Quite the flop show: At every level, the handling of Covid situation has been far from satisfactory

The Covid-19 pandemic has been compared to war. But to go by the performance of our society, leaders and those responsible for its governance, we would cut a sorry figure, were we to, indeed, face the destruction and disruption of a modern high-intensity war. For millions of Indians, the country has regressed into the 18th century, with its attendant anarchy and deprivation. People have been reduced to penury, forced to march across the country on empty stomach, with wives and children in tow. The Centre has simply left the people to fend for themselves, much as the powerless Moghul emperor of the time.

Our politicians and bureaucracy have revealed that they have lost touch with the real India. When PM Modi struck fast and hard on

March 24 by declaring a shutdown, it was seen as another of his famous ‘masterstrokes’. A sudden decision, with little or no consultation, and aimed at inducing ‘shock and awe’.

On March 25, factories ground to a halt, crops were left to wither, leaving tens of millions who lived hand to mouth, wondering where their next meal would come from. Some were hundreds of kilometres away from home. No provision had been made to pay and feed them through this period.

Those who planned it did not consult the states, neither did they seek any feedback; that is not their style. It is only at the PM’s third meeting with the CMs a month and a half after the lockdown that all participants will get a chance to speak.

Going by the word of his NITI Aayog experts, Modi probably believed that a draconian lockdown would break the cycle of infection by mid-May and the PM then would have been seen as the saviour who had defeated Covid. Now, with the infection growth rate rising from 4.7 to 5.5 per cent, the problem has revealed a complexity that requires much more than the theatrics of ringing bells and lighting candles.

Officials advising the government overlooked the consequences of locking down the country with no notice. Confronted with harrowing scenes of migrants, they turned a blind eye to it: ‘As of 11 am this March 31st, no one is on the road. They have been taken to the nearest available shelter,’ Solicitor General Tushar Mehta grandiosely declared to the Supreme Court on behalf of the government.

Only when state governments started making plans to evacuate people that, a full month later, on May 1, the Centre agreed to let the Railways run trains for evacuation. Characteristically even this operation has been marked by chaos and incompetence, cash-strapped migrants, some who had sold even their mobile phones to survive, were asked to pay for the passage back home.

The bureaucracy’s functioning has been marked by confused and confusing directives. One called for the reopening of industries, but ensured that would not happen by warning that CEOs would be held responsible for any Covid infection. Another demanded written explanations from medical professionals who caught the infection.

And then, there was the idea of red, orange and green zones. The original idea depended on its timing. Had zoning been done at the outset, things may have been different. But by the time the Home Ministry bought the idea, three weeks late, the system had already crashed. The crowning tragi-comedy has the inability of state babus to manage the reopening of the liquor shops in an orderly way. The overwhelming impression of the working of the government under Covid is the pleasure the bureaucracy and the police seem to be deriving from governing by fear — on the anvil of the disease, they are able to hammer the people with the danda and the fatwa.

The government has so far refused to unbelt any money to deal with this mass misery. Even foodgrain from the 77 million tonne reserve has not been distributed, even though some of it is rotting. The $22 billion relief package in March was merely accelerated disbursement of expenditure planned for in the Budget. The additional expenditure of $12 billion, 0.4 per cent of the GDP, is among the lowest offered in the world.

No one knows what the PM Cares Fund is doing, even as the people who it is meant for are suffering here and now. In all likelihood, the government is waiting for that magic moment to deliver another masterstroke, but by that time it will be too late.

In the meantime, some black humour: UP and MP have abolished most labour laws to attract business from China. A region that rivals Chad and Congo for backwardness and has no infrastructure to speak of, is going to compete with Southeast Asia and Mexico?

Policy makers are thinking along established lines — control inflation, keep the fiscal deficit within a narrow range and investors will flock to India. But we’re already in a war and all the rules must be thrown out of the window. Hardworking people, who kept the economy going, have become beggars, refugees in their own land. Hundreds of thousands of businesses may never reopen. We are hurtling to a future which we can only faintly grasp. This is not a time to be taken in by your own slogans, nostrums and self-image.

Tribune May 12, 2020

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/quite-the-flop-show-83558?f

The Throttling of Internet Speeds in Kashmir is Aimed at Fighting Ideas, Not Terrorism

RIGHTS

SECURITY

02/MAY/2020

The Jammu and Kashmir administration has opposed the plea raised by the Foundation of Media Professionals in its petition to the Supreme Court that in the light of the COVID-19 epidemic, the throttling of  internet speeds in Jammu and Kashmir is depriving people there of access to education, healthcare facilities and justice.

After banning the internet in Jammu and Kashmir for approximately six months beginning August 5, 2019, the Centre now allows access but with speeds much slower than what people in the rest of India enjoy. Mobile internet is restricted to 2G speed.

Under the constitution, every Indian has, or is supposed to have, freedom of speech and expression and the right to carry on any trade or business. In Anuradha Bhasin, the Supreme Court this January said:

“We declare that the freedom of speech and expression and the freedom to practice any profession or carry on any trade, business or occupation over the medium of internet enjoys constitutional protection under Article 19(1)(a) and Article 19(1)(g). The restriction upon such fundamental rights should be in consonance with the mandate under Article 19 (2) and (6) of the Constitution, inclusive of the test of proportionality.”

Yet, the Jammu and Kashmir administration – by which we really mean the Narendra Modi government operating through the Union Ministry of Home Affairs – has told the apex court in an affidavit that citizens do not have a fundamental right to access the internet for any purpose. No doubt there will be arguments for or against the issue within the framework of the laws of the land and its constitution but the court made it clear in January that as far as it is concerned, the internet is only a medium of communication – the way newspapers, TV, books etc are – and that only reasonable restrictions as envisaged by Article 19 (2) and (6) may be placed on this freedomThe court was being logical by insisting there cannot be two yardsticks for different mediums of communication. After all, what is the internet all about ? It is a platform to access information published on, or to use services provided by, websites that put out everything from news, information, music, educational lessons and commerce to games and even pornography. As a technology, it is somewhat like printing or canvas and paint. Printing technology itself is value neutral, but you can publish books on everything under the sun, and they can be religious texts, poems, novels, pornography, art, mathematics and so on. Paint and canvas can be used to create all kinds of artwork.

Also Read: ‘An Hour to Download ICU Guidelines’: Amid COVID-19, Kashmir Doctors Struggle With Slow Internet

Can printing be banned, or as in this case, downgraded, say, to permit only the use of woodblocks, because printing presses can also be used to produce “subversive” literature? The moveable type printing introduced by Johannes Gutenberg in 1450 led to the spread of printing across Europe and the world.   Before Gutenberg, there were just about 30,000 books in all of Europe, but by 1500 there were anywhere between 10-20 million and by 1600, 150-200 million. These books created a torrent of ideas and knowledge that helped spread the Renaissance and led to the Reformation.

Many of the ideas were deemed subversive at the time, certainly when it came to enabling people to read religious texts themselves instead of them being mediated by a priestly class. Printing enabled the emergence of an intellectual class that was able to expand the horizons of knowledge. The European monarchs were helpless before this technology, but the Ottomans felt they were not: “In 1485, Sultan Bayezid II  issued a royal decree prohibiting the use of printed books. A similar decree was issued in 1515 by Sultan Selim I”.

Also Read: Internet ‘Not a Fundamental Right’, J&K Tells SC as Students’ Careers Hang in Balance

Philosophically, that is about where the J&K administration seems to be pitching its claims: 4G can transmit ideas and views at an exponential scale compared to 2G, so it should be banned.

The reply of the administration, somewhat conveniently, seeks to tell the court that terrible things have been happening in the state and therefore there is need for such draconian action. It spoke of 41,866 people having been killed during the course of the insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir, including 14,000 civilians, 5292 security personnel and 22536 terrorists. The figures are probably an underestimate of the number of civilians killed, but that is not the issue.

The point is that since 2006 or so, there has been a sharp decline in the level of violence in the state. There was much more violence in J&K when the level of internet technology was 2G, and much more before that, when there was no internet and all communication was over land lines.

This is borne out by figures that are available in the South Asia Terrorism Portal. If there has been a bump since 2016, it has been because of the policies of the government which undertook ‘Operation All Out’ to kill all terrorists and militants, rather than focus on a balanced policy of making a political outreach that could have led to the end of the violence.

Thereafter, the government has egregiously deprived Jammu and Kashmir of statehood and autonomy under Article 370. Ironically, now there is talk of extending Article 371 like protections to the state.

So, the degrading of internet speeds is not motivated by security conditions in the state, because as we have said, the level of violence had already come down, and what was needed was a political outreach – but not of the kind that was eventually undertaken.

Also Read: India Must Treat the Internet as a Public Utility During COVID 19, and After

The J&K administration’s claim that social media is being used as an instrument of war is akin to the Catholic Church maintaining the Index Librorum Prohibitorum – an index containing thousands of book titles and blacklisted publications because they were viewed as being subversive to the Church.

Let us be clear: the J&K administration is not fighting terrorists through its ban on high-speed internet. What it is actually fighting are ideas. Because if they were fighting terrorists, an unrestricted internet is an ideal place to track subversive activities. Indian intelligence agencies have the means and the ability to track such traffic though they are oddly enough depriving themselves of invaluable intelligence by worrying about what the J& K administration calls “shadow handles” .

The only conclusion we can arrive at from this is that the purpose of the exercise of keeping the Internet at the 2G level is to punish the Kashmiri people and deprive them of the means to avail of the freedom of speech, expression the right to carry on any trade or occupation — as they have the right to do under the Constitution of India.

The Wire May 2, 2020

https://thewire.in/rights/the-throttling-of-internet-speeds-in-kashmir-is-aimed-at-fighting-ideas-not-terrorism

The Coronavirus Conspiracy Theory Doesn't Add Up. It's Also a Self-Defeating Diversion.

On April 30, the Office of the Director National Intelligence of the United States noted in a statement that it was investigating whether “the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”

The statement also concurred “with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not man made or genetically modified.” In short, the apex intelligence community body seemed to be saying that while the virus did originate in China, there was no direct evidence that it had escaped Wuhan’s research facilities.

This week, the US government’s top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, has once again reiterated that it was unlikely the coronavirus originated in a Wuhan lab. Scientific evidence, he said was “very, very strongly leaning towards” the fact that virus “evolved in nature and then jumped species.” Neither does Fauci accept the view that someone found the coronavirus in the wild and brought it to a lab, from where it accidentally escaped.

According to a report on Tuesday, intelligence shared within the Five Eyes alliance – the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada – has indicated that it is “highly unlikely” the coronavirus was spread because of an accident in a laboratory, but rather originated in a Wuhan market. Clearly, the US president is not yet able to convince even his closest allies that the virus spread was the result of a lab accident.

The Five Eyes report and Fauci’s statement came a day after President Donald Trump ’s townhall meeting at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC where the issue of Chinese culpability again came up. He said that he expected to get a “very conclusive” report soon as to what happened in Wuhan. Pressed on whether there was something nefarious in the Chinese behaviour, Trump said “I think they made a horrible mistake and they didn’t want to admit it…. They tried to cover it.” He went on to imply that having been hit by the coronavirus, China then acted in a way that ensured its spread globally.

The difference between the ODNI and its ultimate boss, the American President, marks the difference between a professional agency – one that coordinates the work of 17 different US spy agencies – and a politician who is up for re-election and is using the “escaped virus” thesis as what is termed in American football a “Hail Mary” manoeuvre.

The standard narrative has  been that the virus originated in an animal and seafood market some 30 kms away from the  Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) where the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory is housed. Speaking to Fox News on April 15, Pompeo remarked that the wet market and the WIV were a “handful of miles away,” and that the US was “working diligently to figure it out.”

Subsequently, right-wing American publications and some tabloids began to run stories claiming that the outbreak originated in the lab. More extreme ones like the Washington Times even claimed in late January that the coronavirus may have originated in a lab linked to China’a biowarfare programme.

The bioweapon story was squashed in mid-March when Nature published  “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2”,  noting that the COVID-19 pneumonia originated in SARS-CoV-2, the technical name for the novel coronavirus, and was the seventh coronavirus known to infect humans such as SARS and MERS and others. The authors noted, “[Our] analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.” Washington Times took back its claim on March 25 and that is when the accidental release story gained traction in the US.

By and large, scientists have stuck to the belief that the coronavirus is a natural phenomenon, and not something cultivated in a lab. While the virus’s origin still eludes scientists, “the evidence that does exist paints a consistent picture  of a wild virus.” What many scientists worry about is the politically charged atmosphere which would make future international scientific collaboration difficult.

A detailed  analysis in NPR has suggested that “there is virtually no chance that the new coronavirus was released as a result of a laboratory accident.” After consulting 10 leading scientists who do the work of collecting samples of viruses from animals and understand how lab accidents happen, the NPR concluded that “an accidental release would have required a remarkable series of coincidences and deviations from well established experimental protocols.”

Yet, accidents happen, and Kelsey Piper has detailed in Vox how dangerous viruses and bacteria have escaped in the lab time and again. The report detailed how small pox leaked in a lab in Birmingham Medical School and killed a photographer, it listed a number of other accidents in laboratories. There have been serious incidents in many US labs, as well as in other countries with poor training and slack oversight being a major cause of them.

The experts NPR consulted said they believe the virus was transmitted between animals and humans in nature, much as the way it happened in the case of Ebola or SARS. Just exactly how it transmitted from nature to humans remains a mystery, though bats are suspect, having been carriers for SARS and MERS. Further, the scientists noted that  the protocols used require a deactivation of the virus before they were worked upon and in any case, the work is done in biosafety cabinets.

But all this has not stopped all manner of speculation. For example Fox News  has claimed that it did originate in a lab, not as a bioweapon, but because China was trying to show it was as good, if not better than the US in identifying and combating viruses. In the process, there had been an accident and citing intelligence sources, the channel said that the first bat-to-human transmission took place in the lab and “patient zero” worked in the laboratory.

There have been other explorations of this theme such as one in the Washington Post which suggested that there could be another culprit, the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, which is just half a kilometre from the market. The CDC, which did deal with bats, is not as secure a facility as the National Biosafety Lab.

By their own admission, the US, and presumably other intelligence agencies, are continuing efforts to assess whether the virus may have inadvertently escaped in a laboratory. No specific evidence has emerged to support the theory, the Chinese government has denied it, but the issue has a salience in the US where it is being used as political football in an election year.

Other issues, too, have emerged, suggesting why we need more information on the subject. For example, the coronavirus came to New York from Europe, not China according to researchers in Northeastern University. This raises questions about Trump’s boast that he had almost pre-emptively  banned travel from China on February 2, but he did not do so for Europe till March 13 and so the infection travelled comfortably for more than a month across the Atlantic.

More intriguing is  a recent report based on a study by Institut Pasteur suggesting that the outbreak in France was not imported from China, but from a locally circulating strain of unknown origins. Were it to be established that the virus existed in France or elsewhere before it was discovered in China, it would have huge implications for the current debate, as well as future course of action.

The world most certainly needs to know how the virus originated and how it spread, and whether or not there was an unconscionable delay on the part of China in alerting the world to its spread.  But this should not be because it wants to soak China for trillions of dollars, but because it would want to prevent a recurrence and develop common protocols to deal with what appears to be a disease that may be with us for a while.

Unfortunately, by deciding that China is a criminal in advance, as vociferous sections of the American opinion have, they have ensured Beijing will not, and cannot, participate in the process. Without Chinese cooperation, we are unlikely to get an answer and even the best intelligence tradecraft is not sufficient to do the needful by itself.

One way out would be for a global  inquiry into the  spread of COVID-19, the steps taken, or not taken by various governments—China, US, Italy, Spain, UK and so on. This could perhaps be more useful  in aiding the global community to move forward, rather than in the self-defeating exercise on trying to pin the blame on China, especially since there is no way of examining the issues without Beijing ‘s cooperation.

The Wire, May 6 2020

https://thewire.in/world/the-coronavirus-conspiracy-theory-doesnt-add-up-its-also-a-self-defeating-diversion

Putting the blocks on China

The government has issued rules to screen foreign direct investments (FDI) from neighbouring nations. This is a too-clever-by-half way of blocking Chinese investments, but even so, action was timely and well-intentioned. There is need to protect the fire sales of corporate assets in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. But focusing on China was not a good idea. After all, what difference does it make if a predatory investor is German, American, Chinese or Singaporean?

Restricting investment in strategically important areas is already established policy. It covers things like defence, railways, atomic energy, space, broadcasting, and so on. In 2010, BSNL barred Chinese companies from bidding in its tenders covering the northern and eastern zones. Subsequently, rules were put in place for security clearance for equipment originating in China. Earlier this year, the DoT got the right to bar Chinese firms from government telecom tenders.

But a great deal of Chinese investment in India is not in strategic sectors but in autos, pharmaceuticals and even companies like Ola and Paytm. The irony is that Chinese FDI has been coming into India in ever larger volumes ever since PM Modi came to power. According to a paper by Ananth Krishnan for Brookings, till that point, total Chinese investment was of the order of $1.6 billion. By 2017, this had risen to $8 billion, not accounting for investment coming in through entities in Singapore.

Chinese companies had earlier been investing in infrastructure, including railway equipment and steel, and power. Indeed, Krishnan points out that from a one-way dependency on China for telecom equipment, semiconductor devices, antibiotics and active pharmaceutical ingredients, the pattern of Chinese trade and investment has been changing.

The post-2014 investment has been in tech startups, pharma, renewables, like solar and wind energy, and consumer goods. Another major area has been automobiles, where the Chinese company SAIC, with its MG motors brand, has invested big and has bigger plans to focus on electrical vehicles as well.

Chinese giants Alibaba and Tencent have been active in 2016-17. The former took minority stakes in Paytm, Snapdeal and Big Basket. Tencent took even bigger stakes in transport, food delivery, education and health sectors, and put down serious money in Ola, Flipkart, learning app Byju’s, and healthcare startup Practo. The Chinese have been dominant players in the mobile phone market, with Xiaomi taking the lead. The company has also spread its money on more than a hundred startups.

Clearly, what Krishnan reveals is that there is a huge space between investments that can affect Indian security, and those that can enhance Indian well-being, through investments, jobs and consumer products.

The problem in a lot of commentary that we see in the Indian media on China is tinged by Sinophobia. China is a neighbouring country with whom we have a disputed border and which uses our estrangement with Pakistan against us. But we also have a cooperative relationship with the country, marked by our membership of BRICS, the SCO and the Asia Infrastructure Development Bank (AIIB), and so on. In recent years, PM Modi has cultivated a special relationship with China’s President Xi Jinping, marked by the informal summits at Wuhan and Mamallapuram, that the leaders have now institutionalised.

Currently, an anti-China mood has gripped the US, which is in considerable measure itself to blame for it. Between 1980 and 2010, it convinced itself that China was on its way to becoming an open, and even democratic society. Ties with China hugely enriched its multinationals, but did not trickle down to society. But their own missteps—the hugely expensive wars of the last two decades, and a refusal to invest in education, healthcare and basic research has now come to haunt them.

The US has shifted its approach to China, but it is not something which has any lessons for us. Our problems with China have a dynamic of their own, and we have the ability to deal with them.

More important, our national aim is different from theirs: The US seeks to preserve its global primacy, while China wants to shake it. We are not in that league. At present, we can have only one national goal—to end the impoverishment and deprivation of hundreds of millions of our citizens.

For this, we need investment and investment, along with trade, trade and more trade. Yes, we need a secure periphery, but though we have our difficulties with China and Pakistan, neither is an existential threat to us.

Even so, the government is right to ring-fence sectors which it deems important for security. But that still leaves a vast area in which Chinese FDI can aid our project of national transformation. This should not be a matter of ego. India and China are no longer competitors in the economic field. Unlike the situation in 1980, China’s GDP and its trade volume today is several times ours.

Take FDI. Despite poor relations with the US, China still managed to get $204 billion in 2019 as compared to $ 42 billion that we got. China sent out FDI worth $97 billion in 2018, not counting the $ 75 billion that went out from Hong Kong. As a manufacturing superpower and as a trading nation, China has a vast pool of experience which can benefit us.

Chinese companies will profit from their investments, but don’t forget, in investing in India, they are the ones who are risking serious money. We still retain sovereign control over on what and how it is spent.

Tribune April 28, 2020

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/putting-the-blocks-on-china-77178

Darwinian world order: 2008 was different, there was global cooperation and no blame game about subprime origins

In June 2003, when Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s delegation arrived in Beijing, the bustling city was eerily quiet, with hotels, restaurants and roads empty. The SARS epidemic was peaking and Beijing remained in the list of “affected areas”. The Chinese were visibly grateful for the visit whose consequences were far reaching. It laid the foundations of Sino-Indian economic relations and a fast track to resolve their border dispute. The two countries grew sharply in the next decade and even rode out the 2008 economic crisis. That they did not resolve their border issue is another story.

This segued into an era of political calmness of leaders like Manmohan Singh, Hu Jintao and Barack Obama. There was no blame game about the subprime origins of the 2008 recession, instead an atmosphere of cooperation led to accords on diverse issues like climate change and Iran’s nuclear problem. The global trading order evolved in new directions with TPP. The world has taken a different tack today. As the Covid pandemic kills by the thousands and brings the world economy to its knees, it’s each nation for itself, global leadership is marked by its absence.

In the past decade we have seen China militarise the South China Sea, Russia invade Crimea, plus the US demolish international accords, walk away from TPP and attack international institutions like WTO and WHO. But most worrisome now is the incipient conflict between the US and China, whose fallout will affect the world.

The US under President Trump believes that Beijing is bent on replacing its primacy as the world’s leading military and economic power. Actually, the US is itself responsible for its relative decline through wars in the Middle East. But what is really sapping US strength is internal division.  NYT has shown that while US GDP rose 79% since 1980 after adjusting for inflation and population growth, the after tax incomes of its rich increased 420% but those of the bottom and middle rose only 20% and 50%.

The political consequence of this was Donald Trump. In his policies against immigration, globalisation and China, he has spread the blame everywhere except where it really lies: the narcissistic ruling class of the US. This has failed the country, as well as the world, which depends on US leadership at times like this.

Even so, the American decline has been only relative. US GDP per capita is around $65000 while China’s is around $9500. As for military expenditure, China’s $250 billion pales before America’s $649 billion in 2018.  Beijing is a long way away from having the capacity to replace the US as the global hegemon.

Given their own shoddy handling of the Covid outbreak, Trump and the Republicans believe they must demonise China to win the November elections. Leave alone the Phase I trade deal, Trump could, under pressure from the Biden campaign, double down on measures he has been taking  on 5G and proscribe trade in other areas related to Beijing’s  Made in China 2025 project – robotics, AI, electrical vehicles, green energy, aerospace, power, pharmaceuticals etc.  China would be hurt badly but coming on top of the Covid crash, it could have a devastating ripple effect not just in East and Southeast Asia but the world.

Unlike SARS, Covid has accentuated the negatives of the global order with consequences still unfolding. In the US alone 26 million people have lost their jobs, across the world it could bring mass starvation and the impoverishment of hundreds of millions who made it out of poverty in the last two decades.  It has doubled down on the Darwinian world Trump has made, where survival is only for the fittest. The Chinese will bully their South China Sea neighbours, even while being bullied by the US, and President Putin will go on with his games in Ukraine. As for the small and the weak, they’ll have to learn to swim with the tide or go under.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/darwinian-world-order-2008-was-different-there-was-global-cooperation-and-no-blame-game-about-subprime-origins/

Times of India April 25, 2020

Coronavirus Has Made China’s Diplomats Turn Into ‘Wolf Warriors’

In 2015, Wu Jing—a Chinese martial artist, film star and director—produced Wolf Warrior about an elite Special Forces unit. Simply put, the film was Rambo with Chinese characteristics. In the spectacularly successful Wolf Warrior II, made in 2017, the storyline moved abroad to Africa. Playing on  the theme of aggressive Chinese nationalism, it became the highest grossing film in China and has been the highest grossing non-English film worldwide.

In 2020, the ‘Wolf Warrior’ has been reborn as the new kind of a Chinese diplomat, patriotic, aggressive and ready to go head to head with anyone to defend the country.

Rise of the Chinese ‘Wolf Warrior’ Diplomat

The earlier breed of Chinese diplomats were usually known for their conservative low profile approach, in keeping with Deng Xiaoping’s 24 character strategy of hiding the country’s abilities and biding its time.

The increasing tensions between the US and China has, according to the Global Times, forced China into using a ‘Wolf Warrior’ style diplomacy—pushed by a  new breed of Chinese diplomats who are “increasingly more strident and combative.” It marks, says the Communist Party of China(CPC) owned newspaper, the end of an age “when China can be put in a submissive position.”

Even so, the Global Times claims that their actions and statements, often using platforms like Twitter which are not available in China, as  a defensive and restrained response to the West’s effort “in smearing China’s virus fight and its cooperation with other countries and world organisations.”

‘Wuhan Virus’ and the Awakening of the ‘Wolf’

Not surprisingly, the designation of the virus as “China virus” or “Wuhan virus” triggered a tweet storm from the Chinese diplomats.  Not all the tweets were in the category of promoting conspiracies about the American origins of the virus.

Among the ‘Wolf Warriors’ who sprang into the breach in mid-March was the spokesman of the foreign ministry Zhao Lijian who in early March, infamously accused the United States military of introducing the coronavirus infection in Wuhan. He continued the ‘fight’ for weeks.

In the fourth week of March, the Chinese Embassy to France posted a series of tweets claiming that the US had covered up a coronavirus outbreak in 2019 as flu cases. In another post, it attacked France for letting older people die in retirement homes.

BRI and More: Trade Sets the Tone of Diplomacy

The coronavirus pandemic provides a perfect template for the ‘Wolf Warrior’ diplomat. The bungled initial handling of the outbreak by China and the increasingly strident criticism coming from the US, required an aggressive response from China to repair its image globally.

One part of the campaign has featured aggressive posturing, while the other a new Health Silk Road diplomacy that has seen test kits, masks, ventilators and other medical supplies provided to over 100 countries around the world. Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) targets like Italy, Serbia, Iran, Pakistan, Venezuela, and some Asian countries also received contingents of medical experts to helpIn the last three years, as the US and China crossed each other in the trade war, the tone of Beijing’s diplomacy began to change, in considerable measure because of the BRI.

The European Union leadership has been wary of China wooing the Central and East European nations through the 17+1 grouping. It is not an accident that Chinese aid has gone to Italy which was the first major EU country to support the BRI, or Serbia which attacked the EU for banning the export of medical equipment and hailed Chinese supplies that it got subsequently.

Twitter is the Battlefield of China’s Wolf Warriors

An interesting feature of the ‘Wolf Warrior’ is the aggressive use of platforms like Twitter which are not available in China.  According to the South China Morning Post, Chinese state-run media outlets have “at least 115 identifiable Twitter accounts belonging to diplomats, embassies and consulates.”  The phenomenon is fairly recent with many of the accounts being opened just last year. To an extent, the Chinese may be influenced by how Trump successfully uses Twitter to evade responsibility and purvey falsehood.

In a tweet tackling the issue of the delay in informing the world of the Covid outbreak, chief spokeswoman Hua said “China has been updating the US on the cornonavirus and its response since Jan 3. And now blame China for delay? Seriously?”

In another Tweet, Ambassador Xu Hong in the Netherlands, accused Trump of racism in ignoring “the great effort and sacrifice made by the Chinese people!”

Earlier this month, the Twitter account of the Chinese embassy in Sri Lanka was suspended for a while for violating Twitter rules. The embassy had got into a bitter exchange of words with Twitter users after being accused of negligence in the spread of coronavirus.

For China, Coronavirus is Not the Only Issue

The coronavirus is not the only issue that has led to the emergence of the Wolf Warrior. The US China trade war, the issue of detention camps in Xinjiang and, above all, the Hong Kong disturbances have put Beijing on the backfoot. The strong support that the Hong Kong protestors got from the West led to a strong push-back from Chinese diplomats. Chinese diplomats used speech platforms, press briefings and opeds in newspapers to put across the Chinese point of view which was essentially that the local government was handling things to the best of its abilities and foreign interference was complicating things. The Chinese ambassador to India Sun Weidong used the Indian media on several occasions to convey China’s official position on the Hong Kong protests.

The tone of this new Chinese diplomacy was set last year by Hua Chunying, who at the time of her promotion as the Chief Spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, called for Chinese diplomats to be more assertive, especially in the face of adversity. In a front page article of Study Times, the flagship of the CPC’s Central Party School, she  called on Chinese diplomats for more effectively and aggressively telling the China story, to get the message across to the world.

China’s Diplomacy Also Has Home Audience

‘Wolf Warrior’ diplomacy is as much about messaging at home as abroad. China has a limited number of Twitter users, but the message being put out aligns itself with the domestic narrative that Beijing will not bow to international bullying. Some of it, of course, is about promoting the careers of the younger Chinese diplomats, but some of it is the old tactic of using offensive tactics to defend the indefensible.

Given the devastation caused by the coronavirus people are unlikely to be carried away by tales of Chinese generosity. Even if they do not blame the Chinese people as such,  they are not unaware that the virus did originate in China and that there are questions about the initially bungled response of the authorities.

By targeting the outsider or someone else for your troubles, the ‘Wolf Warrior’ approach, whether by the Chinese or others, is likely to promote xenophobia and nationalism. Across the world it has been seen in discrimination against Africans in China, Muslims in India, and in attacks on Asian Americans, mainly Chinese in the United States.

Quint April 20, 2020 https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/china-diplomat-coronavirus-india-foreign-policy-trump-wuhan