Xi’s and CCP action has only compounded it. This blemish will endure. It is a matter of public conviction and opinion. Is that a major strategic loss? I think so.Ĭhina will face blame for the origin of the Virus whether it likes it or not. The degree of Chinese untrustworthiness is unprecedented. If its debt trap diplomacy is added to the mix, its reputation worsens. Its expansionist tendency and world domination through communist ideology has bubbled up. The significant emergent feature is that China is untrustworthy in international relations. Any change in the LAC status with India was to be bilateral. It was not to militarise the South China Sea as per its own promises. It was to maintain the special status of Hong Kong as per its treaty with the UK. Complete strategic miscalculation? Let us examine it.Īpart from the virus-related issues, China has gone back or violated most of its international commitments. Xi Jinping has done the opposite of Deng’s formula. The world reacts and China is now fully in the strategic dock. In essence, Xi Jinping has gone into unrestricted war with the world through multiple domains. It goes into an economic punishment mode with Australia. It touts that its authoritarian system is better than democracies in controlling the virus. China also weaponises the virus through mask and vaccine diplomacy. Hence it threatens an invasion of Taiwan also. However, as a national obsession, it cannot let Taiwan go. Militarily, it sinks a Vietnamese fishing boat and starts a military campaign against India to settle the LAC as per its perception. What does China do? Diplomatically it unleashes its wolf warriors, becomes aggressive, hides the origins of the virus and starts diverting blame to others. The ‘One China’ and ‘Unification of the Chinese People’ dream would have probably been realised if China had stuck to its primary aim as enunciated in its white paper. Taiwan was lying virtually undefended when all three aircraft carriers of the US were non-ops with the pandemic. The chaos would have led the US to take its eye off the ball as it actually panned out. The virus would have spread anyway and created the chaos it did.

All China had to do was agree to cooperate with the world and be transparent even if it did not intend to do so. When the Wuhan virus broke, there was a lot of international understanding for China. The strategic opportunity was squandered. China seemed to be purring into superpower status. Donald Trump senses things slipping away from the US and launches the Trade War in his inimitable style. Theories of Mao’s Palm and Five Fingers and the Six Inevitable Wars China Must Fight start appearing in the media. Barack Obama’s US looks away when he grabs the islands in the South China Sea. He announces that he will build the greatest military on earth. He talks of the China Dream and rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Perfect.Ĭome 2012 and Xi Jinping arrives. By 2014, glimpses of superpower status were appearing just over the horizon. It had quietly infiltrated porous democracies for its advantage. It had started undermining the WTO, UN and other international institutions. As the West was exhausting itself, China was gaining strength under the carpet. Let us also not forget Grenada, Panama, Libya, Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Haiti, and more such campaigns. The period of break-up of USSR, Gulf Wars, Afghanistan, War on Terror. Thirty years since 1984 puts you in 2014. In 2001, what Deng had said was already coming true. By the time the West would be exhausted, China would have risen. Deng had probably foreseen that the Western powers would exhaust themselves in wars. I personally felt that it was a great vision for China. This statement contains China’s aspirations and strategy: War avoidance as a route to superpower status. Then we can have the time calmly to carry out our socialist four modernistions… If we truly have twenty years, thirty years without war, no war in fifty years, then this war has the possibility of being avoided.” He had said in 1984, “We hope that for at least twenty years there will not be a war, and hope even more for no war in the next seventy years. I came upon this farsighted thought of Deng Xiaoping. In 2001, I was working on my dissertation during my Higher Command course.

Strategic war