Can India & G7’s Democratic Pledge Block China’s Illiberal Might?

The great value of the recent Group of Seven (G7) meeting in Cornwall, UK which concluded on Sunday, 13 June, was that it took place in the circumstances that it did, and put across a picture of a rich and democratic world looking more united than it has done in the recent past.

This is important because of the disarray created by the presidency of Donald Trump which probably contributed to the G7’s signal failure to provide any kind of leadership to combat the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

The meeting now is all the more important when it is clear that the G7 is facing off against the illiberal might of China, which has successfully combated the pandemic, and whose economy is already on the path of recovery, while a large part of the world, including India, are flailing.

It is in this context that we should read the lengthy joint statement at the end of the meeting on Sunday dealing with health, climate change, democracy and open societies, economic recovery, trade and future research and innovation

G7’s Pledge to Fight COVID

The G7 comprises of the US, UK, Canada, Japan, Germany, France and Italy, as well as the EU. The UK, which is the host, had invited India, South Korea, Australia and South Africa to attend as guests. The leaders of all the countries, except India, were physically present at the meeting. Prime Minister Modi participated in its outreach sessions through video.

Heeding the call of activists and organisations, the G7 has promised to do more to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, and has pledged over 1 billion more vaccine doses for poorer countries over the next year.

Learning from the crisis, they have also agreed to establish new early warning systems and boost scientific support to enable vaccine development and treatments in a span of 100 rather than 300 days. In line with this, the communique pressed for a Phase 2 study by the WHO, on the origins of COVID-19 which should include China as per the experts group recommendation.

All Eyes On China

China’s was the looming shadow over the meeting and its focus on the Indo-Pacific region. Where countries like the US and Japan had earlier taken the lead, today we see them joined by Germany, UK and France in calling for the maintenance of “a free and open Indo-Pacific, which is inclusive and based on the rule of the law,” as the joint statement noted.

It added that the G7 “remain seriously concerned” about the situation in the East and South China seas, and “strongly oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo and increase tensions.”

There was also an unprecedented reference to Taiwan which had been discussed by the G7 foreign ministers in their May meeting. Sunday’s summit communique said, “we underscore the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, and encourage the peaceful resolution of cross-Strait issues.” The communique bluntly told China to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms with respect to Xinjiang and Hong Kong.

G7’s ‘Build Back Better World’ Initiative Is Also Targeted At China

China also figured in the economic front with the G7 offering a united front to declare that it will adopt “collective approaches” to take on China’s “non-market policies and practices which undermine the fair and transparent operation of the global economy. This is an important development which indicates that the US has been able to get the EU to fall in line with its hard-line strategy of dealing with China.

There can be little doubt that China is also the context of the new Build Back Better World (B3W) partnership announced by the G7. This is an infrastructure investment initiative based on “democratic values and norms” to promote “clean green growth” in developing countries.

Clearly, it seeks to target China’s ongoing Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), though there was no specific reference to China here. It is not clear, though, what kind of money the G7 would be willing to put up for the project.

Climate change and a “green recovery” was an important leg of the summit, with President Biden and Prime Minister Johnson strongly endorsing measures towards achieving net zero emissions by 2050 and increasing climate finance by 2025.

G7’s Shared Belief In Democratic Values Reaffirmed — And PM Modi Being Its ‘Torchbearer’

Since the competition with China is also being framed as a contest between autocracy and democracy, it is not surprising that the communique also emphasised the overarching theme of shared values of the open societies that constitute the G7.

This was underscored by a separate outreach session on “open societies and economies“ whose lead speaker was Prime Minister Modi.

Later, the summit also adopted a statement that reaffirmed the shared belief in open societies, democratic values and multilateralism for the “responsible stewardship of our planet.” It made a ringing call for the upholding of rules and norms that promote human rights for all, “online and offline”, and opposition to any kind of discrimination. It gave a ringing endorsement to democracy, which it said included voting in free and fair elections as well as the promotion of social inclusion, equal opportunities for all, freedom of expression, the rule of law with “effective, independent and impartial judicial systems”.

It also criticised the threat to democracy from “rising authoritarianism, electoral interference… politically-motivated internet shutdowns.”

There is some irony in Prime Minister Modi’s remarks hailing India’s solidarity and unity with “open and democratic societies and economies” and on recalling that “democracy and freedom were part of India’s civilisational ethos,” given the erosion of democratic norms in the country under his watch.

But Modi had been billed as the lead speaker in the “Open Societies and Economies” session, and he had to say those things. Perhaps the G7 intended a message in inviting him to speak at the session.

The Quint June 15, 2021

https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/india-china-g7-summit-modi-open-societies-economies-democratic-values-official-communique-covid-pandemic-joint-fight#read-more

'New' Defence Ministry Policy on Declassifying War Histories Isn't Original, More Must Be Done

It is difficult to know what to make of the Ministry of Defence’s new policy on archiving, declassifying and compiling war operations and histories announced last week.

On the one hand, Rajnath Singh’s decision has opened the gate to declassification of defence information; on the other, where this gate takes us is a maze of bureaucracy-driven processes that will ensure nothing happens. Singh certainly seems to be well-intentioned, but the babu authors of the policy seem to have only a vague idea of the problem.

Cutting through the verbiage of its June 12 press release, this is what the Ministry of Defence seeks to have defence organisations do:

1.  Transfer their records, “including war diaries, letters of proceedings and operational record books” to the History Division of MoD.

2. These would be records that were already vetted by the organisations to see if they were fit for declassification3. Thereafter, the History Division would use these declassified records to publish authoritative compilations and war histories. This process would be done in a time-bound span of five years after “completion of war/operations”.

4. After the compilation or publication of the official history, records older than 25 years will be transferred to the National Archives, presumably to be made available to the public.

Established procedure

In fact, the Public Record Rules, 1997 – which framed the rules of the Public Record Act, 1993 – have already established a procedure for the declassification of records and their transfer to the National Archives after a period of 25 years or more.

All ministries are supposed to have a records officer responsible for liaison with the National Archives. As for declassification, the 1997 rules say the ministry or office “shall by an office order authorize an officer not below the rank of the Under Secretary to the Government of India to evaluate and downgrade the classified record being maintained by it.” The officer concerned is supposed to evaluate these records every fifth year for the purpose of downgrading. Finally, when these are deemed records of “a permanent nature”, they are to be transferred to the National Archives. Otherwise, presumably, they will be destroyed.

Two processes mixed up

The MoD’s June 12 press note seems to have mixed up two things: first, the process of declassification and transfer to the archives, and second, the writing and compiling of war histories.

While these are indeed bureaucratic processes, the MoD has also bureaucratised the writing of the histories by appointing a joint secretary as its nodal figure.

The History Division which has, in the past, authored a number of well-received war histories, will not, lead the process of “compiling” or writing future accounts. The job will be done by a committee headed by the joint secretary, who may or may not have a background in history, or for that matter, the military. This committee will have representatives of the three services, Ministry of External Affairs and Ministry of Home Affairs. As for “prominent military historians” they will be inducted “if required”.

Also read: Rajnath Singh’s Booklet on ‘Reforms’ Shows Defence Ministry Is Still a Serial Propagandist

By the way, the press release confuses the 2012 Naresh Chandra Committee, which actually gave recommendations in the area, with the 1993 N.N. Vohra Committee, which dealt with the criminalisation of politics.

But more important seems to be a complete absence of understanding of what history is all about. You get a hint, perhaps with the use of the word “compilation” in the press release, implying that all you have to do is to compile “facts”. As E.H. Carr pointed out, history is not just about “facts” but sifting, interpreting and analysing facts on the basis of the expertise of the historian. When writing on any given modern battle, the historian will not be wanting for “facts” which are plentiful; his/her challenge will be to sift through them, select the most relevant and provide a coherent account.

The background

The reason for this development arises from the contorted history of India’s wars of 1962, 1965 and 1971. The History Division of the MoD is an old one and had, after independence, published the history of Operation Polo, the “police action” to liberate Hyderabad in 1948, Operation Vijay to liberate Goa, the History of the Indian armed forces in UN Operations in Congo (1960-63) and that of the Indian Custodian Force in Korea in 1953-4.

All are now out of print. None are officially available online.

The real problem began with the History Division’s work on the 1962, 1965 and 1971 wars. Under the talented team headed by Dr S.N. Prasad, all three war histories were prepared based on declassified documents and records of the day, as well as interviews of participants. The History Division then went through the difficult process of finding approval from various departments. The manuscripts readied for publication were signed off by the then defence secretary N.N. Vohra in 1992, who actually wrote the foreword for all three books.

At this point, however, objections came primarily from the Ministry of External Affairs. It was not too happy with the idea of releasing the 1962 history because relations with China were sensitive. For the same reason it felt that a 1971 war history, too, would be imprudent because of Bangladesh.

So, the government gave the MOD authority to circulate these histories in a limited way to training institutions and higher command levels.

Around 2000 or so, the Times of India obtained the manuscripts and put them on their website from where they were downloaded across the world. Since these were PDFs of ready-to-print manuscripts, scholars around the world have believed that these were actually officially released histories. Today, as far as the academic world is concerned, they are.

And now comes the bizarre part. In 2011 and 2014, S.N. Prasad and U.P. Thapliyal, who had already retired from service, updated and published the histories of the 1965 and 1971 wars. But, though the copyright of the two books is held by the Ministry of Defence, Thapliyal noted in the foreword that the ministry had merely “sponsored” the books, and that they did not reflect the views of the armed forces or the MoD. In other words, we still don’t have the official history of those two wars.

As for the Sino-Indian War of 1962, that remains off-limits for the MoD, though the leaked version continues to be authoritatively cited by scholars around the world.

So, there is nothing particularly unique in what Rajnath Singh has done. The Public Records Act of 1993 had already mandated some of these actions. Most ministries have already created records rooms to transfer older documents. The MEA has tasked former ministry staffers to author a number of authoritative works based on these records. But whether they have transferred those documents to the National Archives or not, is not known.

Also read: Not Just the MoD, the Military’s QR Overreach Is Also Culpable For Impeding Modernisation

One big problem which is mentioned only in passing is declassification. All agencies involved in security – the armed forces, intelligence agencies and so on – have a system of ascending scale of classification (confidential, secret and top secret) by section officers, under secretaries and deputy secretaries and so on. Only the Official Secrets Act of 1923 is clear about what is secret – maps, sketches, codes, passwords, note or document relating to the sovereignty and integrity of India. Needless to say, this does not even begin to meet the requirement of secrets in a digital age.

The government has yet to work out a uniform system for classifying, safeguarding and declassifying national security related information. It needs to set up classification standards and levels of classification, and categorise the classification authority, duration of classification and the process of declassification or downgrading the classification of a document in clear terms.

Having the junior-most person in the hierarchy to declassify documents, as the 1997 rules provide, is a problem. No officer, specially a junior one, would be willing to take the risk of declassifying something really sensitive, even if it is 50 years old, assuming that she or he even understood its importance.

In this era when information is generated in huge volumes, separating wheat from chaff is the key issue. If you have too many secrets floating around, the chances are some will spill out. There is need for an automated process through which documents get downgraded every five years, till they are declassified at 25. Any decision not to automatically downgrade a document should be taken by a small committee and they should record their reasons in writing so that the decision can be reviewed again later.

The government can, if it is wise, begin involving retired officers to aid the process of declassification. Their expertise and domain knowledge would ease the process considerably.

The Wire June 14, 2021

https://thewire.in/security/defence-ministry-war-history-archives-declassify

Have India-China Managed To Convince the World of Peace at Galwan?

It has been a year since the 15 June clash in the Galwan river valley in eastern Ladakh that led to the death of 20 Indian and five Chinese soldiers.

The circumstances of the clash remain murky, but in retrospect, it was a situation that went out of control, rather than any kind of a pre-planned attack. Both sides share the blame for the fracas, though the Chinese had no business to be where they were on the Galwan river valley, an area clearly on the Indian side of the LAC.

The clash reverberated around the world since these were the first casualties in the disputed Sino-Indian border since 1975. The rapid build-up of forces on both sides of the Line of Actual Control and the face-off in the Pangong Tso region in the month before the clash triggered concerns that the two Asian giants could be headed for war.

The enormous interest was manifested by news reports, often based on the analysis of commercial satellite imagery, since it was not possible to send reporters to that remote region of Ladakh. For its part, the government provided little information. 

But in early July, it was revealed that after talks between the National Security Advisers of the two sides, a disengagement had been effected by troops being pulled back 1.5 km each from the site of the Galwan clash.

There was one more flutter at the end of August when the Indian forces occupied the Kailash Heights, adjacent to the Pangong Tso, overlooking the Spanggur Tso and the Chinese positions there. Warning shots were fired in the area a couple of times, but there was no physical clash. Since September 2020, the two sides managed to maintain a tenuous peace and an ongoing dialogue that worked out a disengagement in the Pangong Tso region as well.

Restrained Interference From US, Russia

The Sino-Indian drama played out with the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, was made even more dramatic by the growing and sharp estrangement of the world’s two principal powers, the US and China.

Many have speculated that one of the many triggers that caused the Chinese to move along the LAC was India’s growing friendship and military ties with the US.

So it is not surprising that when the Trump administration went on the attack mode against China in 2020, the Ladakh crisis was bought into the picture by US officials. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused the Chinese of “incredibly aggressive action” in Ladakh and said it was because of the unequalled number of disputes that the Chinese had with other countries.

But, according to an American specialist, Jeff Smith, India requested the US to be circumspect so as not “to feed Chinese propaganda narratives that this is all a component of the China-US rivalry”.

Not surprisingly, Russia, too, played a restrained hand. Speaking just a week after the incident to the media after a Russia-China-India virtual meeting, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that China and India did not need any kind of assistance to resolve their disputes.

A Call for No ‘Nirbharta’ on China

As India and China undertook repeated rounds of military-officer level talks through the second half of 2020, the interest of the international community waned. However, the consequences of the events were visible in the call for aatmnirbharta or self reliance as a means of reducing dependence on China, as well as to enhance the restrictions on Chinese companies in India and FDI from there. Other restrictions were also announced on Chinese technology companies operating in India.

US analysts felt that the developments would push India to double down in its relationship with partners like the US and Australia and was part of the first ministerial meeting of the Quad held in Tokyo in October 2020. Further, New Delhi agreed to include Australia in its annual India-US-Japan trilateral Malabar naval exercises. There was also a sense that the “choices and trade offs” India made could offer opportunities for American companies, if India sought to reduce its dependence on Chinese companies.

Despite these developments, India continued to participate in its other plurilateral arrangements, which also involved China, such as BRICS and the Russia-India-China dialogue, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

China-India Trade Ignored Political Tensions

That the events in eastern Ladakh did not lead to any large-scale disengagement between India and China as is evident form the fact that in 2020 Indian exports to China rose to a record 16 percent to $20.86 billion, though the overall trade was down by 5.6 percent at $87.6 billion, perhaps because of COVID. They brought down the trade deficit to its lowest since 2015.

In the first five months of the year, trade has soared by 70.1 percent in dollar terms to $48.16 billion. In essence, China-India trade seems to have ignored the political tensions arising from the Galwan incident.

The major reason for this peculiar situation is the manner in which India has handled the information on eastern Ladakh events. While it could not avoid discussing Galwan and Pangong Tso where physical clashes occurred, it obfuscated the extent of the crisis from the outset.

What it did do was to immediately build up its forces to match the Chinese deployments, but it adopted what Army Chief M M Naravane recently said was a strategy of dealing with China in a firm but “non-escalatory” manner, with a view of seeking “complete disengagement at all friction points”.

As is well known, Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself denied that any intrusion had taken place in Galwan. What had happened was that Indian forces had repelled an attempted intrusion. Speaking in Parliament in September 2020, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, too, had claimed that attempts at transgression were detected “and consequently responded to appropriately by our armed forces”.

With the Galwan pull back done in July, in early February this year, Indian and Chinese military officers finally succeeded in organising a disengagement in the Pangong Area, where a similar formula was accepted with both forces moving back a mutually agreed distance and leaving the area as a no-patrolling zone. At the time, Rajnath Singh had said that the next meeting would be convened within two days and “address and resolve all other remaining issues”.

The “Remaining Issues...” With China

The big problem is that neither the PM, nor Rajnath Singh, nor the Ministry of Defence has told us what those “remaining issues” are. They have not told us that the Chinese still occupy significant chunks of Indian claimed areas in eastern Ladakh, which have changed the LAC on the ground dramatically. These are —the Depsang Plains, Kugrang river valley adjacent to Hot Springs-Gogra and the Charding Nala, south of Demchok. Here, by intruding into the Indian side of the LAC, the Chinese have prevented Indian border forces from patrolling large chunks of territory they used to patrol earlier.

Senior officers like Army Chief Naravane and Northern Command chief Y K Joshi have claimed that the most serious of these blockades, in the Depsang area, are “legacy” issues, meaning they had been there before the 2020 events. But, writing in the website of the Vivekananda International Foundation, Lt Gen (retd) Rakesh Sharma, who had once commanded the XIV Corps that looks after Ladakh, said that despite huge difficulties, Indian border guards had actually conducted “a minimum of eight to ten patrols in the 2013-2019 period” in this area. According to sources, indeed, the last patrol had taken place in January-February 2020.

Is it surprising, then, that from the point of view of the rest of the world, things appear fine in eastern Ladakh. Pull backs have taken place in the problem areas of Pangong Tso and Galwan Valley and no-patrol zones have been put in place. As for the other places, they have simply not heard about them. 

The Quint June 14, 2021

https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/india-china-america-galwan-clashes-international-interests-border-dispute#read-more#read-more

China on mind, US reboots its priorities

The US President, Joe Biden, has not quite secured his domestic agenda, but he is setting off this week to give shape to his foreign policy. First stop will be the UK, which is hosting the G-7 summit. After that, a hop across the Channel to Brussels, where he will participate in a meeting with NATO partners. Then on June 16, there will be a summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva.

The locus of Biden’s foreign tour is as strong a signal as you can get, that for the present, the trans-Atlantic remains the primary focus of US policy. Biden knows that to meet his key foreign policy goal — outcompeting China on all fronts-he must first repair and strengthen the US itself and revitalise America’s primary alliance network.

In recent months, the US has worked with European allies to sanction both China and Russia — the former on Xinjiang and the latter because of cyber attacks and Ukraine. Biden has also strongly emphasised prioritising democracy and human rights along with issues of trade and security, something that sits well in Brussels.

Russian cyber attacks and other such activities are in some ways an effort by Russia to get the attention of the West and work out a modus vivendi. Putin knows well that the future of Russia lies in its ties with Western Europe, and not China, and the key to that is the US. For the Americans, weakening the emerging Sino-Russian entente is an important goal since their main geopolitical rival of this century is China. The upcoming summit in Geneva could well yield some surprise results. Already, there are signals that the US may be ready to accept the Nord Stream 2 pipeline running from Russia to Germany.

With a revitalised trans-Atlantic relationship as a springboard, Biden hopes to raise the game with China, as well as take up the agenda of climate change. Though his administration's formal China policy is yet to be revealed, the US has signalled that it would involve cooperation with allies on a broad front involving technology, development and connectivity, even while going on the front foot to combat Covid.

In many areas, the administration is building upon and expanding the Trump administration’s sanctions on Chinese entities. In the next phase, a bipartisan Strategic Competition Act will provide hundreds of millions of dollars for the US competitive effort. A complementary Endless Frontier Act will boost technology research to promote US innovation by putting up $100 billion.

On the eve of Biden’s tour, the US declared a donation of 80 million vaccine doses, most of them to the global Covax facility, making it the biggest donor in the world by far. This signals the US return to multilateralism and that it has successfully overcome the Covid pandemic.

In the real world, unexpected events usurp policy goals and no region is more unpredictable here for the US than the Middle-East which has thwarted US attempts to pivot away from the region and “return” to Asia, the most dynamic economic region of the world. The region remains a powder keg, not only on account of the Israel-Palestine issue, but the Saudi-Israeli-UAE strategy of containing Iran.

Where does India fit in here? Remarkably, a recent US poll showed that in April, more Indians had a favourable view of the US (79 per cent) under the Biden administration than the Americans themselves (78). Positive views of the US were up in most of alliance countries, especially Germany, but only in Japan and Italy did they exceed 50 per cent. But it is unlikely that New Delhi can derive any payoff from this. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s recent visit suggested that there is a distinct lack of frisson in US-India ties.

The priority given to India on account of the US Indo-Pacific strategy remains strong in terms of high-level visits and virtual conversations between leaders. There is a solid foundation of defence and security ties built up in the past decade and more. Better US ties with Moscow could ease pressure on New Delhi on account of American sanctions on arms trade with Russia.

As the relative gap between its power and that of China grows, India needs the US to balance China in the South Asia-Indian Ocean Region. The Indian contribution, military or economic, towards a strong American Indo-Pacific strategy appears more nebulous. This is an asymmetry which cannot but have real-life consequences. India should not assume that antipathy to China alone will be the over-riding factor in the US global policy.

Even though the Indian economy is limping, everything looks good on the Indo-US bilateral front where trade in goods and services is flourishing, as is the FDI relationship, even though India’s protectionist turn doesn’t sit well with Washington. But this is small change compared to the US engagement with China. With Trump snapping at his heels, Biden must show results in the next year or so, which would preclude measures against China that could have a blowback on the US.

The recent spectacle of India begging for assistance because of its own bungled response to Covid could not have gone unnoticed in the Administration. New Delhi looked more of a liability than the self-confident player which is needed to boost US policy in the region.

India’s increasing autocratic turn and persecution of Muslims, too, cannot easily be ignored by the US which is critical of China on both those counts. All US administrations balance policy between American interests and values. If India can serve US interests, the values part of the equation can be adjusted.

The Tribune June 8, 2021

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/china-on-mind-us-reboots-its-priorities-265002

Need sooner, not later There’s now a publicity overdrive on the vaccine bonanza headed our way in future

The thought that comes to mind when we think about Prime Minister Modi’s BJP is muscular nationalism, Hindutva, and over-the-top-theatrics. Actually, the defining trait of the government is incompetence. Those other things are merely a cover for ineptitude. The record ranges from misreading and mishandling China, demonetisation, the shoddy GST rollout and slowing economy. But what has really revealed its true incapacity is the handling of the Covid vaccination programme. 

The PM’s virtual address on January 28 to the WEF in Davos was an essay on hubris. He declared that India’s health infrastructure, trained staff and technology application had contained the Covid challenge. Not only had India vaccinated 2.3 million health workers in 12 days, but also planned to vaccinate 300 million older people in the ‘next few months’, and supply vaccines to other countries as part of India’s humanitarian tradition.

At the onset of the pandemic last year, the union government seized the command and control of the Covid response. Lockdowns were enforced and loosened through the mildly menacing Home Ministry circulars. The pain and suffering that migrant workers faced in their sometimes epic journey to reach home was simply ignored. The government also took charge of the national vaccination campaign, creating a National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration to centralise the vaccination process through the CoWin app and dishing out certificates with the Prime Minister’s picture on it.

But no one had done any calculation about the actual number of doses that would be needed in India. The government, dependent on just the Serum Institute and Bharat Biotech, waited till January 2021 to place orders for their vaccines. On May 3, the SII head, Adar Poonawalla, said his company had received orders for 260 million doses, of which 150 million had already been supplied and the company had received an advance for another 110 million doses for the May-July period. Even with the 20 million Bharat Biotech Covaxin doses, these numbers would barely scratch the surface of the country’s requirements.

The second wave has consumed the narrative of bravado and bombast. As people scrambled for beds in hospitals and fought for oxygen cylinders and cremated and disposed of the remains of their near and dear haphazardly, they looked for direction and leadership and there was none.

There were no stern Home Ministry directives, no prime ministerial homilies. The decision to lockdown was now left to the states who were suddenly told that the responsibility of coping with the situation was actually theirs. As the vaccination programme began faltering, rules were changed and states were told to buy their own vaccines from wherever they could.

As the second wave intensified, the pace of vaccinations has faltered on account of vaccine shortage arising from poor decisions of the Central government, which now compounded the problem by opening up vaccines for all adults as of May 1. A government advisory group has since revealed that this was a purely political decision. This led to a huge surge of demand which has sent the vaccination programme into a tailspin — the number of shots declined from an average of 3.6 million a day on April 10 to just about 1.4 million on May 20.

Instead of ‘cooperative federalism’ that we desperately need to deal with the situation, what we have been getting are made-for-TV spectacles where the PM interacts with District Magistrates and Chief Ministers in a one-way monologue where no questions are asked nor answered.

Last Sunday in an interview, the Prime Minister’s Principal Secretary PK Mishra came up with all the usual platitudes and excuses — India has the fastest rate of vaccination, had vaccinated third highest number globally, the slowdown was not policy failure but a consequence of previously stockpiled vaccines running out and so on.

Mishra repeated the boast that India had vaccinated 19 crore people, the equivalent of half the US population. A look at the figures collated by Our World in Data shows, as of May 21, China has administered 483.34 million (48 crore) doses as against India’s 187.89 million (19 crore), nowhere near the PM’s claim of doing 300 million at the WEF meet.

There is now a publicity overdrive on the enormous vaccine bonanza headed our way in the coming months. As Mishra noted, ‘While kicking in with a time lag of a few months, the supply is slated to increase from 7 crore per month in April to 16 crore in July and 25 crore in October.’

This will be of little comfort to those whose near and dear have been dying at the rate of 4,000 per day since mid-May. Possibly a hundred thousand or more will be dead before ‘things kick in with a time lag.’

And all we have is the promise of vast quantities of vaccines in future. We have no way of knowing whether they will arrive, or whether the government which has singularly bungled the vaccination programme so far, can deliver it to the people. Meanwhile, those who will lose a near and dear one while waiting must take it on the chin, this is part of the resilience and positivity expected from people whose country is destined to be a Great Power.

The Tribune May 25, 2021

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/need-sooner-not-later-257879

Without Its Own China Strategy Yet, Biden Administration Maintains Trump's Hardline Stance

According to a recent Pew poll, 53% of Republicans consider China as an “enemy” as against 43% who see them as a “competitor”. Only 20% of Democrats see China as an enemy, as against a majority of 65% who see them as a “competitor.” But the jury is still out on how the US views China.

The Joe Biden administration says that it is in the process of formulating its China strategy. In the meantime, it continues to maintain the hardline stance of the Donald Trump administration. In fact, there is a great deal of pressure from the Republican Party to prevent any significant change of policy or any rollback in the penalties Trump’s team imposed in terms of tariffs and bans on exporting technology.

Pressure is now building up from a section of the Democrats as well. Last week, House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi called for the US and world leaders to boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics. Many feel that she is reflecting the views of the Biden administration, which is keen on not getting outflanked by the Republicans on this issue.

Right now, the only area in which Congress seems to be adopting a bipartisan approach is China. Outcompeting China is an area in which both parties agree. Om April 20, Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, unveiled the “Endless Frontier Act” aimed at promoting domestic critical technologies through basic research.  This is co-sponsored by Republican Senator Todd Young. The anchor of this legislation is a $100 billion funding for the National Science Foundation to create a new technology directorate.

On April 21, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chaired by Democrat Bob Menendez approved the Strategic Competition Act of 2021, which will channel more aid to Africa, Latin America to counter China’s financial aid to these countries, provide greater funding for US tech industries, strengthen the US International Development Finance Corporation to compete against Chinese institutions.

These two Bills are likely to be melded together to make for one comprehensive anti-China legislation, but the support that both Bills have been getting suggests that there will be a strong legislative push to the new US policy on China.

Michael D. Swaine, the well known American Sinologist, has called these moves a “de facto declaration of cold war on China by the US Congress”. Criticising what he says was the “demonisation” of China, he has called on the Congress and the Biden administration to take up “a more balanced, fact-based approach to China” that not only looks at the threats and challenges, but also the opportunities that China presents. More than anything else, he believes that such legislation could put off US allies and friends who will feel that the US is pushing for a “win or lose cold war with China”.

Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Photo: Reuters/Brian Snyder

Decoupling cost the US too

Though the Trump administration shifted US policy from engagement to competition with China, there has been criticism that the Trump approach was confusing and incomplete. After all, in January 2020, the US and China signed a significant trade deal which only came apart on account of the stress generated in US-China relations because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Actually, the Trump “decoupling” cost the US some.

In a recent article, former US diplomat Chas Freeman noted that American farmers have lost most of their $24 billion Chinese market, US companies have had to cut profits and wages and raise prices for American consumers, and almost no jobs have been re-shored back to the US. By 2025, the US can expect job losses topping 320,000 and a GDP that is $1.6 trillion less than what it would have been otherwise because of its China restrictions.

A recent report of the Rhodium Group says that FDI between the US and China fell to $15.9 billion on account of the COVID-19 pandemic and the US-China tensions. Interestingly, completed Chinese FDI to the US showed a slight rise to $7.2 billion in 2020 from $6.3 billion in 2019. Chinese venture capital also showed a slight increase to $3.2 billion in 2020 from $2.3 billion in 2019. As far as the US is concerned, both its FDI and venture capital to China declined.

For the present, the Biden administration is maintaining the restrictive policies imposed in 2020, but a great deal depends on how the China issue is playing out domestically in the US. In early April, the US Department of Commerce added seven Chinese supercomputing companies to its Entity List. The Biden team has called for a more systematic and coordinated action with allies to screen investments from China, impose export controls and consider human rights issues. This could actually see more predictable restraints and some loosening up of investment and trade issues in non-sensitive areas.

So far, the Biden inclination has been to see China policy in terms of strategic competition with China. The joint statement following the visit of Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to Washington DC in mid-April was important for their call for “peace and stability” in the Taiwan Straits, but also the decision to invest together in areas like 5G, AI, quantum computing, genomics and semiconductor supply chains.

The US also categorically assured the Japanese that the US-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security applied to the Senkaku islands, which the Chinese claim, and this guarantee includes the entire gamut of US capabilities, “including nuclear.”

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga in Tokyo, Japan, May 7, 2021. Photo: Hiro Komae/Pool via Reuters

But the big challenge could well be Taiwan, with American military leaders saying that they believe that Beijing could attempt a forcible take over of the island, sooner, rather than later. Though these views have been dismissed as alarmist, they do provide a flavour of the situation today.

China has itself to blame

In great measure, China itself is to blame for its predicament. Take the case of the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) with Europe. This was agreed to at the end of 2020 despite the problems in Hong Kong and the criticism of Chinese actions in Xinjiang and done over US objections.

But the Chinese decision to sanction a number of European MPs and scholars in March 2021, has gotten the EU Parliament’s back up. The Chinese action was ostensibly in reaction to the European/American sanctions on a number of Xinjiang officials. But where the Europeans targeted relatively junior Xinjiang officials, the Chinese went for the jugular and sanctioned Reinhard Butikofer, a prominent member of the Greens Party and four other Members of European Parliament, 2 Dutch, 1 Belgian and one Lithuanian MPs and some well-known scholars and research institutes.

As a result of this, the European Parliament has suspended the process of ratifying the CAI. More trouble could be headed China’s way as polls suggest that the Greens could play an important role in the German government after the September elections. Observers say that there is a perceptible hardline shift in European views of China.

Tensions swirl around the Indo-Pacific region and it is up to responsible leadership in Washington and Beijing to ensure that they do not reach the point of confrontation and war. The fate of Hong Kong has served as a warning as to how things can change in the region. Taiwan has been facing increasing Chinese assertiveness and could compel the United States to take a stand, though as observers have noted, as of now the position remains ambiguous.

The Wire May 24, 2021

https://thewire.in/world/without-its-own-china-strategy-yet-biden-administration-maintains-trumps-hardline-stance