A Worried Xi Jinping Coming To Meet A Very Confident Modi At Mamallapuram
By
Colonel Awadhesh Kumar, Special Forces
China had demonstrated a near all out support to its key client Pakistan by informally pushing the P5 countries at the UN Security Council in mid-August to discuss Kashmir. This attempt fizzled out badly in spite of some underhand vile game playing by the slimy Brits.
Next a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, aware that President Xi is travelling to Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu, for a second informal summit with Prime Minister Narendra Modi this week, recently said that Kashmir won’t be a “major issue” between the two sides.
Then came the well timed War Game in Arunachal by the newly raised 17 Corps of the Indian Army, the Strike Corps for deep thrust into Tibet and beyond.
Again the Chinese threw tantrums but in the end choice for Xi Jinping was either cancel the talks or Come to Chennai and meet Modi.
Xi Jinping is coming to India, against the backdrop of the Sino American Trade War, the Hong Kong civil unrest, the Quighers revolt in Xinjiang, the Quad Ministerial level meet and the Naval Exercise, the Afghanistan set back in talks with Taliban, the Chinese set back in Maldives, the growing Indo Vietnamese military and economic cooperation, the growing Indo Korean Cooperation and the Chennai- Vladivostok Link. The Indo Taiwan and Indo Tibet friendship will also always remain in the shadows, to come out any time.
Knowing about this Visit of Chinese President to India, very cleverly Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan decided to go to Beijing. Not having much confidence in the Cricketer, Pakistan army chief Gen.
Qamar Javed Bajwa, clearly couldn’t trust his PM to talk to the Chinese leadership alone – so he flew into Beijing one day before. The spokesperson of the armed forces, DG ISPR Gen. Asif Ghafoor tweeted:
If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad, as goes the well-known saying, then Muhammad must go to the mountain. PM Imran Khan in addition shouted from roof top that he will raise the Kashmir situation as well as the $60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which is said to be losing steam because of Pakistan’s rising international debt.
Well the Chinese after weighing all the pros and cons have now once again announced clearly that Kashmir is a bilateral issue in which China has no role to play !
Chinese realises better than anyone else that they may be caught between the rick and a hard place of its own making. Beset by low economic growth, the trade war with USA and the Hong Kong problem is one thing, but how do you tell the rest of the World that you are its natural leader by virtue of your size, population and natural resources if you can’t be on good terms with India. Japan, USA, Australia, Vietnam, Korea and rest of South East Asia.
As Mohamed Nasheed, Maldives former President and current speaker of People’s Majlis (Parliament), said that the Chinese are worse than the East India Company because they end up owning land by offering huge loans, then exchange the failure to pay with equity.
So with their traditional ping pong move in trying to unbalance India and chaffing from Maldives set back, in mid-September in Kathmandu, they had sent the ‘Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism With Chinese Characteristics for a New Era’ in the form of a two-day symposium. It was attended by none other than Nepalese prime minister K.P. Oli.
The symposium was jointly organised by Oli’s Nepal Communist Party (NCP) and the Communist Party of China (CPC)’s Central Party School, Organisation Department and International Liaison Department – the same people that a delegation of BJP leaders met when they visited China in August and told them that the BJP’s membership had overtaken CPC rolls.
The NCP’s School Department deputy chief Beduram Bhusal told the Press that the “Chinese side has proposed to share its experience in running the party and the government,” and that the Nepalese would also be doing the same.
Nepal’s Communist parties coming together under the leadership of Oli, after winning the elections proceeded to tilt towards Beijing.
China’s successful development path, Oli was quoted by South China Morning Post as saying, provides a “new choice” for developing countries like Nepal.
That’s why Xi Jinping’s by visit to Nepal, the first by a Chinese head of state since Deng Xiaoping in 1978, is now trying to indicates just how much the Chinese are setting store by its Himalayan neighbour.
The Chinese may provide a large “ aid package”, especially in the development of hydropower as well as infrastructure connectivity over the Himalayas, such as the $2.8 billion trans-Himalayan railway project between Kathmandu and Kyirong in Tibet.
Though India will not “lose” Nepal because of such aid. Nepal will have no options but to look towards India when the payback time of the so called “ Aid “ will arrive.
Modi, too, has won hearts and minds in Nepal, and soon it will be percolating down to the capital’s bureaucratic classes which insist on doing business with its neighbours dominated by official talking points, power-point presentations and memory cards.
With things stacked in India’s favour, PM Modi can afford to play the perfect, cool host. What actions Chinese take after Mamallapuram will be the real story.
