the precondition for peace.”

This reads like a warning that Mr Modi, a Hindu nationalist, will not back down in his country’s worsening disputes with China. India may even extend the threatre of contest to include the Indian Ocean and the Straits of Malacca (11) while joining others to confront China in the South China Sea (12) where previously it had little interest. There is also talk of India reaching out to Taiwan.

On the diplomatic front, India lacks the aura of China’s military might, wealth or ambition, but it has soft power appeal to many countries (apart from Pakistan). 

Many developing countries admire China’s rise and even welcome it as an alternative model of development to the US. But they will be alarmed by China’s decision to turn on India, a fellow Third World traveller and once-loyal comrade in the joint struggle against colonialism. 

The split with India will further cast Xi’s China as an untrustworthy partner, a bully, and a difficult neighbor. In Pew Research’s survey of 34 countries (13) last December, 45% of respondents said they lack confidence in the Chinese leader when it comes to world affairs, with only 29% approving. Few see China’s growing military benefiting their country, with those in Asia “especially doubtful”,” said Pew.

The Beijing-Delhi fallout will be felt in Southeast Asia already reeling from territorial disputes with China.

Singapore, which has expressed pain at having to choose between the US and China (14) will be further tortured by the thought of an unprecedented Beijing-Delhi split. Until Mr Xi’s presidency, Singapore dealt with the three giants from a comfortable position that allowed it to be friends with everyone. The balancing act is looking increasingly difficult.

Russia, which has been courting the two Asian giants, (15) has vowed to stay out of their quarrels. But it will grow warier of an increasingly temperamental China. So will the Middle East’s regional powers such as Saudi Arabia, Iran (16), and Israel (17) that have maintained good relations with both sides. India’s fate will prompt an uncomfortable question: when could it be their turn to fall out with Mr Xi?

Even Pakistan may not be entirely safe. Its “all-weather friendship” (18) with China rests largely on Beijing’s generous funding for infrastructure-building associated with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), and their common opposition to the US and India. Will the friendship hold if China, facing its worst economic slowdown in four decades, is unable to continue with the corridor’s proposed US$60-billion investment that is part of Mr Xi’s ambitious US$1-trillion Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)? How will Pakistan be affected if the CPEC fails to deliver on its ambitious targets (19)? Both the CPEC and BRI are already under scrutiny for the financial viability of China-driven projects (20) and the debt burden imposed on host countries.

The Special Case of Hong Kong
HONG KONG’S new national security law was hurriedly passed on June 30 without debate or consultation with the region’s government of chief executive Carrie Lam, business and legal elite. The law was drafted behind closed doors (21) by members of Beijing’s top lawmaking body, the National People’s Congress (NPC), bypassing Hong Kong’s own elected legislative council.

Article 38 has captured the most attention: “This Law shall apply to offenses committed against the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region from outside the Region by a person who is not a permanent resident of the Region.”

According to Donald Clarke (22), a Chinese law expert at George Washington University Law School, the article can be interpreted to empower Beijing “asserting extraterritorial jurisdiction over every person on the planet.”

On paper, it means the PRC government has the right to arrest anyone anywhere that it broadly accuses of involvement in acts of secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign powers against China.

In including critics, Beijing has criminalised free speech everywhere, far exceeding the United States’ extraterritorial powers that target people suspected of terror activities.

Mr Clarke further notes that the establishment of the Office for Safeguarding National Security in Hong Kong is empowered to “send people back to China for processing and sentencing in mainland institutions according to the Chinese Criminal Procedure Law.”

Its officers are “untouchable under Hong Kong law” and possibly even under mainland law as well. Vested with “Gestapo-level” powers, Mr Clarke said they may commit murder “in the course of duty” and not be held liable.

This new law speaks to Beijing’s desperation to impose its will on the world. 

How is friendship possible under such circumstances? In a friendly situation, laws are enacted and applied defensively. They are not designed to dominate and stifle the other party.

The question today is no longer about what it means to be a friend of China. Instead, the question needs to be reframed and directed to Mr Xi and the CCP: what does it mean for China to be friends with other countries?  

NOTE: A version of this story first appeared on New Bloom Mag. Link: https://newbloommag.net/2020/07/20/india-china-border-conflict

FOOTNOTES
1. https://thechinacollection.org/hong-kongs-national-security-law-first-look
June 30, 2020. “Hong Kong’s National Security Law: a first look” by Donald Clarke

2. https://ccfso.org
Canada-China Friendship Society of Ottawa (CCFS)

3. https://www.smh.com.au/national/rudd-rewrites-the-rules-of-engagement-20080412-gds972.html
April 12, 2008. “Rudd rewrites the rules of engagement” by Geremie Barme

4. https://thediplomat.com/2012/08/historys-hostage-china-india-and-the-war-of-1962
August 21, 2012. “History’s Hostage: China, India and the War of 1962” by Ivan Lidarev

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathu_La_and_Cho_La_clashes
Nathu La and Cho La clashes

6. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/forgotten-in-fog-of-war-the-last-firing-on-the-india-china-border/article31827344.ece
June 14, 2020. “Forgotten in fog of war, the last firing on the India-China border” by Ananth Krishnan

7. https://www.theweek.in/news/biz-tech/2020/06/18/economic-impact-of-india-china-conflict-why-there-wont-be-just-one-loser.html
June 18, 2020. Economic impact of India-China conflict: Why there won’t be just one loser

8. https://theprint.in/diplomacy/china-and-india-pose-no-threat-to-each-other-ambassador-sun-weidong/430647
May 27, 2020. China and India pose no threat to each other: Ambassador Sun Weidong

9. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/software/india-bans-59-chinese-apps-including-tiktok-helo-wechat/articleshow/76694814.cms
July 9, 2020. India bans 59 Chinese apps including TikTok, WeChat, Helo

10. https://www.newsbred.com/article/modi-evokes-lord-krishna-in-rousing-speech-to-soldiers-in-ladakh
July 3, 2020. Modi evokes Lord Krishna in rousing speech to soldiers in Ladak

11. https://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-ladakh-face-off-fallout-india-to-strengthen-maritime-alliance-against-china-2830625
July 2, 2020. Ladakh face-off fallout: India to strengthen maritime alliance against China

12. https://www.cnnphilippines.com/news/2020/7/2/india-south-china-sea-lorenzana.html
July 2, 2020. “Lorenzana: India wants presence felt in South China Sea” by Gerg Cahiles

13. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/12/05/attitudes-toward-china-2019
December 5, 2019. Attitudes towards China: Pew Research Center

14. https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/asian-countries-would-be-very-unhappy-if-they-have-to-choose-between-us-and-china-pm-lee
October 6, 2019. “Asian countries would be very unhappy if they have to choose between US and China: PM Lee Hsien Loong” by Choo Yun Ting

15. https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/russia-india-china-meeting-india-china-dont-need-outside-help-says-russian-foreign-minister-sergei-lavrov-2250912
June 23, 2020. India, China Don’t Need Help: Russian Foreign Minister At Trilateral Meet

16. https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2019/12/25/iran-turns-to-china-and-india-in-the-face-of-us-sanctions
December 25, 2019. Iran Turns to China and India In the Face of US Sanctions” by Mohammad Soltaninejad

17. https://www.jpost.com/international/how-could-the-india-china-standoff-impact-israel-632008
June 18, 2020. “How could the India-China standoff impact Israel?” by Seth J. Frantzman

18. http://cpecinfo.com/china-is-the-most-reliable-and-all-weather-friend-of-pakistan
January 30, 2020. China is the most reliable and ‘all weather friend’ of Pakistan

19. https://www.csis.org/analysis/china-pakistan-economic-corridor-five
April 2, 2020. CSIS: The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor at Five

20. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/FP_20200615_china_pakistan_afzal_v2.pdf
June, 2020. “How Pakistan and China control the narrative on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor” by Madiha Afzala

21. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/29/china/hong-kong-national-security-law-passed-intl-hnk/index.html
June 30, 2020. “China passes sweeping Hong Kong national security law” by Helen Regan

22. https://thechinacollection.org/hong-kongs-national-security-law-first-look
June 30, 2020. “Hong Kong’s National Security Law: a first look” by Donald Clarke