Ranen Kumar Goswami
Uneasy lies the country that has an overbearing neighbor on the other side its border. On June 15, it will be three years since the China-induced bloodbath along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh took the lives of 20 Indian soldiers. The standoff still continues. New Delhi’s differences with China were recently accentuated with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar countering Beijing’s claim that the situation was generally stable. On May 5, 2023 a day after his bilateral meeting with Chinese counterpart Qin Gang on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Council meet at Benaulim in Goa, Jaishankar said China’s position that everything else could continue, while the main problems were not addressed effectively, was not acceptable. The minister’s remark came in response to queries about China’s readout of the Jaishankar-Qin meeting, in which it said Qin had told Jaishankar the border situation was stable and that China was ready to work with India to carry out bilateral relations back on the track.
Against this backdrop, China’s bilateral trade with India should have nosedived. But no. It has gone up with the scale heavily tilted towards the neighboring country. This is what the Embassy of India in China informs in its official website: “In 2022, the overall trade with China increased by 8.47% year on year to reach $136.26 billion, crossing the $100 billion mark for a second time in a row. The trade deficit came at $101.28 billion as India’s imports from China witnessed an increase by 118.77% to reach $118.77 billion. Meanwhile, India’s exports to China decreased by 37.59% year on year to reach $17.49 billion, down from last year’s net exports of $28.03 billion.”
China’s global trade surplus is a strong source of money for financing its belligerent behaviour. Incessant flow of imports (both essential and non-essential) from the country is a serious threat to a key job creator in India—- the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME). Along the LAC in the Himalayas it has been building a war infrastructure with security installations, roads, helipads, electronic warfare facilities, duel-use border villages and other assets. Not only Eastern Ladakh, its military muscle-flexing has been put on display at Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh from December 9, 2022. All this it has been doing behind the façade of Communism or socialism. Maybe, it won’t be irrelevant now to pay a glance at the Chinese brand of socialism.
On the first of July, 2021, when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was celebrating its centenary, a leading daily in India wrote in its editorial: “As Chinese Communist Party celebrates a 100 years, its record mixed, across economic, political, and social spectrums, it’s a good time to ask— how do we assess communism? In 1989, when Soviet Union cracked, China had already reset its Marxism, Francis Fukuyama famously predicted communism’s death as a living ideology.” Then the editorial comments: “But it remains dead, undead and alive all at once.” It observes: “Articulated in the late 19th century, the classical Marxist doctrine never quite played out. Even in Soviet Union and China, the idea took shape in their distinct ways. These days, communism in some shape or form still lives on in Vietnam, Laos and Cuba. It remains in parts of Latin America. It still engenders violent struggles all over the world. And its intellectual influence remains powerful in the social sciences. It’s leftwing politics, a set of ideas inspired by but very, very distinct from classical communism, that lives on, not as struggle but as accommodation.”
Here, a significant development in India appears worth recalling. In September 2022, Kavitha Krishnan, politburo member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) for more than two decades, gave up her leadership positions. Talking to a reputed media outlet from south India, she said: “We fight for civil liberties and democratic rights in India…….In capitalist countries people are allowed some sort of freedom. But in socialist societies working classes don’t even have this freedom. No independent union activities are allowed without government’s approval. It is really under one-party rule……. When China is putting Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps in the name of war on terror and Muslims in India too are facing violence and the threat of detention camps by the Hindu-supremacist state, can we afford not to join the dots and make connections?” In substance, what the disillusioned Left leader wanted to say was that, while condemning the authoritarian rulers in India, the communists must also be vocal about the same authoritarian behavior of the socialist countries like China.
The CCP held its 20th Congress from October 16 to 22, 2022. As widely expected, President Xi Jinping became the general secretary (the most powerful post) for third time in a row. In CCP’s five-tiered structure, 2,300 delegates represent its 96 million members. Above them is the central committee comprising 205 permanent and 171 alternate members. Presiding over the central committee is the 24-25 member Politburo. The Standing Committee of the Politburo (PBSC) is the most powerful body. And towering over them all is the general secretary Xi Jinping. Keeping all principles of empowerment at bay, the CCP has left women out of, not only the PBSC and Politburo, but also from the central committee. No member of the minority community has found any place in these bodies. The post-congress communique of the party acknowledges the goal of transforming China into world’s “leading military power” by 2035 and a “great modern socialist country” by 2049, based on “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.”
Leave aside the views of known Left-baiters, let’s hear what the Red Star group of Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist) says. In its opinion, hiding behind the signboard of “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” it has blurred the demarcating line between market economy, corporate capital and a bureaucratic state structure. Corporate sector will be there, but only under the party command. CCP office bearers remain busy in party meetings as well as company board meetings. The working class is at the receiving end of this unholy alliance, as a result of which, their wages are the lowest in comparison to western countries. Cheap labor lures foreign investments as the cost of production is relatively low and profit margins are high. Production is high that has enabled China to be a leading exporter of commodities. The resultant affluence is a booster dose for its military muscles, which it has put on display along the border for India to see. Peace remains elusive. You cannot escape the suspicion that by keeping the border on boil, pushing the boundary, thus creating an atmosphere of aggression, does China want to capture the Indian market?
Ranen Kumar Goswami is a renowned Guwahati-based senior journalist.
75 PNGB Path, Santipur Hillside, Guwahati 781009,
Cell number: 98640-61359
Source: Assam Tribune, dated June 7, 2023
