China for new relationship with India
As China and the United States lock horns in a looming all-out tariff war with serious long-term consequences on their bilateral relationship, Beijing has been putting out feelers to India on constructing a platform of trust and cooperation. The Chinese Embassy in New Delhi issued a statement highlighting the need for deepening Sino-Indian ties in face of American truculence. President Trump set the ball rolling with an attack on China’s trade practices, which ensured a heavy US trade deficit - $34 billion in September alone. The US has imposed tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports, to which China has responded with tariffs of its own on US goods, although of a lower scale. The end game, said President Trump, could be US tariffs on the entire spectrum of Chinese imports, setting off an economic cold war between the world’s two largest economies, a war that could last a decade.
This clearly has muddied the waters for Xi Jinping’s government in Beijing. The Chinese economy is facing myriad challenges, leading to possible unforeseen consequences for the political stability of the country sooner or later. Beijing’s stringent controls of information, freedom of thought and expression may have neutered normal public discourse without destroying dissent but merely sending it underground and deepening neuralgic anxieties about the regime’s future. The resetting of the Confucian button as ideological insurance is doomed to split at the seams, as the contemporary world, of which China is an integral part, is too complex to be contained in a synthetic straitjacket tailored for a society over two millennia ago.
Mending ties with India will require a long haul. Decades of suspicion and mistrust have to be cleansed for a genuine new beginning in relations. Pious slogans and shibboleths will no longer suffice; those days are now history, from which India has gained both knowledge and understanding of Chinese ways and practices. That said, there is no good reason to spurn offers to turn the tattered page for a new clean one. Both sides have much to gain from the exercise. The US, under the Trump Administration, is set to keep World Order under its control. America First, now and always is the President’s cry to the international community. National sovereignty is consigned to the dustbin as an irrelevance. Whatever the internecine turf wars between Republicans and Democrats, neither party has abjured America’s Manifest Destiny, its Exceptionalism and much else, ordained, they say, by the Creator.
Relegation to Bantustan status would neither be in Indian nor Chinese interests. That is reason enough to set out an agenda in which past differences, discords and misunderstandings can be addressed with realism and imagination. A few items could be spelt out to get the Sino-Indian conversation moving in the right direction. China’s territorial claim to Arunachal Pradesh must be terminated once and for all; this being the sine qua non of further progress in the dialogue. Easier access to the Chinese market must follow. Indian sensitivities on secure borders from Pakistani-sponsored jihadi terrorism must be taken on board. Containing India through a Pakistan proxy is untenable. Beijing must cease its opposition to Indian membership of the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group. Finally, China must chart a friendlier relationship with the littoral powers in the South China Sea. The solution to these contentious issues will require a long march. The desired traction will take time.
With patience, imagination and common sense a more enduring structure of the Sino-Indian relationship can be built into a more inclusive architectonic security structure in South and Southeast Asia.
Saudi Arabia: Murder most foul
The mysterious disappearance Saudi Arabian dissident Jamal Khashoggi (a US resident and Washington Post columnist) from his country’s consulate in Istanbul, where he had gone to obtain personal documents required for his marriage to a Turkish woman, has set off a storm in Saudi-Turkish relations. The Turkish government which maintains close surveillance of foreign diplomatic missions on its soil, but more especially of countries it considers hostile. Saudi Arabia is a regional rival. Riyadh has hotly denied charges that Khashoggi was murdered on the premises of the Saudi consulate, as the Turks claim but have offered no conclusive evidence that he was not. Why were there no CCTV pictures of Mr Khashoggi leaving the building? Because, replied the Saudis, the consulate cameras were out of order.
Meanwhile, the Turkish government has been releasing drip-drip evidence of Khashoggi’s torture and death at the hands of a Saudi hit squad sent out from Riyadh to carry out the assassination. The men were photographed arriving in Istanbul, and then leaving when their job was done and dusted.
That was not the end of the macabre tale; it was merely the beginning – and it has caused considerable stir among Saudi Arabia’s staunchest allies and friends, foremost of whom are the United States and Great Britain and the great and good of the European Union. These self-appointed guardians of democracy, human rights and much else, are more than a little discomfited. After all, was not Saudi monarchy not touted as a pillar of Middle Eastern stability and the West’s collaborator in reining in and liquidating evil jihadi groups like ISIL, Taliban and kindred other groups? However Saudi petro-dollars spread the message of a conservative, reactionary Islamism across much of Asia and beyond.
Saudi medievalist judicial code requires beheadings of prisoners guilty of grave crimes and misdemeanours, amputation of limbs for alleged thieves are scarcely less barbarous. In return, Saudi government gave periodic contracts for armaments worth billions of dollars to its principal benefactors, the United States and its foremost client and ally, the United Kingdom. A world closely attuned to cynicism and hypocrisy as standard diplomatic currency was slow to anger, but anger eventually was visible.
The United Nations Secretary General Antonio Gutteres has called the likely murder of Jamal Khashoggi an intolerable act flouting moral decency and international law. Presidents Donald Trump, Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Theresa May have spluttered words of hesitant criticism of the Saudi regime, if proven guilty. But Saudi money will surely prevail, if the past is anything to go by. The regime’s formidable horde of oil, dollars and petro-dollars are the regime’s insurance in Washington. A seriously weakened US dollar could unhinge the Trump Administration.
The charge of guilt has turned on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, presented as a modernizer by much of the western media. He kidnapped the prime minister of Lebanon and his coup includes the incarceration of his perceived rivals in the Saudi establishment. There is likelihood of crisis control with additives of good behavior in the future, and of looming threats to western ways of life and democracy emanating from the east - a serial without end.
FAO award for Sikkim
Small is beautiful: it’s an adage to stress the strength and relevance of small projects in the contemporary environment. Sikkim is one of India’s smallest states, and easily, one of the most beautiful. Nestling in the Himalayas, its scenery is truly bewitching, as are its people. Charming and hospitable are an apt description. The State is a magnet for business and tourism, domestic and foreign. Sikkim became the Indian state to switch to organic farming, and hence the food it produces is chemical fertilizer, pesticide-free.
This achievement has now received the recognition of UN body, Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). ‘Sikkim had shown that ‘100 per cent organic is no longer a pipe dream, but a reality,’ said FAO Director General Maria-Helena Semedo at the Future Policy Awards in Rome. The awards have honoured combating desertification, violence against women and girls, nuclear weapons and pollution of the oceans. This year’s was for agro-ecology, which includes shunning chemicals using crop residues as compost, planting trees on farms and rotating crops to improve the soil and protect against pests.
Organic farming advocates say agro-ecology could increase farmers’ earnings and make farming more resilient to climate change as erratic rainfall and extended dry periods hamper food production. Tourism numbers in Sikkim rose by 50 per cent between 2014 and 2017, according to the World Future Council.
‘Sikkim sets an excellent example of how other countries worldwide can successfully scale up agro-ecology,’ said Alexandra Wandel, Director of the World Future Council.
