India should not do any appeasement of the Chinese as Chamberlain did towards Hitler but boldly confront them like Winston Churchill
The Chinese Army recently penetrated about four kilometres into Indian territory in the Galwan area of Ladakh. Many people in India may think that this incident was only due to some small misunderstanding about the border between the two countries but that is not so. The incident is part of a much larger imperialist design of the Chinese, so let me explain. In the 1930s-1940s, Nazi German imperialism was the real danger to the world and not British or French imperialism. This was because German imperialism was rising and expanding and hence was an aggressive imperialism while British and French imperialism were only defensive. While the latter two nations only wanted to hold on to their colonies, the Nazis wanted to conquer and enslave other countries. Hence the Nazis were the real danger to the world at that time. Similarly, today the real danger to the world is not from the US but from China, because the Chinese are on the road of aggressive expansionism in the world. With their massive industry seeking markets for its goods and with their huge $3.2 trillion foreign exchange reserve hungrily seeking avenues for profitable investment, the Chinese are today aggressive imperialists and the greatest danger to the world. It is true that they are not expanding militarily like Nazi Germany at the moment but they are aggressively expanding economically by penetrating and undermining the economies of many countries of the world.
In the last decade, Chinese overseas investment has skyrocketed. Today the Chinese are almost everywhere, Asia, Africa, Latin America and of course the US and Europe. Their Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a network of roads, railways, oil pipelines, power grids, ports and other infrastructure projects connecting China with the world. It aims at improving infrastructure and connectivity between China and the rest of Eurasia in order to dominate it. China’s focus is often on vital infrastructure like ports, for instance, Gwadar in Pakistan, Piraeus in Greece and Hambantota in Sri Lanka, the aim being to get a strategic foothold in these countries.
By selling goods at less than half the price at which the American or European manufacturer can afford to sell (in view of his higher labour cost), the Chinese have destroyed many American and European industries. Now the Chinese are seeking to capture the markets and raw materials in underdeveloped countries by dumping goods at very low prices so as to make the local products uncompetitive. Pakistan, for instance, is flooded with cheap Chinese goods.
While capturing foreign markets, the Chinese were carefully protecting their own industry by putting high tariffs. It has to be said to the credit of US President Donald Trump that he called the Chinese bluff and bluntly told the Chinese that this strategy won’t do. You can’t have 25 per cent tariff on import of automobiles into China when the US imposes a tariff of only 2.5 per cent for import of cars into its territory. Trump has imposed tariffs on several Chinese goods and has announced more in the future. To this, the Chinese announced retaliatory tariffs but that will hurt the Americans little. It is well-known that the Chinese have no business ethics and that is why many US and European companies are reluctant to hire Chinese from mainland China as they often commit espionage and steal industrial secrets.
Let us now look at China’s economic relations with India. As is well-known, India was a British colony till 1947 and the British policy was broadly to keep India unindustrialised. However, after Independence, a certain degree of industrialisation took place in India and we started manufacturing goods which we had to earlier import.
Now the Chinese have, to a certain extent, penetrated our market at the expense of our domestic industries. An article entitled How Chinese companies are beating India in its own backyard, published in The Economic Times, gives some interesting details. Indo-Chinese trade is heavily skewed in favour of the Chinese. Indian exports to China are to the tune of $16 billion, mainly of raw materials. But its imports from China are worth $68 billion, mainly of value added goods like mobile phones, plastics, electrical goods, machinery and its parts. This is typical of the relation between a colony and an imperialist country. Chinese companies use aggressive pricing, State subsidies, protectionist policies and cheap financing. In certain industries, Chinese companies dominate the Indian market, for instance the telecom sector, 51 per cent of which has been captured by the Chinese. Indian homes are full of Chinese goods like fittings, lampshades, tubelights and so on. The Indian Government and the citizens of the country must seriously start opposing Chinese imperialism.To ignore this danger will be behaving like an ostrich, just like Neville Chamberlain who kept thinking that Adolf Hitler was no danger until it was almost too late. Apart from opposing the aggressive Chinese moves at the border, the Indian Government should ban the entry of Chinese goods into the market and get rid of Chinese firms from the country. India should not do any appeasement of the Chinese as Chamberlain did towards Hitler but boldly confront them like Winston Churchill. Appeasement only whets the appetite of the aggressor.
(The writer is a former Judge, Supreme Court of India)
