A Different Side To India China Skirmish || India-China Faceoff

The India China relationship is the current topper in all the news channel and for about three months now. But before jumping right off to the current India China relationship let's start at the beginning of where India China skirmish began. On December 2019, a new virus was identified into existence by WHO. A virus that the WHO was not sure about but tracing the infected people back to their travel history, each one of them had visited China. Not only China and anywhere but at a specific city called Wuhan which is quite big in size as well as population. The virus was found zoonotic and there are thousands of zoonotic viruses that do not spread to humans. The virus originating in Wuhan was inspected under the microscope and had similar properties to the SARS virus which erupted in 2003 all around the world. This virus had a crown-like structure on its boundaries and hence was named CORONA which literally means crown in Latin. With its behaviour resembling the SARS virus, it was also called SARS- 2 or SARS-COVID-2 or simply COVID 19. COVID-19 is an abbreviated term to COrona VIrus Disease 2019. This is just the background and I know very well that since our lives have halted, you are aware of all this.

China And WHO

Since China was the source of the CORONA virus, it is quite obvious that it would be the first country that started the research. This was the reason that WHO asked China a simple and important question that would affect millions of lives, "Can this virus jump from Humans to Humans?" and to which China said, "No, it does not.". This question should have been a reference for the research of WHO but instead, they made this question their research. They announced that CORONA virus cannot jump from humans to humans and that gave a sigh of relief all over the world. I mean, if it is just originating by eating the bat, a lot of the population is already safe there. People rely heavily on WHO for authentic and reliable information. But today, the CORONA virus has killed around half a million people all over the world. One of the countries affected worst was also one of the most powerful countries, United States Of America. In Italy too, seeing such an overwhelming number outside the hospital forced the doctors to decide whom to let die and whom to give medical care. This was the extreme worst case in the field of humanity. You would hardly see something at such a disastrous level where the people were left to bargain for their lives. 

China's Old Tricks - 1962 India China War

I will come back to the coronavirus but before that, another piece needs to be connected. In 1962, "Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai" was backstabbed by the People's Liberation Army (PLA) under the command of Mao. There were three main factors for this attack. First, Nehru was too confident that China is a loyal and friendly country to India (even after the attack on Tibet, Mongolia etc). Second, India was a newly independent country with literally nothing but a mess in the name of the army. We were not organised, we were not equipped and we were not so trained. Third and most important being China was hit by its worst national poverty and unemployment crisis. China was so unemployed that people came to the streets and started protesting against the government. This became so uncontrollable that something was needed to distract their mind. Can you think of something that can distract the mind of a whole nation and actually unite them together? It's a patriotic feeling for their country. Declaring a war against India moved the focal point from unemployment and poverty to the number of soldiers dying and how our country is great. This was the loss of a considerable piece of land till Galwan valley and the lake.

April 2020- The Corona Outburst

April 2020 brought with it anger and frustration in the minds of people all over the world. They started to question their governments. The United States Presidential elections are in November this year and Trump needs something solid to prove his candidateship in front of the people of the United States. With a crippled economy and lockdown all over the world, you cannot start development and anything else to show he is capable. The one thing that is left is to target the country that created all this mess. With a loss of half a million lives, people are too emotional towards this subject and the secretive attitude of the Chinese government is like gasoline in the fire. A long series of target question was now arising towards China which the world noticed.  Everybody now stood up and questioned the Chinese government. In the meantime, Borris Johnson became infected from the coronavirus. It was obvious and natural that he started taking it personally and created a group called D10 (10 democratic countries) to create a trade network and lessen the dependency on China. On the other hand, Donald Trump invited India for the G7 summit and the topic being "To Discuss Matters Related To China". On the next month, two more things arose.

May 2020- Taiwan and Hong Kong Protests

In May 2020 while China was being targeted for hiding the information related to the virus and leaking it intentionally, Taiwan's newly elected president and a really strong and confident lady, Tsai Ing-wen protested for the recognition of an independent country. How deeply China and Taiwan are connected, is a topic in itself and maybe I will discuss some other day. Tsai donated millions of masks to India in an emergency when China "sold" faulty testing kits (92% failure rate) and faulty PPEs. Tsai had gained the support of India and India nominated Taiwan to be included in the United Nations. This created protests in Taiwan to free itself from Chinese dictatorship.

Read A Better Path To Satisfaction

On the other hand, Hong Kong started protested for its own independence from China. Hong Kong is an extremely important trading hub for the whole world. It holds a majority of the trade all around the world. So, naturally, the whole world responded to it. Trump has his own reasons and so does India. Majority of countries supported Hong-Kong and while this was happening, many firms exited China on popular demand. This created a wave of unemployment to which people again started protesting. The people of China started questioning the government. Why was coronavirus' information not revealed? Why it was told that the virus does not jump human to human? Why this much unemployment? Research from the global view found three main important points after this:

• China did not declare it's trade number for the month of January and February.
• China suddenly in October and November gave a huge order to Canadian companies for Ventilators, PPEs and medical equipment.
• China dipped it's medical equipment export significantly in November.

This indicated China knew about the virus and so lost the interest of its own people.

India-China Faceoff June 2020

So, what happened in 1962 when China was targetted by the whole world? It created a shift and distraction. In June 2020, China started its old book strategy of provoking India and moving into the Indian territory. But unfortunately, like Atal Bihari Vajpayee (who commanded the Kargil War), Narendra Modi stopped them at the border. This was not expected from China who has always thought India fear them and does not retaliate. As a citizen of India, I have admired our prime minister's stance on such notorious activities. You kill our soldiers in Uri base camp, you will be attacked by a surgical strike. You again strike us in Pulwama, our jets goes deep into your territory and drops 6 bombs out of which the only one missed the target. The prime minister was not enjoying vacations when he visits so many countries. The relations are strong as ever and the military is equipped with the modern artilleries and equipment. Not only this, but 68 roads along the China border are also under construction out of which many have been completed. An air landing strip is ready in DBO which is the highest airstrip in the world and there are many more developments. 

The point is, China has been targeted by so many countries, it needs some distraction, yet again. China has been aggressive just because the focus needs to be shifted. Tell me, how many stories and theories and statements were published targeting China for the deadly coronavirus? Thousands. And today? None. Today no one is blaming China. Actually, no one is really interested in Coronavirus at all. Everyone is watching the borders and the shift is focussed. This will continue until the coronavirus issue settles. After that, the Chinese army will back off. The coronavirus story would be old. 

Although I believe China had never expected that Indians would unite and boycott Chinese products. Indians are too emotional and when it comes to their country, they are the most patriotic people you would see. Wallet power is greater than the bullet power. Boycotting Chinese products is a major step towards crippling the dictator regime that is the main cause of 500 thousand people. During SARS (which also originated in China) the world said to close their wet markets. But they did not. We rely too heavily on China and they are very smart people. So smart that if I give them anything already made up, they would break it understand it and create an exact replica even though I never told them how I made it. But their smartness limits to the sentiments of the people. Boycotting Chinese products is a chance for India to rely on itself and be self-dependant. We are a country of 1.3 billion people. There is absolutely nothing this country cannot do. It hurts me when I see people opposing boycott Chinese products with lame reasons. Your soldiers are dying on the duty. They are in their 20s. They are dying so that this country can function. Boycotting Chinese product has already irritated China and they have released multiple statements through their Global Times channel. Just remember when you buy a Chinese product next time, that this money will go to the government. The government will make weapons out of it. And do you know who will be the target of these weapons? Your own soldiers.

Thanks

Harish Rajora