New Delhi: The ongoing standoff between Indian and Chinese troops at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Eastern Ladakh could be part of President Xi Jinping’s larger game-plan to divert attention from domestic troubles that Beijing is currently facing, ThePrint’s Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta argued in episode 553 of ‘Cut The Clutter’.
Referring to an article that appeared in The Guardian, written by Cai Xia, a former professor at the Central Party School of Beijing who is now expelled from China for writing against President Xi, Gupta said China has been silencing such dissenting voices.
According to Cai, President Xi has been an obstacle to progress in China and has mishandled the Covid pandemic. Xi had met the politburo on 7 January, which Gupta said was weeks before he warned the world about the coronavirus pandemic.
In the speech, Xi had made it clear to the politburo members that there is a new virus and discussed the coronavirus problem. Gupta referred to Cai quoting the Chinese Communist Party’s journal, Quishi, stating that the Chinese president could have informed and warned China and the world about the virus “much earlier than he did”.
“So this is a damning indictment of Xi Jinping. Not that he cares that much probably, but it is evidence from an insider,” Gupta said.
Also read: Another round of India-China talks tomorrow as LAC disengagement process remains ‘complex’
‘China heading towards disaster, isolation’
Quoting Cai, Gupta said, Xi’s powers have become “unlimited” and that he has made “the world China’s enemy or he has made China the world’s enemy”.
“Next point, she says that now you get into a vicious cycle of mistakes, because he makes a wrong decision, which has bad results. Nobody can tell him. Nobody can tell him to reverse a decision,” he said. “So you follow it up with more bad decisions. Everybody’s far too afraid to question him. So that’s why China is heading towards a disaster and isolation.”
Gupta said many like Cai are unhappy in China, especially those who believed in reforms brought about in China by Deng Xiaoping. He also spoke about other experts on China who highlighted the methodology followed by the Chinese Communist Party.
Among them is Richard McGregor, a former Financial Times correspondent who is now with the Lowy Institute. McGregor is also the author of ‘The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers’.
In one of the articles written by McGregor for the Nikkei Asian Review, he said, “All state media had said that China needs political stability between 2020 and 2035 to genuinely grow into a superpower, and for that, that has been used as an excuse to give Xi Jinping this kind of position. But he said far from providing stability, he thinks, that Xi’s decision may do the opposite.”
Watch the full CTC episode here:
