No progress has been made on disputes along the Line of Actual Control since India and China held the 19th round of Corps Commander-level talks in August. A Chinese expert said the 2023 Camp David agreement is the ‘first shot for a new Cold War’. Beijing launched new exercises around Taiwan but this time no deadline has been set. Chinascope examines the world developments between the Camp David agreement and the BRICS summit.
China over the week
India and China have said they are trying to resolve the border stand-off in a “forward-looking manner” after the 19th round of Corps Commander-level talks. But the relatively positive tone of the statement has more to do with the interests of both sides in letting their leaders hold the upcoming BRICS and G20 meetings.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the Indian Army held the talks over two days from 13 to 14 August.
“The two sides exchanged views in an open and forward-looking manner and agreed to maintain the momentum of communication and dialogue through military and diplomatic channels to resolve remaining issues as soon as possible,” read the joint statement.
China’s President Xi Jinping is set to attend the 15th BRICS summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, from 22 to 24 August. Chen Xiaodong, China’s ambassador to South Africa, has confirmed that the two sides will hold direct talks during the meeting.
For Beijing, BRICS and G20 are important forums where Xi would like his civilisational and geopolitical ideas to reverberate. A conciliatory joint statement with India was a small prize for Beijing. But it’s hard to tell what New Delhi received in return besides some reassurance of confidence-building measures. If we are taking past stand-offs as a playbook to resolve the current one, we are making a blunder. The geopolitical context of US-China relations is entirely different now.
India and China also held Major General-level talks at Daulat Beg Oldie (DBO) and Chushul, Ladakh, on 18 August But the Chinese side hasn’t confirmed what happened at these talks.
With the joint statement, Beijing may have created room for Xi’s participation in the BRICS and G20 meetings but let’s not forget that PLA hasn’t moved an inch back.
Is Xi’s attendance at BRICS and G20 summits the price New Delhi is willing to pay for its peace and security? The transaction yet again favours Beijing as it gets to assert its presence in the emerging economies, sidelining India’s influence.
The two military-level talks may have allowed the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Xi, but there is no assurance that Beijing has any plan to pull back its forces from Depsang and Demchok.
The discussions about confidence-building between the two forces at the Major General
-level talks must be followed by disengagement in the two areas before the two sides can discuss the next steps.
New Delhi must realise that seeking a short-term reprieve through talks will not bring long-term peace with China. Not when Beijing is training the next generation of soldiers to face India.
If our diplomacy targets merely event management, we will lose our place in the world order even if Beijing offers minor concessions on the border stand-off.
Amid all this, the Chinese state media continues to promote ideal PLA soldiers to defend the border with India. Among them is Aydın Tursunbek, a PLA medical doctor of Kazakh origin, who speaks both Hindi and English.
Aydin, called the first-generation minority leader of Xi’s new China, is at the forefront of defending China’s borders. He is a deputy commander of a Southern Xinjiang Military District regiment and a representative of the 14th National People’s Congress.
“Our medics chase our fighters, our warriors chase the invading foreign enemy like a bayonet into the heart of the enemy, when you know what life and death mean. I have to charge again. It’s a fight to the death…” said Aydin while recounting the Galwan clash.
India’s former foreign secretary Shyam Saran, who was recently in Beijing, told The Hindu that a certain view in China is that “putting pressure on India will dissuade them from moving closer to the US.” Anyone who reads the Chinascope would know I have shared the same view for a long time.
Beijing has made up its mind about India hosting the G20 Summit and is trying to create an impression that New Delhi isn’t too close to the US. So, it wouldn’t make much difference.
China’s absence from the forum will make Beijing sit up. Today, I don’t think New Delhi has an appetite for radical ideas lost in diplomatic-speak.
Unlike past stand-offs between India and China, there is much more at stake now—the world order itself. New Delhi is behaving exactly the way Beijing desires.
China in world news
The world has started to think that the US’s ability to unite countries for a grand bargain has run out of steam. The Camp David agreement gave a new life to the hub and spoke system for the US in Asia.
The agreement will include intelligence sharing, military exercises and joint efforts on cybersecurity between the US, Japan and South Korea.
“From an historical perspective, it is arguably much bigger than Aukus because nobody doubted that the US, UK and Australia could work together,” said Michael Green, a former top White House Asia official who is head of the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.
The mistrust between Japan and South Korea runs deep, including their military bureaucracies, which don’t exactly get along. But Washington has managed to convince both countries to get past their trust issues—and a long history—and sign the agreement.
The joint statement from the Camp David summit described the Taiwan Strait as an “indispensable element of security and prosperity in the international community”.
After the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD) failed to put together a statement on Taiwan, many questioned the ability of the US to unite countries to address tensions in the Taiwan Strait. The Camp David agreement proved them wrong.
“China is firmly opposed to any practice which targets, implies or even interferes with China’s internal affairs,” said Xing Haiming, the Chinese ambassador to South Korea.
Meanwhile, PLA’s Eastern Theatre Command launched new exercises around Taiwan to protest the Taiwanese vice president — and presidential candidate — Lai Ching-Te’s transit through the Strait.
On Saturday and Sunday, PLA sent 42 and 45 jets towards Taiwan, of which 26 aircraft crossed the median line on Saturday. On Sunday, the number one trend on the Chinese social media site Weibo was “Taiwanese Angelica” (台湾当归). It was based on an article published in People’s Daily, Chinese Communist Party’s newspaper, at midnight on Saturday. The hashtag was viewed over 1.25 billion times.
Beijing uses creative ways to talk about Taiwan. Instead of referring directly to ‘Taiwanese independence’, the People’s Daily used the term Dāngguī (Chinese name for Angelica Sinensis). It is essentially a herb used in Chinese medicine, which can be poisonous. Beijing was trying to convey that ideas of independence can be ‘poisonous’.
“‘Taiwan independence’ is a historical reversal and a dead end. The motherland must be unified, and it will inevitably be unified,” read the People’s Daily article.
The Camp David agreement will be viewed as an effort by the US to contain China through its alliance system in Asia. If there was a possibility of a US-China détente, it is now dead in the cold. One Chinese scholar even said that the agreement is the “starting shot for a new Cold War”.
Also read: At Camp David, US, South Korea and Japan condemn China, agree to deepen military tie
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The author is a columnist and a freelance journalist. He was previously a China media journalist at the BBC World Service. He tweets @aadilbrar.Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)