China’s Five-Finger Punch
Project Syndicate
July 21, 2020
China’s
Five-Finger Punch
Tibet is the key to China’s
territorial claims in the Himalayan region – and not only because of geography.
As long as the Communist Party of China – and especially China's revisionist
president, Xi Jinping – holds a monopoly on power, none of the country’s
neighbors will be safe.
NEW DELHI – As the world
struggles to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, which first emerged in China,
Chinese President Xi Jinping is pursuing his quest for regional dominance more
aggressively than ever. From the Himalayas to Hong Kong and Tibet to the South
and East China Seas, Xi seems to be picking up where Mao Zedong left off, with
little fear of international retribution.
The parallels between Xi and
the despots of the past are obvious. He has overseen a brutal crackdown on
dissent, engineered the effective demise of the “one country, two systems”
arrangement with Hong Kong, filled concentration camps and detention centers
with Uighurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang province, and laid the groundwork to
remain president for life.
According to US National
Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, “Xi sees himself as Joseph Stalin’s
successor.” Many others have compared Xi to Adolf Hitler, even coining the
nickname “Xitler.” But it is Mao – the People’s Republic’s founding father, and
the twentieth century’s most prolific butcher – to whom Xi bears the closest
resemblance.
For starters, Xi has
cultivated a Mao-style personality cult. In 2017, the Communist Party of China
enshrined in its constitution a new political doctrine: “Xi Jinping Thought on
Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.” The ideology is inspired
by Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, but its inclusion in the CPC’s constitution makes Xi
the third Chinese leader – after Mao and the architect of China’s modernization,
Deng Xiaoping – to be mentioned in the document. Last December, the CPC also
conferred upon Xi a new title: renmin lingxiu, or “people’s leader” – a label
associated with Mao.
Now, Xi is working to
complete Mao’s expansionist vision. Mao’s China annexed Xinjiang and Tibet,
more than doubling the country’s territory and making it the world’s fourth
largest by area. Its annexation of resource-rich Tibet, in particular,
represented one of the most far-reaching geopolitical developments in post-World
War II history, not least because it gave China common borders with India,
Nepal, Bhutan, and northernmost Myanmar.
In fact, Mao considered
Tibet to be China’s right-hand palm, with five fingers – Nepal, Bhutan, and the
three Indian territories of Ladakh, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh – that China
was also meant to “liberate.” Mao’s 1962 war against India helped China gain
more territory in Ladakh, after it earlier grabbed a Switzerland-sized chunk,
the Aksai Chin region.
This past April and May, Xi
had the People’s Liberation Army carry out a series of well-coordinated
incursions into Ladakh, with the intruding forces setting up heavily fortified
encampments. He then deployed tens of thousands of troops along the disputed
Line of Actual Control (LAC) with Ladakh, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh.
This “incredibly aggressive
action,” as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called it, led to bloody clashes
in Ladakh on June 15, leaving 20 Indian soldiers, and an unknown number of
Chinese troops, dead. (US intelligence agencies believe China suffered more
casualties than India, but whereas India has honored its fallen as martyrs,
China has refused to divulge its losses.) Despite continuing bilateral efforts
to disengage rival forces, the specter of further clashes or a war continues to
loom.
The CPC has not forgotten
about the other two fingers, Bhutan and Nepal. Just as China and India began
withdrawing troops from the site of the June 15 clashes, Beijing opened another
front in its bid for territorial expansion, asserting a new claim in Bhutan.
In 2017, China occupied the
Doklam Plateau – at the intersection of Tibet, Sikkim, and Bhutan, and claimed
by the latter – following a 73-day military standoff with India, the de facto
guarantor of Bhutanese security. Now, China is laying claim to another 11% of
the tiny kingdom’s territory, in an area that can be accessed only through
Arunachal Pradesh (which Chinese maps already show as part of China). The move
thus advances Xi’s efforts against two of the five fingers simultaneously.
The fifth “finger,” Nepal,
has been drifting away from India and toward China since it came under
communist rule two and a half years ago. Indeed, China aided the Nepalese communists’
victory, including by unifying rival factions and funding their election
campaign. Since then, China has openly meddled in the country’s fractious
politics, in order to keep the ruling party intact, with its ambassador acting
as if she were Nepal’s matriarch.
But being in China’s
strategic orbit has done nothing to protect Nepal from the CPC’s territorial
predation. Last month, a leaked Nepalese agricultural department report warned
that China’s massive road-development projects have expanded China’s boundary
into northern territories of Nepal and changed the course of rivers.
Of course, altering Asia’s
water map is nothing new for China. Tibet is the starting point of Asia’s ten
major river systems. This has facilitated China’s rise as a hydro-hegemon with
no modern historical parallel. Today, Chinese-built mega-dams near the borders
of the Tibetan Plateau give the country leverage over downstream countries.
As the hand metaphor indicates,
Tibet is the key to China’s territorial claims in the Himalayan region – and
not only because of geography. China cannot claim the five fingers on the basis
of any Han-Chinese connection. Instead, it points to alleged Tibetan ecclesial
or tutelary links, even though Tibet was part of China only when China itself
had been conquered by outsiders like the Mongols and the Manchus. Chinese
current claims are nothing more than a power (and resource) grab.
In other words, the
five-fingers strategy, coupled with Chinese expansionism elsewhere, is all
about upholding the world’s longest-running autocracy. As long as the CPC – and
especially the revisionist Xi – holds a monopoly on power, none of China’s
neighbors will be safe.
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