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Turning the Tables: China’s Approach to COVID-19

by Francesca Ghiretti & Lorenzo Mariani

China’s Xi Jinping gets tested during a rare appearance amid the Coronavirus outbreak (Image credit: BBC)

This article was originally published by the Rome-based Istituto Affari Internazionali

It seems plausible to argue that COVID-19 will accompany us for most of 2020. Given the little information we have about the new coronavirus, the scientific community is cautious in forecasting the duration and extent of the coronavirus epidemic that is raging across the world at present. Although over a hundred countries already recorded cases of contagion, many still focus on China. Interestingly enough, the country has changed from being the centre of the epidemic into the first success story in the fight against the virus, now offering support to the other affected countries. Recently, as a sign of victory against the epidemic and with the aim of reviving the hearts of Chinese citizens, Xi Jinping visited the central Chinese city of Wuhan, the place of origin of COVID-19. In the meantime, commentators continue to wonder what the impact of the virus and of the consequent extraordinary measures taken to counter the virus outbreak will have on China’s governance.

As mentioned in numerous other analyses, the economic impact of the epidemic is of particular concern to international observers. Weakened by the trade war with the United States and by a moderate but steady decline in its growth, the Chinese economy has already begun to feel the effects of the government’s quarantine measures imposed on its citizens and businesses. If already at the end of 2019 the six per cent growth forecast for 2020 seemed excessive, now it seems impossible.

Furthermore, given the importance of Chinese production in global value chains, the world economy will also be affected by the closure of the factories and the Chinese economy’s slowdown. The apparent improvement of the situation in China has now prompted Beijing to loosen quarantine measures and reopen some plants with the aim of restarting the economy. Despite the government’s exhortation to return to their jobs, many Chinese workers remain reticent about the idea of ​​resuming normal work routine as well as public life, to which must be added the fact that some key production areas, such as the province of Hubei, still remain in lockdown.

The fallout of the epidemic on Chinese society is also important. Of major concern is what Beijing will decide to do in the future with the control measures introduced in the midst of the Coronavirus emergency. Over the past few months, in fact, the central government has found in the new technological solutions developed by the main companies in the country a valid ally in the fight against the virus: from the cameras that in addition to detecting the body temperature carry out facial recognition even with masks, to the applications that monitor the potential contact of people with infected citizens. In the eyes of several international observers, the extensive collection of data that today has helped China to contain the epidemic could tomorrow be used to further limit the privacy of Chinese citizens.

On a political level, the central government is unlikely to be affected by drastic repercussions despite the many speculations of the past few weeks which spoke of a possible stability crisis of the Chinese Communist Party and of the Presidency of Xi Jinping due to COVID-19. Although it is true that many, especially in the most affected areas, have criticised the work of the government and the lack of transparency of information, judging from the online response of Chinese users, most of them genuinely adhere to the line presented by the state media. After all, in China the opacity and the distortion of the news are certainly not new, and it should be noted that the majority of citizens who have not been directly affected by the health crisis have not developed a sense of dissatisfaction with the party such as to lead to political claims of the aforesaid scope.

The containment of criticism in the domestic environment was obviously facilitated by the Party’s communication machine, which was set in motion at full capacity already in the first days of the health crisis and which is now helping the government to recover internal consensus and international support. Much of the initial energy was spent primarily to prevent any blame and negligence from falling on the central government. To pay the costs, as it very often happens in China, was, therefore, the local government of the province of Hubei, guilty of not having contained and managed the infection. In a second phase, the communication of the Chinese press organs concentrated its efforts in promoting a national cohesion campaign under the leadership of the Party which culminated in Xi Jinping’s visit to Wuhan where the President met the population and, albeit via connection. remote, even the sick.

Finally, over the past few days, the main attention of the Chinese media has focused on the rest of the world and especially on the United States, accused of having chosen to adopt a “selfish” attitude during a time of global crisis. Proposing itself once again in antithesis to the US policies of closures, China is now seeking to recover the ground that it lost over the past few months. An attempt to revive its image as a responsible nation, ready to collaborate multilaterally for the good of the international community and to send out support to its partners in case of need. In this regard, emblematic is the case of the alleged preferential treatment reserved to Italy in the reception of medical supplies from China, often described as the result of the special relationship that exists between the two countries.

It is still too early to know for sure what the consequences of this health crisis will be on China’s internal politics and international ambitions. What seems clear is that Xi appears to have endured one of the most demanding tests since he took power in 2012. Furthermore, it clearly surfaces the idea that if in the coming months Beijing will be able to play its cards well, then China, and with it the Chinese Communist Party, could even emerge from this crisis stronger than before.

Francesca Ghiretti is a PhD candidate at King’s College London where she has been awarded the Leverhulme Scholarship as part of the project ‘Interrogating Visions of a Post-Western World: Interdisciplinary and Interregional Perspectives on the Future in a Changing International Order’. Her thesis is about Chinese FDI in the EU. Francesca is also a Research Fellow in the Asia department at Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) in Rome and a geopolitical consultant at CQS, a London-based hedge fund.

Lorenzo Mariani is Research Fellow in the field of Asian studies at the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) in Rome where he collaborates mainly on research projects dealing with Chinese domestic and foreign affairs, and Inter-Korean relations. Since 2017, he has been Korea Foundation Fellow. He graduated in International Relations at the University of Bologna and earned a Master’s double degree in China Studies from Zhejiang University and University of Turin. During his academic career, he was an exchange student at Peking University (Beijing) and at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (Seoul).

China’s Turbulent Year: 2019

by Kerry Brown

Chinese President Xi Jinping faces a turbulent 2020 (Photo Credit: AFP)

2019 was not an easy year for Xi Jinping’s China. The most obvious cause of this was the ongoing tensions with the US, mostly taking the form of trade frictions. While these dissipated to some degree by the year’s end, it was the happenings in Hong Kong and Xinjiang that will probably prove most significant. These are likely to have a long term impact on the trajectory of the People’s Republic, with Xinjiang in particular offering a more profound and worrying set of problems.

For Hong Kong, the perpetual protests from the middle of the year were the issue that attracted most international attention. The city is held in deep affection by anyone who is associated with it, or even knows about it. To see it’s people often divided, with the government some days almost under siege, with acts of violence by police and protesters on the streets, sometimes almost daily, was truly a tragedy. A unique, hybrid place looked, towards the year-end, to be in perpetual decline.

It is easy to seek to defend one of the sides involved in the Hong Kong issue over others. But the fault lies with almost every party. The Chief Executive, Carrie Lam, has been lamentable. Her greatest failure in the long term will probably be the way in which she has illustrated with a stark finality none of her three predecessors ever did the lack of power in her hands and the need to constantly be seeking support from Beijing. From her handling of the original proposal to introduce extradition legislation which was seen as violating the city’s hard-won legal autonomy, to her response to the subsequent demands of the protesters, there is little about her performance that inspires confidence. She remains in power however because she has managed to maintain the support, however, of the one group that matters to her – the leadership in Beijing.

On their part, the Xi leadership has refrained, so far, from direct intervention in the security of Hong Kong, no matter that it might or might not be doing behind the scenes. But its shrill defensive attitude to the plight of the city, and the ways in which it has indicated little real desire to compromise only expose the ways in which it clearly regards the One Country, Two Systems rubric as little more than window dressing. For it, the most worrying aspect of the city’s 2019 travails should be the ways in which they showed the real problems of a Chinese model of governance in a place which is incontestably of Chinese identity, and part of the PRC sovereign territory. The impact of that on views in Taiwan, where many look on in dismay at Hong Kong and fee their rejection of the ways in which it is offered as a model they may one day which to reunify with the Mainland, has been dramatic, and will probably have long term consequences. There is little overt sign at the moment at least that this is the lesson Beijing has drawn from 2019 and Hong Kong – but it should be.

But nor can the protesters be spared criticism. Lionised by many in the west, including the US Congress, some members of whom have sought to reap political capital from the city’s challenges, protesters have proved a diverse, and sometimes disunited and fractious group. While many have shown courage, and the success of more pro-independence parties in the 2019 local elections was a huge moral victory, they still lack coherent political leadership. It is an easy thing to be critical about this, and a hugely hard thing to achieve – but in the end, unless there can be unifying, and pragmatic voices from the protesting groups managing to steer their grievances in a more constructive, political direction, rather than stoking constant protest, it is hard to see how they can create long term benefit for themselves out of the shocks of the last few months.

Hong Kong, however, does have some things worth fighting for – from its legal system, which at least still has some integrity, to the vestiges of freedom of expression which, for all the complaints, are still there, albeit eroded.  Xinjiang was, until quite late in 2019, a less exposed issue. But it is likely that this will be the one with potentially the deepest long term consequences. The implementation of harsh security measures there since 2018 have involved, reportedly, up to a million people. Papers obtained by the New York Times in November 2019 showed the extent of the commitment to the clampdown on Uighur’s, along with some evidence of opposition to it by officials locally which had been snuffed out.

Chen Qiangguo, Party Secretary of the autonomous region, and previously the top official in Tibet, has received unwelcome international attention as the protests have increased across the world, from Turkey to Europe to the US, about what has been occurring in the area. Under the guise of security and counter-terrorism, the detention of so many has resulted in some gut-wrenching testimony of families destroyed, and ordinary people swept up in a series of events that clearly have left them incarcerated, evidently judged guilty without even the vaguest pretence of an attempt to follow any kind of due process.

Xinjiang is an issue over which the central government seems unwilling to brook any compromise. Attempts to discuss the issue even in the most placatory way are usually met with defensiveness in China. This is our domestic issue, the line goes, and one that involves serious issues of security concerns. Foreigner’s comments and criticisms are unwelcome.

Despite this, Xinjiang is potentially a long term, deep worry for the Chinese government for a number of reasons. Through the imposition of draconian policies, some, according to the evidence offered by the New York Times leaked documents, imposed with little consideration of the risk of unwanted outcomes, there is a high possibility that a generation of Uighurs ostensibly being re-educated in the camps in the region is actually being radicalised. The official measures here are almost designed to breed deep resentment and anger, something which may take years or decades to manifest itself, but which should not be taken lightly. The very outcome that all the effort the government has expended in Xinjiang over the last few years – greater security – may well be the one put most at risk by the way it has sought to achieve this.

This is a strange position for the Chinese government to be in. Usually so cautious about what it does, and deliberative, it seems that in Xinjiang it has acted according to an almost knee jerk way, bringing in a suite of actions and regulations that show little sign of having been pondered a bit more thoroughly and questioned.

One of these side effects can already be seen – the detrimental effect that Xinjiang has had on international opinion towards Xi’s PRC. Already, a formidable array of critical voices have started to be raised. At a time when the country’s global role is already becoming more prominent, and its potential critics and enemies are seeking for something to rally around, this issue above all has unfortunately given them plenty of highly legitimate material to cast back at the Chinese government.

With some signs at the end of 2019 that the policies in Xinjiang might be softening, 2020 may well see the intense anger at this issue at least decrease. The government may, after all, have been listening, and seek to silently repair some of the damage done. But the odds must very unfortunately be on them harvesting a long term and a serious set of challenges from the 2018-2019 Xinjiang clampdown. What is currently a tragedy for many people in Xinjiang may well end up being one for the whole country, proving one of the most bitter lessons from Chinese history: that its greatest threats come more often from the inner Asian region than its coastal areas.

Kerry Brown is Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College, London. He is an Associate of the Asia Pacific Programme at Chatham House, London, an adjunct of the Australia New Zealand School of Government in Melbourne, and the co-editor of the Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, run from the German Institute for Global Affairs in Hamburg.

Internet Sovereignty as a Gateway to Global Norms: The Battle over Global Internet Governance

by Eve Gleeson

18 July 2019

A borderless world, or not really? (Image credit: Pxhere)

Introduction

The Internet’s essence as “open, global, [and] borderless” has complicated attempts toward international cooperation on Internet governance. Many authoritarian states with comprehensive cybersecurity policies and strategies regard the Internet as a tool to monitor and quell internal dissent that may threaten regime stability, while liberal democracies, especially those belonging to Western multilateral organisations such as the EU and NATO, have tended to conceive of it rather as a borderless space free from excessive regulation.

Authoritarian states, such as Russia, China and the states with whom they maintain rather informal ties, such as Iran and Southeastern Asian states like Malaysia and Indonesia, clash with the proponents of liberal democracy whose values traditionally prevail in international institutions. As leaders of the Internet Sovereignty (IS) movement, China and Russia hope to use their growing diplomatic influence to manipulate global Internet governance standards in favour of state sovereignty. This article will discuss how the values of IS may impact the global power balance and a transnational Internet governance agreement, stressing the position of Russia and China in global diplomatic bodies.

Transnational cybersecurity governance

Bodies like the UN and its agency the International Telecommunications Union have created and reviewed numerous initiatives concerning transnational Internet protocols. However, these initiatives have proved to be vague and incomplete strategies victim to gridlock and technical limitations. IS leaders Russia and China and their increasingly potent force of global Internet allies remain challenged by Western actors, such as the United States, who benefit from institutionalised power and market-dominating private technology companies.

Bilateral and multilateral cooperation in this area has been prolific as powerful states seek to gain Internet allies who may represent their interests at the global negotiating table. This includes the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, an alliance originally designed to combat terrorism but has since ushered its eight members, hailing from South and Central Asia, toward strategies and norms that speak to the threat that information poses to national security and stability. Other occurrences of inter-group cooperation are reflected through signatures on UN resolutions by band-wagoning states, including by developing states in Latin America, Africa and Asia, as well as collaborations on global Internet conferences.

China and Russia: Messiahs of Internet Sovereignty

These states serve as beacons of hope for national jurisdiction over the digital space, serving up bold cybersecurity policies and strategies. With landmark policies like the Golden Shield and the Great Firewall, and technology giants like Huawei and Alibaba, China has become a leader of technological prosperity. Russia has created similarly robust Internet policies in addition to several market-dominating technology companies including Yandex and Kaspersky Lab. This has given the Russian state the capacity to expel Western technology companies, bolster the national economy, and monopolise national identity creation through social media censorship.

Chinese policies of filtering and censoring content reflect the ideals of state control over national identity, information access, dissent and mobilisation, and emerging technologies. China’s investment in the telecommunications sectors of East African states (linked with their adoption of Chinese-inspired censorious cybersecurity policies) and policy leadership in the SCO and BRICS partnerships reflect the state’s efforts to “promote [their views] as the basic principles for structuring international relations and regimes on a global level.”

In 2015, China and Russia formalised their bilateral cybersecurity relations with the Agreement on International Information Security Cooperation. Russia has also forged formal cybersecurity ties with less advanced emerging economies, such as Southeast Asia through an emerging agreement with ASEAN and existing cybersecurity collaboration with the Philippines. In addition, Russia has used the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, an alliance comprised of former Soviet satellite states, as a tool to consolidate a collective cybersecurity strategy. By combatting Western technological dominance, both materially and normatively, Russia and China can expand their own industries, retain control over their population, and spread non-Western ideals among states who may, in turn, provide support to them in international fora.

Implications and Conclusion

A global Internet governance regime ruled by IS ideals, whether it be a codified UN agreement or more informal norms and practices, would not mirror the hierarchical structure of traditional governance bodies: instead, it would create no order of power at all, with each individual state executing autonomy over Internet activity within its borders. This sort of agreement may also impact how cybersecurity development programs are funded, with resistance from China and Russia for developing states to receive development aid from the West.

Such a collaborative agreement may also struggle to set human rights and transparency norms. By granting states autonomy in this arena, it would relinquish authority over domestic consequences of Internet policies. This would leave states with a pre-modern degree of sovereignty, allowing them to steer the Internet toward or away from state-based information and knowledge control, political mobilisation, and national identity creation. Russia and China’s efforts toward Internet sovereignty norms will persist as they advance their interests of building a strong anti-West alliance. As they grow as economic powers, their efforts to integrate Westphalian values of sovereignty into international institutions will grow in tandem, threatening liberal ideals of globalisation.

So far, the transnational agreements that have been proposed, amended, and rejected have encountered fragmentation, ambiguity, and logistically-weak imperatives. The economic and infrastructural disparities between states, the struggle for policy to outpace technological advances, the role of private stakeholders that uphold the industry, and the logistical impracticalities of enforcing Internet policies have all stifled ventures toward global cooperation. In addition to resolving these issues, states must realistically engage in compromise to construct a functional regime.

Eve Gleeson is a master’s student in International Relations at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, as well as the Communications Manager of Strife and a security analyst at AMC Solutions. Her research focuses on technology governance, cybersecurity of critical systems, and socio-technical theory. Eve holds a BA in International Studies with a focus on conflict and security from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. You can find her on LinkedIn and on Twitter @evegleeson_.

A Matter of Survival: How the Trade War will Shape China’s Future

By Francesca Ghiretti and Lloyd Yijue Liu

2 May 2019

The trade war between the US and China is just the tip of the iceberg of deeper differences that will have complex ramifications (Manufacturing.net)

 

The trade war between the US and China is more than what meets the eye, and this is not a mystery. In fact, besides the trade deficit, there are multiple aspects at stake: intellectual property rights, the opening of the Chinese market and most of all, the political-economic system of China. The economic aspects appear to be laden with heavy political values for both actors. For Trump the trade war is a political means aimed at reinvigorating his political message with the eye on re-election, while for Xi Jinping it is a matter of survival, both his and that of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

Although negotiations are ongoing, the deeper political issues on the table risk triggering a mutation of the trade war. During the current state of affairs, an open armed conflict is highly unlikely. However, it is probable that the conflict between China and the US may spread to other countries and areas of interest, thus creating a complex matrix of entangled elements. The fight for technological advancement appears to be the most notorious battlefield, leading many to believe that in the near future the trade war could take on the shape of a technology war. The case of Huawei and the debate on AI are only two early examples of what such a conflict might look like. One wonders: why technology? Technological advancement is fundamental for the survival of the American primacy in the world and of the CPC in China. Both powers are aware that those who will lead the technological revolution that is unfolding under our eyes will lead the world in the coming years. After all, Britain would have hardly had the capacity to build an empire without the advantage of the first industrial revolution, and the West would have looked very differently and occuped a very different global position were it not for the industrial (and technological) revolutions.

Thus, both China and the US interpret the ongoing power struggle as a matter of survival, and technological development appears to be the main arena in which the battle is fought. In the long-run, instances for the US and China to face each other and present their contrasting models will not be lacking in number. However, in the short term, an agreement might be reached. It is for this reason that we propose three different scenarios each consisting of a possible outcome of the current negotiations between the two countries. In scenario one, an agreement is reached, and all tariffs are dropped. Scenario two describes the current situation– a state of limbo where some tariffs are in place but there is still space for communication and for a sudden turn in any direction. In the third scenario the US and China are unable to get a significant deal, leading to the prolonging and worsening of hostilities.

There is a perceivable division between the motives of President Donald Trump and those of the American strategists. The former needs a victory in view of the upcoming elections, even more so following the failure of the negotiations with North Korea. American strategists, on the other hand, appear to be seeking a more radical change in China’s way of doing business. Trump’s goal is to obtain an agreement which has the aspect of a victory for the US, with China expected to open its market to more American investments and firms, protect intellectual property and balance the trade deficit. Such objective seeks only a superficial change which would mean sizeable but not system-changing concessions by China.

The adoption of a Foreign Investment Law by China and the reform of the law on Intellectual Property suggests China’s propension to implement a few changes in order to find an agreement with the US, at least formally. On the other hand, the broader aims of the strategists seek deeper changes which ultimately would strip the CPC of its absolute centrality. This might be a real deal-breaker, should they be seriously pursued. In fact, Xi understands the importance of achieving an agreement for the sake of the Chinese economy. However, the survival of the CPC and its control over the entire Chinese society will always remain the first priority. All in all, what is to be expected is a temporary deal where China makes some quantitatively significant concessions but leaves structural changes to an unknown future.

Scenario 1.     Trade deal (Tariffs at 0%)

In the first scenario the trade war ends with the US and China reaching an agreement which leads to the abolition of all the tariffs. However, this scenario envisages not a peace treaty but a regulated and extended truce. The deeper issue however, the nature of the Chinse political system, will not have been resolved. The basis of the Chinese government’s actions lays firmly with the doctrine of the ‘party leads everything’ (党是领导一切的) and is expected to remain. Here, the CPC would keep on centrally managing all aspects of China’s life, including areas which in the West are usually private or independent, such as academia and the judiciary. If the US is seeking a change in such approach, this issue is destined to come to the surface again at some point in the future and spur a conflict between the two.

In the short run, however, China will certainly be more collaborative with the US and the West. This would not mean a return to Deng Xiaoping’s ‘hide and bide’ paradigm, but a purely rhetorical switch to a more low-key and friendly campaign to present the ‘rise of China’ to the world, while creating more skillful ways of attracting foreign talent and importing technology and know-how from developed countries to develop China itself.  Moreover, forging new strategic partnerships in the Western sphere would be easier with the blessing of the US and China’s renewed collaborative attitude.

Scenario 2.     Further extending the deadline for a deal (Tariffs at 10%)

Currently, we are likely to be living the last moments of this transition scenario, which is probably advantaging China more than the US. The longer the negotiation lasts, the more uncertainty to the global economy and pressure on Trump’s credentials it will bring. The CPC is not immune to the political repercussions of a slowing economy, but unlike Trump, Xi does not have to face elections in a few months. Were it not for these looming elections, Trump too would have highly benefitted from a longer period for negotiations, as it would have allowed him to test whether China’s promises turned into reality. In such a scenario, a full-fledged deal (Scenario 1) would still be on the table, but China would have time to consider and perhaps test other alternatives. To force the Americans to reach a suboptimal deal and to protect their own economy from future repercussions, the Chinese might try to intensify their transactions with other trading partners. They might also try to explore possible fractures between the US and its allies, such as the EU, while exploiting the disruption of the global supply chain of goods manufactured in the country, such as tech components, to increase the pressure on the reaching of a deal and preparing for more negative alternative scenarios.

Scenario 3.     No deal (Tariffs at 25%)

This is not the most likely outcome. However, with Trump and Xi, two stubborn leaders leading the discussions, this option cannot be ruled out. In this case, China and the US would become more assertive in implementing their own plans and fulfilling their geopolitical interests. Thus, multiple actors and areas of interests, such as technology, geopolitical claims and multilateral settings, would be involved in the disputes which is likely to take place simultaneously in different arenas, an example of which was the run for technological advancement previously mentioned. If the conflict becomes further politicised; China will make it difficult for the US to reach its goals in any international issues which China has influence on (such as in North Korea, the South China Sea or instances presented to the UN Security Council). At the same time, China would actively strengthen its already existing alliances, seek new allies and leverage any possible dispute between the US and its allies.

At home, the CPC would further devalue the Renminbi (RMB) to maintain China’s competitive edge while promoting stronger nationalism. In fact, it is believed that after 1979, the way in which the CPC maintained the level of legitimacy it needed to govern has slowly shifted from a nationalistic rhetoric to a more pragmatic promise of future wealth for Chinese people. Now that growth is slowing, and the West is becoming more hostile to China’s economic power, the CPC is attempting to transform the public’s economic grievances into a nationalistic feeling of an imminent external threats, which would grant the Party more space of maneuver. Interestingly, although often thought otherwise, it has been shown that the younger generations are at the same time materialistic and nationalistic, the use of an emergency rhetoric might override their materialistic need and help them endure economic difficulty in time of perceived external threats.

Regardless of the outcome of the trade war, the Chinese government could use its tax policy and the control of property price to encourage consumer spending. Furthermore, the CPC is likely to implement more large-scale infrastructure construction projects to keep the economy running in an attempt to mitigate the impact of the trade war and the slowing economy. An excellent example of this is the outcome of the recent Belt and Road Forum where China has strongly reaffirmed its commitment to the realisation of the project, robustly responding to the increasing skepticism towards the feasibility of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).  In China, more openness of the market has oftne been followed by a tightening effort for societal control to avoid a Soviet-style system collapse, this is likely to remain the case in the foreseeable future. Abroad, as in Scenario 2, China would seek new allies. However, according to the outcome of the trade war, the degree of assertiveness used by China to pursue such goal will change.

In conclusion, none of the scenarios presented rules out a future clash between the US and China, as the power struggle between the two will endure even after reaching a potential agreement. Their embodiment of different, and in certain aspects antithetical, models of governance and development will impede the complete appeasement between the two, leaving the world politics and economy in an uncertain state of affairs. In the long-run, this is likely to end with a drastic change in one of the two actors and the subsequent victory of one and loss of the other.

Francesca Ghiretti is a doctoral candidate at department of War Studies and European and International Relations at King’s College London where she has been awarded the Leverhulme scholarship ‘Interrogating Visions of a Post-Western World: Interdisciplinary and Inter regional Perspectives on the Future in a Changing International Order’. The focus of her thesis is the political response of the EU to Chinese foreign direct investments. Follow her @Fraghiretti.

Lloyd Yijue Liu is currently working as a research assistant for the China part of the research project Mapping Elite Networks and Governance in the 21st Century at the Department of Political Science at VU University of Amsterdam. He holds an advanced master’s degree in International Relations and Diplomacy from Leiden University and previously studied History and Modern European Studies at the University of British Columbia. 

India and Pakistan on the Brink of War at Jammu and Kashmir: What Role for China?

By Axel Dessein

6 March 2019

Putting the RIC back in BRIC. Russia, India and China met for a trilateral meeting between the country’s foreign ministers, against the backdrop of the unfolding crisis in Jammu and Kashmir (China Daily)

Next to the ongoing U.S.-China trade war and the premature ending of Donald Trump’s meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un in Vietnam’s Hanoi, it seems somewhat odd that the risk of war between the two nuclear-armed countries India and Pakistan was only the third newsworthy item last week. In retaliation of a suicide bombing against Indian paramilitary police in the Pulwana district of Jammu and Kashmir earlier last month, Mirage 2000 planes of the country’s air force on February 26 bombed a presumed stronghold of Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists in the town of Balakot, located inside Pakistani territory. In response, the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) shot down two Indian Air Force (IAF) MiG-21 fighter jets on February 28, leading to the arrest of Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman. While the captured pilot was released on March 1 as a peace gesture by Pakistan’s prime minister Imran Khan, the fog of war has not yet receded.

The other fighter pilot presumably went down in Indian-controlled Kashmir, according to Major General Asif Ghafoor. There are also reports which indicate that the IAF shot down an F-16 of the PAF, but proof remains meagre at best. The suicide bombing, the deadliest since the beginning of the insurgency in 1989, set into motion a simmering spiral of events, which seemed to carry through over the weekend, with shelling resuming across the Line of Control (LoC) on Friday but declining in intensity later on. In this article, I aim to first focus on the crisis that took place, adding some more information to two earlier pieces. Next, I bring into account the role of China, Pakistan and India’s big neighbour to the East.

Don’t get MAD

This map, edited from Google Maps by Kamaldeep Singh Sandhu, shows the Line of Control, the de facto border between India’s and Pakistan’s parts of Jammu and Kashmir. (Google Maps/Kamaldeep Singh Sandhu/Strife)

Last week’s hostilities were yet another violent iteration of the countries’ territorial claims over the region of Jammu and Kashmir. In earlier articles published on the Strife blog, Kamaldeep Singh Sandhu and Saawani Raje graciously analysed the risk of nuclear war between the two countries according to an escalation ladder (or pyramid) with its three rungs of sub-conventional, conventional and nuclear response. Somewhat counterintuitively at first sight, the authors noted that the nuclear capabilities of both Pakistan and India in fact increase the stability in the region. Little wonder, since a nuclear exchange between these countries would be disastrous. As Karthika Sasikumar of San Jose State University notes, even a single strike on a big city, would lead directly to nuclear midnight, wreaking havoc on the socio-economic and political systems of both countries and the wider region. It is clear, nuclear war is MAD, as it would almost directly lead to mutually-assured destruction of Pakistan and India.

Nevertheless, it is clear that India has upped the ante by employing conventional firepower in the contested region of Jammu and Kashmir. The Indian Express even calls it a “milestone in India’s retaliatory response to terror.” The nature and scale of which was something like seen in Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria, as one senior officer is quoted as saying. Following the Pulwana attack, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi noted Pakistan’s involvement and publicly gave clearance to the country’s military brass to “decide the time and place of response.” However, details of what happened on the operational level remain scarce. Uncertainty is equally high about the success of the IAF mission. Indeed,  satellite imagery is raising doubts about whether the IAF’s Israeli-made SPICE-2000 precision-guided munitions actually hit the Madrassa Taleem al-Quran, a JeM religious school and the specific number of insurgent casualties. It is also unclear whether the IAF actually crossed the LoC or whether the SPICE missiles were launched from the Indian side of the line.

A road sign points the way to the Madrassa Taleem al-Quran, the religious school and presumed JeM training base on the hilltop that was hit by the IAF bombing. (Asad Hasim/Al Jazeera)

Reports are also unclear about whether the PAF scrambled F-16 or JF-17 fighter jets in response to the presumed IAF incursion of Pakistan’s air space. A deployment of the U.S.-made F-16s in this scenario for example would be an infringement on the end-user agreement, now said to be under investigation by the U.S. State Department. In contrast, the JF-17 is a product of a joint-venture between the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex (PAC) and the Chengdu Aircraft Corporation (CAC) of China. A further display of the ties between the countries whom define their relationship as an “all-weather strategic cooperative partnership,” was also visible shortly after the escalation by the IAF.

The neighbour to the East

With no real end in sight, Pakistan’s foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on February 27 called on his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi for China to play a “constructive role in easing the tensions.” As published on Sina News, Wang expressed his deep concern about the tensions between Pakistan and India, briefing Qureshi on the Chinese efforts to persuade and facilitate talks and reiterating the hope that both countries will exercise restraint and fulfil their commitment to prevent the escalation of the situation. The statement followed an earlier Chinese acknowledgement at the U.N. Security Council of the “heinous and cowardly suicide bombing” by JeM. Indeed, China’s Foreign Ministry repeated its condemnation of any form of terrorism and called upon the countries involved to cooperate in preserving regional peace and stability.

Interestingly, it was right in the middle of the Kashmir crisis that the 16th trilateral meeting between Russia, India and China took place on February 27 in Yueqing, China’s Zhejiang province. At this meeting, the country’s respective foreign ministers Sergei Lavrov, Sushma Swaraj and Wang Yi issued a joint statement condemning “terrorism in all its forms and manifestation” and called for the  strengthening of the U.N.-led counter-terrorism efforts. Here, it is interesting to draw attention to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a multilateral security alliance which Pakistan and India both joined as a full member during the June 2017 summit in Astana, Kazakhstan. With China and Russia leading this organisation’s struggle against terrorism, these countries could act as important mediators in the tensions between Pakistan and India.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor: bringing peace or worsening tensions? CPEC runs right through many contentious areas, including China’s Xinjiang, the region of Jammu and Kashmir and all the way to Balochistan. (Dawn)

However, China itself also has territorial disputes with India, tensions which undoubtedly complicate the manner in which China can play a mediating role. Most important among these disputes is the region of Aksai Chin, part of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, and the northern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. But a small corridor between China, India and Bhutan is also cause for concern. To halt Chinese road-building, the area known as the Chicken’s Neck was the main stage of a long-lasting standoff at the Doklam plateau in the Summer of 2017. While not disputed territorially, it was the proximity of Chinese troops and their intrusion into Bhutan’s Doklam that raised Indian suspicion and ultimately triggered a reaction. In those towering heights of the Himalayas, Indian and Chinese troops even engaged in a stone-fight. To complicate matters even more, there is also the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the flagship project of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which aims to connect the Chinese north-western city Kashgar with the Pakistani port of Gwadar. As such, the CPEC can be traced right through many of disputed regions within Pakistan.

In an article for The Diplomat, Vasabjit Banerjee of Mississippi State University and Prashant Hosur Suhas of Eastern Connecticut State University offer important analysis on the Indian capabilities to handle a war with Pakistan or even a two-front war with Pakistan and China. While that may be so, the author similarly points to the fact that China’s military is primarily geared towards the U.S. and its allies, such as Japan. Rather than focusing on the possibility of nuclear war, one could do well by considering more broadly the many escalatory actions that can take place below the nuclear threshold. Indeed, when considering the close relationship between China and Pakistan, one can beg the question whether China may ultimately employ its relationship with Pakistan to add increasingly more pressure on India, in an area already rife with terrorist factions opposed to the Indian government. Somewhat contradictory, there is also the question of China’s expanding role in counter-terrorism and peace-keeping in Central Asia and beyond. Indeed, Gerry Shih of the Washington Post recently reported about Chinese uniformed presence in Tajikistan, near Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor. The question one can ask here is whether China’s political-territorial interests would prevail over the preservation of stability in the region itself.

Conclusion

While the meeting between Russia, India and China went largely unnoticed, it is an interesting development showcasing China’s commitment in creating a more secure region. In light of the deadly attack in Pulwana, the country strictly condemned the terrorists while calling on Pakistan and India to de-escalate the tensions. At the same time, China has many stakes of its own in the region. With the CPEC running right through Pakistan, it could very well be that the country would help its “all-weather” partner Pakistan secure its claims against India, the country with which China has several territorial disputes itself. Nevertheless, this episode has shown the potential role of China as a mediator between states. Let’s watch this space.

Axel Dessein is a doctoral candidate at King’s College London and a Senior Editor at Strife. His research focuses on interpreting the rise of China. Axel completed his BA and MA in Oriental Languages and Cultures at Ghent University in Belgium. You can follow him on Twitter @AxelDessein. 

Image sources:

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201902/28/WS5c771b3ca3106c65c34ebd56.html

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/02/indian-air-raid-site-casualties-mysterious-madrassa-190227183058957.html

https://www.dawn.com/news/1371720