Joint pushback of China’s unfair policies needed

Yogesh Gupta

Former Ambassador

Defining the threat that Communist China poses to the free world, President Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in his Nixon House Library speech on July 20, 2020, said, “If the free world does not change, Communist China will surely change us.”

In the National Security Strategy released in December 2017, Trump announced a new era of ‘great power competition’ with China. His Vice-President Mike Pence, in a landmark address on October 4, 2018, castigated China for the first time for its colonisation of the South China Sea and use of unfair trade policies, such as denying market access, stealing technologies from foreign companies and others for deriving unfair gains.

Trump’s former National Security Adviser Lt Gen HR McMaster (retd) recently said that China had increased its annual military spending by 800 per cent since the 1990s; it had embarked on the largest peacetime military build-up in history. Beijing wants to match the US military capabilities by 2035 and defeat her in an armed conflict by 2050.

Measures taken by the Trump administration to push back China’s abusive behaviour included rescinding Hong Kong’s special trade status after China imposed its security laws, reviewing China’s investments in critical technologies in the US, closure of its Houston consulate over stealing of intellectual property, blacklisting Chinese 5G giant Huawei and 34 other companies from acquiring sensitive technologies and curtailing visas of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members from 10 years to one month.

The sanctions on Huawei will certainly hurt Beijing’s ambitions to exploit the global 5G market; it will slow down China’s efforts to acquire supremacy in the applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in military, defence and civilian industries as China will struggle to source microchips and semi-conductors from elsewhere.

China’s colonisation of the South China Sea decelerated after the Trump administration ramped up freedom of navigation operations and called China’s claims to sovereignty over most of the islands as ‘unlawful’.

Similarly, the Trump administration unambiguously criticised China’s aggression against India (in Ladakh) and Australia (economic), provided modern weaponry to India, Taiwan and other countries to deter and push back China’s hegemony and aggressive behaviour.

China has signalled that the winning power would decide the nature of the international order (IO). What kind of IO China will promulgate can be ascertained from the authoritarian policies of its leader Xi Jinping who has installed an average of two cameras to mount surveillance on one person in his country, has completely eliminated criticism by sending the dissenters to prison camps and eroded the freedoms enjoyed by the media, academic and business communities and minorities.

After unilaterally deciding that India was getting too close to the US for its comfort, Xi Jinping despatched his troops to deceptively occupy the Indian territories in Pangong Tso, Depsang plains and other areas in east Ladakh in April 2020. China is now trying to put added pressure by using Tibet’s waters as a political weapon against India and providing arms, training and hideouts to terror groups operating against India in the North-East and supporting Pakistan in its cross-border terror operations on India’s western borders.

China has escalated its interference in the domestic affairs of Asian countries by supporting regimes which toe its line, e.g., the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Recently, when Australia protested against Beijing’s intervention in its internal affairs, China hiked tariffs and imposed non-tariff barriers against Australian exports of barley, cotton, coal, timber, wines and other items and is demanding that Australia must cease its public criticism of Beijing.

China is trying to break the political will of countries which it thinks are moving closer to the US. It is trying to divide the US from its allies and partners to break the transatlantic alliance, as China’s only friends are a debilitated Pakistan and North Korea.

After the victory of Joe Biden, the NATO and EU countries are becoming more receptive about the China threat. A group of independent advisers commissioned by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg recently concluded in their report that the scale of Chinese power and global reach pose acute challenges to the democratic societies due to China’s authoritarianism and increased territorial ambitions; it asks members to prepare for greater competition with China. The report seeks wider consultations and cooperation with Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand and a partnership with India.

The outlook of EU leaders towards China is also hardening as it now sees China as a “systemic rival”; its interest in India as a likeminded partner has increased. EU’s planned summit with Xi Jinping for next year has been deferred and it has confirmed a summit meeting with Indian PM Modi in May 2021. China is turning to Russia to counter the revitalisation of the trans-Atlantic partnership against her.

China’s biggest strength is its manufacturing competitiveness which rests on the use of unfair policies such as denial of market access, low interest credit to its industries and acquisition of foreign technologies by unfair means. The US, Europe, Japan, South Korea and other countries have to join in the collective pushback of China’s abusive behaviour, started by President Trump, India and Australia.

The Covid experience has proven the urgency of the US, its allies and partners working together on shifting of supply chains for essential items away from China, creating a large transatlantic grouping for economic cooperation, increasing the technological and military capacities of frontline states on China’s periphery and expanding patrolling in the South China, Pacific and Indian Ocean regions to deter China.

President-Elect Biden has started on a positive note. In an interview after his election, he said, “America is going to reassert its role in the world and will be a coalition builder.” As US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said earlier, the fight against China’s hegemony is a collective struggle for the freedom, values and economies of free nations and they have to win it to protect their societies and cherished ideals.