A Pandemic Induced Hiccup

The current posturing by China in the border area in Ladakh has to be seen against the background of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. For the last three months the world has been battered by this single virus. The origins are by and large clear now. It originated in China and spread around the globe. It is now generally assumed that China was careless and even downright negligent in controlling the virus, whether by accident or design is a matter of speculation. It is also alleged that the virus originated in a Chinese bio-weapons laboratory. Whatever may be the origins, China is facing a lot of heat over the pandemic. Most of the countries in the world are blaming it for this crisis.

In the current scenario China is responding like a typical or classical dictatorial state. It has to create incidents which take away world attention and that of its people from itself. The people of China were not impressed with their government’s handling of the crisis. At the best of times the Chinese people hardly get any personal freedom. This crisis took away its remaining vestiges. Being the sole authority in the country the Communist party and its government cannot shirk from taking the responsibility for handling the crisis, so they did the next best thing a dictator does. Divert the attention of the people. Whip up nationalist sentiments to show that the government is fighting for the people. Since the government controls the media, the Chinese population gets almost no access to foreign media sources and have to consume the fare dished out by the government. Hence, manipulating public opinion becomes easy.   

This time the difference is that Nepal has been roped in to add some pressure. The Nepalese PM was known to be favoring the Chinese and they have probably asked him to ratchet up tensions.  It is believed that the current dispensation in Nepal (which is a leftist one) is facing domestic issues. India bashing helps to take the pressure off temporarily. The world has been demanding an investigation into the root of this pandemic and the Communist party in China hopes that this posturing on the border may divert the attention of its restive people to a different crisis which can be better controlled.  India has shown itself to be in favor of an independent and impartial probe of the pandemic. It has also revised its FDI policy to better scrutinise Chinese investments in India.
This sudden flare-up could be a subtle message from China that India should not add its voice to the clamor that the world is making for the probe, as well as for its China specific policies. The US move to bring in a bill in the Congress to delist eight hundred Chinese companies from the stock market and the deteriorating situation in Hong Kong has only added to the headaches the communist party is suffering from.

It does not look as though much needs be read into these current border incidents at least for now. It is probably a fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. (China was also seen to be more aggressive in the South China Sea recently.) Whether these bouts of aggression will subside or increase will depend on how much heat the Chinese take, post this crisis.