“We have the manufacturing record for ventilators. We have the most and the finest testing anywhere in the world. We are producing gowns, masks, and surgical equipment in our country…It was almost exclusively made in foreign lands, in particular, China, where ironically this virus and others came from,” he said in his address from the lawns of the White House.

“China’s secrecy, deception, and cover-up allowed it to spread all over the world, 189 countries and China must be held fully accountable,” he said, once again accusing Beijing of covering up the outbreak of the pandemic. On Friday, Trump made a direct appeal to disaffected white voters four months before Election Day, accusing protesters who have pushed for racial justice of engaging in a “merciless campaign to wipe out our history.” Praising America’s “scientific brilliance”, Trump said on Saturday that the US will likely have a therapeutic and/or vaccine solution long before the end of the year.

Trump has expressed disappointment over China’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in the past. In May, he claimed that it was the “incompetence” of Beijing that led to the mass killing across the globe.

China has denied US’ claim of “covering up” the extent of its coronavirus outbreak and has accused the US of attempting to divert public attention by insinuating that the virus originated from a virology laboratory in Wuhan.

“China was the first country to report the Covid-19 to the World Health Organisation (WHO), (and) that doesn’t mean the virus originated from Wuhan… There has never been any concealment, and we’ll never allow any concealment,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said in April.

The novel coronavirus which first originated in Wuhan in December last year has claimed over 5 lakh lives and infected more than 11 million people globally. The US is the worst affected country with over 1.2 lakh deaths and over 2.8 million infections, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

The post Donald Trump blames China’s ‘secrecy, cover-up’ for spread of Covid-19 appeared first on IMR.

He wrote that he was responding to comments by his trade representative Robert Lighthizer, who has been at the forefront of trade war negotiations with Beijing.
Lighthizer told a congressional committee on Wednesday that China so far has been living up to the terms of a “phase one” agreement that eased the dispute, but that decoupling the two economic giants was now impossible.
“That was a policy option years ago, but I don’t think it’s a policy or reasonable policy option at this point,” Lighthizer said.
Lighthizer described himself as a hardliner on China policy, and outlined the Trump administration’s plans to “reset” the World Trade Organization, largely so that it can better rein in Beijing’s policies which he says run afoul of free trade rules.
But his admission that the world’s two largest economies are inextricably linked, despite Trump’s aggressive campaign to push American firms to relocate production to the United States, caused some angst in Republican circles.
Trump tried to let his trade official off the hook.
“It was not Ambassador Lighthizer’s fault (yesterday in Committee) in that perhaps I didn’t make myself clear.”
Trump in January signed the “phase one” of a trade deal aimed at ending a trade war in which he has slapped tariffs on billions of dollars of Chinese products.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that a senior Chinese official also confirmed to him Beijing’s commitment to phase one, which includes China stepping up purchases of US products.
Pompeo met Wednesday in Hawaii with Yang Jiechi, a veteran maker of Chinese foreign policy, in Hawaii to discuss soaring tensions.
Besides trade, the United States has sharply criticized China over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, an upcoming security law in Hong Kong and its mass detention of Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims.
Senior US diplomat David Stilwell, who accompanied Pompeo, said the United States insisted on a “more reciprocal” relationship but declined to discuss the discussions in depth.
“Whether or not they were productive or not, I will look at what comes up in the next couple of weeks. You’ll see a reduction in aggressive behavior or not,” Stilwell told reporters.
“If they come to the table with a reasonable proposal, the US is obviously going to treat it reasonably and look for ways to work toward a positive outcome.”

Source link

The post Trump warns of ‘complete decoupling’ from China appeared first on IMR.

This is the largest exercise since national airline Air India flew back 1,70,000 during the first Gulf War from Kuwait during the Persian Gulf War. It was followed by the evacuation of 1764 Indians from Lebanon in 2006 and more than 5600 Indians from Yemen during the civil war that raged there in 2015.

An operation of this magnitude was also the most comprehensive evacuation ever attempted and at a difficult operating time when an unpredictable, dangerous and invisible enemy like the coronavirus was lurking everywhere.

India banned all flights in late March as it imposed one of the world’s strictest lockdowns to check Covid-19 cases, leaving thousands of workers and students stranded. Till now, the government had resisted evacuations, given the logistical and safety nightmare of bringing back and quarantining returning citizens.

Detailed instructions were issued by the government on the categories of people who were to be given precedence, medical screening of passengers, the procedure on reaching the destination,  protocols, the infrastructure to be put in place.

Evacuation by Air

National carrier Air India and its subsidiary Air India Express ran special ferry flights from New Delhi, Kochi and Kozhikode to Singapore, Abu Dhabi and Dubai respectively. The two airlines operated 64 flights in seven days to bring back 14,800 stranded Indians from 12 countries.

Three decades ago, Air India led a group of airlines which included Indian Airlines and Aeroflot as well as IAF to rescue an estimated 111,711 Indians from the Gulf, after Iraq invaded Kuwait in the year 1990. The 59-day operation involved 488 flights and was conducted before the first Gulf war. This time, the exercise encompassed flights to the US in the West to Philippines in the East.

The Indian Air Force prepared about 30 aircraft, including C-17 Globemaster and C-130J Super Hercules for the mission.

Role of the Indian Navy

The Indian Navy said, on 5 May, that it had launched Operation Samudra Setu (sea bridge), as part of the national effort to repatriate Indian citizens from overseas. Indian Naval Ship (INS) Jalashwa and INS Magar were sent to Malè, Maldives to commence evacuation operations from May 8 as part of Phase-1.

The Indian Navy had previously carried out evacuation efforts in conflict-hit areas like Lebanon (2006) and Yemen (2015). However, a potential operation in the Gulf will not only be larger in scale, but it would have to keep in mind social distancing norms.

INS Jalaswa. The ships were suitably provisioned for the evacuation operation. INS Jalashwa is the Navy’s Landing Platform Dock (LPD) and has a capacity to generate 60,000 gallons (212 tonnes) of fresh water a day, around 3MW of electrical power and has extensive medical facilities. Weighing over 16,400 tonnes, it is also the second-largest combat warship in the Indian Navy after the aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya. It is capable of carrying tanks and can carry up to 1,000 soldiers. Since her commissioning in 2007, INS Jalashwa has proved to be indispensable and an extremely valuable acquisition for the navy. The ship has played major roles in amphibious operations, strategic sealift and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) missions. The Navy suitably modified INS Jalashwa by removing non-essential equipment in order to accommodate evacuees. The ship was provided relief and coronavirus protection material as well as medical and administrative support staff.  It set sail from Male to Kochi on 8 May with 750 persons.

INS Magar. INS Magar, also an amphibious ship, can carry armoured personnel carriers for transportation and tanks to target beaches. The Magar-class ships weigh about 5,500 tonnes. The ship can also carry 500 fully laden troops for nearly 10 days, in addition to her own crew.  The ship was zoned to prevent intermingling of the crew with the evacuees.

INS Airavat and INS Shardul also headed to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for evacuation and were in addition to the civilian aircraft sent.

The post PANDEMIC: Operation Vande Bharat – 197,000 Indians to be Evacuated appeared first on IMR.

From Srinagar to Thiruvananthapuram and Dibrugarh to Kachchh, the Army carried out various activities like laying wreath at the police memorials, honouring and felicitating health professions and emergency supply operatives. Visits to hospitals were carried out over hundreds of towns in all states from the local army formations all over the nation in small and big numbers by army teams along with military bands which played patriotic tunes as a tribute to the nation’s frontline warriors against coronavirus.

Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Agra, Amritsar, Belgaum, Ranikhet Pithoragarh among many metropolis, big and small townships saw the Army, Navy and IAF and Coast Guard (ICG) visiting hospitals and paying tributes. The activities started with laying wreaths at the local police memorials, an event which is truly unprecedented and brings the forces closer to their uniformed brethren. Whole country and all countrymen enjoyed this rich salute and poured wishes and love to the armed forces over social media.

The Armed Forces also organised multiple other events like fly past by fighter and transport aircrafts of the IAF throughout the length and breadth of the country. The helicopters of IAF, Indian Navy and ICG showered flower petals on the hospitals treating COVID patients. Army and IAF bands visited COVID hospitals and played tunes in an expression of gratitude to the Corona Warriors.

Fighter aircraft formations, comprising of the Sukhoi-30 MKI, MiG-29 and Jaguar fly past over Rajpath and orbited over Delhi visible to the residents from their roof tops. In addition, C-130J Hercules transport aircraft also flew over Delhi.

The Navy and ICG ships formed formations near shores at select locations. Ships were illuminated at 25 locations covering the entire coastline of the country including the remote sites and far flung island territories of Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep and Minicoy islands.

The post PANDEMIC: Armed Forces Salute Corona Warriors appeared first on IMR.

One of the most talked-about pre-coronavirus trends was the controversial collaboration between the Big Tech, Biotech and Big Pharma players and some major sections of the Western press were involved in the discussions around these emerging trends. From an outer view, the post-coronavirus lockdown world seems like a playground of well-scripted efforts, where fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) strategy are nourishing the fortunes of these three booming industries. If we consider that this current trend is going to continue for a much longer period then we should prepare not just an exit strategy but a future roadmap too.

Big Tech – Biotech – Big Pharma Loop

It is interesting to see how the biotech investments of Big Tech companies, which initiated with the R&D goals, have eventually ended up in the controversial partnerships with some Big Pharmaceutical players. The pattern and ease with which these tech giants have shifted their domains to entirely different areas (in a similar timeframe) raise some serious questions.

Google

In 2007, Google backed a biotech and personal genomics company 23andMe (founded by Anne Wojcicki, who married Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin in the same year). Since its launch, the underlying medical purpose of 23andMe’s Personal Genome Service has been highly controversial and several times this entity fell under the scrutiny of the US and UK government agencies. On 25 July 2018, to leverage the DNA test results from 5 million customers, 23andMe and drug giant Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) entered into a partnership, too.

On 18 September 2013, Google announced its new initiative called Calico (California Life Company), and Arthur D. Levinson, Chairman and former CEO of Genentech and Chairman of Apple, took up the charge as the CEO of this healthcare venture. Calico made some interesting R&D partnerships with AbbVie (a global biopharmaceutical company), Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, QB3 (California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences), Buck Institute, Ancestry DNA, Jackson Laboratory, and C4 Therapeutics. And, in November 2018, it entered into a collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics (ITMAT). The stated mission of Calico was to explore advanced technologies and their possible role in controlling the human lifespan and to “to devise interventions that enable people to lead longer and healthier lives” but it is surprising that even after extensive research, their expected interventions and findings are still in shadow, even for the scientist fraternity.

Another Google/Alphabet subsidiary, which often made headlines is Verily Life Sciences or Verily, an R&D organization devoted to the study of life sciences. Last year, Verily formed strategic alliances with Novartis, Otsuka, Pfizer and Sanofi kind of leading biopharma organizations, to develop digital clinical research programmes using Project Baseline’s (an initiative of Verily, started in 2017) evidence generation platform and tools. Its official objective “Making information work better so that healthcare works better” may sound philanthropic to some but the company is purely commercial. In 2016, Verily formed a joint venture called Galvani Bioelectronics with British pharmaceutical giant Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK). In 2015, Verily and Johnson & Johnson’s medical device company Ethicon, launched a startup called Verb Surgical, a robotic surgery platform. The company has delivered some health-tracking wearables including smart spoon, smart lenses and smart shoe kind of projects.

It is also interesting to note that biopharma and life sciences investments make up more than a third of Google Ventures’ portfolio. Google Ventures, the venture capital investment arm of Alphabet (an American conglomerate and restructured parent company of Google and several former Google subsidiaries) invested in some thriving biopharma/biotech companies including Editas Medicine (a leading genome editing company), Foundation Medicine (a molecular insight company), PACT Pharma, Magenta Therapeutics, Flatiron Health (a cancer research company, which was acquired by Roche, a Swiss pharma), One Medical, Arcus Biosciences, 23andMe, Grail, and Denali Therapeutics.

Microsoft

Last year, Microsoft and pharmaceutical company Novartis formed a strategic alliance “to transform medicine with Artificial Intelligence,” which is seen as one of the most expensive tie-ups between Big Pharma and Big Tech. Since 2010, tech giant Microsoft’s biological computation arm has been working on a wide range of projects including “designing molecular circuits made of DNA, and programming synthetic biological devices to perform complex functions over time and space.” The company has quietly built up a stronghold in the medical research and biological computation domains and their researchers are exploring moonshot possibilities in cell programming (to fight serious diseases) kind of emerging sectors and developing computer modeling tools to assist Big Pharma companies in drug discovery and development.

In 2000, Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft started what he called his “second career” in philanthropy with the foundation of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, whose primary goal was working globally to enhancing healthcare efforts and reducing extreme poverty. In the same year, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation invested in the GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization) – a public-private global health partnership, which is also the third-largest financial contributor (8.39 per cent) to World Health Organization (WHO), next after USA (14.67 per cent) and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (9.76 per cent) itself.

These days GAVI is in news for COVID-19 vaccine funding and distribution to poor countries, too, but it is important here to recall that in the past (2011-12) this alliance received some serious criticism for higher pricing of vaccines and for providing Advanced Market Commitments to companies like GSK and Pfizer and was also blamed for encouraging a duopoly situation in the sector.

Amazon

Big Tech and Marketplace player Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos have a growing inclination towards the biotech sector, too. In 2016, Jeff invested over $100 million in Unity Biotechnology, an anti-aging startup. Jeff Bezos invested in other healthcare startups, viz, ZocDoc, Mindstrong Health and cancer research startups Grail and Juno Therapeutics. These were some of Amazon’s most talked-about biotech investments but there are some lesser known initiatives too, ie, Project Gesundheit, which is a part of Amazon’s Grand Challenge R&D initiative. In 2017, CNBC channel reported that the marketplace giant Amazon has a dedicated team (led by Babak Parviz, ex-director and distinguished engineer at Google X), which quietly works on the healthcare projects. According to recent media reports, this year this group (which is sometimes called 1492) is working on a cure for the common cold and its revelation made headlines amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Facebook

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan’s biotech initiative – Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, frequently makes headlines. One of its ambitious initiatives is the Cell Atlas project, which aims to map every type of cell in the human body. The CZ Biohub is also working on infectious diseases and rapidly developing capabilities in diagnostic tests, drug and vaccine development, using advances in biotech and machine learning technologies. Last year, Facebook acquired CTRL Labs, a startup working in non-invasive neural interface technology. After that acquisition, Facebook Reality Labs (an Augmented and Virtual Reality initiative) and CTRL labs joined forces and announced to work together on advance projects including wearable and implantable devices.

There is a lot of noise about several other moves of these Big Tech players, whether IDSeq open-source tool of Facebook or Google’s Project Nightingale (a data storage and processing project by Google Cloud and Ascension, a Catholic health care system) and its recent collaboration with Sanofi and other pharma players, which at the end signifies the growing synergies between Big Tech, Biotech, and Pharma industries. There are also lots of discussions going on whether Big Tech companies should be allowed to handle the sensitive health care domain.

India’s Concerns

Discussing only vulnerability on every global trend will not suffice. Today, India is in a position where it should make a calculation about how wise is it for a huge and diversified democracy like us to wait till the real disruption in our national security posture occurs and how much are we prepared to face the consequences of delaying the actions that we should take now to protect our national security interests?

Imagine a possible situation when the same set of players, who dominate our narrations, observe and trace every single pulse of our activity, control what we read/listen and watch, suddenly start prescribing to us X and Y medicines and tests (for diseases which may not be known to us). We will end up using the search engine algorithms that are again sorted by them. This is like an endless loop, where finding the right fact/solution or any sort of cure for a normal user will become remarkably difficult. And it is more of concern for a country like India, because none of the leading actors involved in these pursuits belongs to our land.

India certainly has tremendous capabilities in technology, biotech and pharmaceutical sectors, but we could not succeed in disrupting the existing dominance. Time for brainstorming in this direction has come and today we are already in that perfect ‘pause’ phase which is needed for such moves.

The post PANDEMIC: Security Concerns Over Big Tech, Biotech and Big Pharma Loop appeared first on IMR.

The Chinese government initially mishandled the new coronavirus epidemic. Local authorities in Wuhan – the epicentre of the outbreak – concealed critical information from the public even after medical professionals sounded the alarm. Dr Li Wenliang, who was among the first to warn Chinese authorities about the danger of COVID-19, in late December, was subsequently interrogated and silenced by local police. He died of the illness on February 7.

The crisis also showed how tenuous the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) control over information has become and highlighted the latent power of Chinese civil society.

Mishandling of the Crisis

The number of grieving relatives has swelled. Ordinary residents have complained of being turned away from multiple hospitals. The Chinese authorities are clamping down as grieving relatives, along with activists, press the ruling Communist Party for an accounting of what went wrong in Wuhan.

Lawyers were warned not to file suits against the government. The police interrogated bereaved family members, who connected with others like them online. Volunteers who tried to thwart the state’s censorship apparatus by preserving reports about the outbreak disappeared.

Some aggrieved residents pressed ahead despite the government clampdown. Tan Jun, a civil servant in Yichang, a city in Hubei Province, became the first person to publicly attempt to sue the authorities over their response to the outbreak. With China’s judiciary tightly controlled by the central government, it was unclear whether Tan would get his day in court.

The crackdown underscores the party’s fear that any attempt to dwell on what happened in Wuhan, or to hold officials responsible, will undermine the state’s narrative that only China’s authoritarian system saved the country from a devastating health crisis.

Public Criticism

There has also been a spate or writings against Xi. Chinese realty tycoon Ren Zhiqiang, an outspoken maverick and former chief of Beijing Huayuan Group, a state-owned developer, wrote an opinion piece crucifying the top leader. Ren called Xi a “clown” and likened him to the emperor in the famous story by Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen. Ren was held at a secret prison in a suburb in Beijing and that he may be locked up for no less than 15 years as he has been a recidivist, relentlessly attacking Xi.

There was another open letter circulating suggesting convening an extraordinary plenum of the Politburo to reflect on “Xi’s wrongs” since taking office and decide if he should step down as president, party chief and commander of the military. Chen Ping, a publisher and founder of the Hong Kong-based SunTV network, shared it on WeChat, according to the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle and Radio Taiwan International.

Zhang Xuezhong, the constitutional scholar was taken away on 12 May after posting an open letter calling for political reform in China, was allowed to return home after questioning by the authorities.

Strongman in Charge

Under Xi, correcting policy mistakes has proved to be difficult, since reversing decisions made personally by the strongman would undercut his image of infallibility. Xi’s demand for loyalty has also stifled debate and deterred dissent within the CCP.

For these reasons, the party lacks the flexibility needed to avoid and reverse future missteps in its confrontation with the United States. The result is likely to be growing disunity within the regime. It is nearly impossible to remove a strongman in a one-party regime because of his tight control over the military and the security forces. In the years ahead, Xi may come to rely on purges more than he already does, further heightening tensions and distrust among the ruling elites.

The Dangers of Slower Growth

By cutting China off from the United States’ vast market and sophisticated technology, Washington can greatly reduce the potential growth of China’s power. Since the Chinese economy today is less dependent on exports as an engine of growth-exports in 2018 accounted for 19.5 percent of GDP, down from 32.6 percent in 2008 – decoupling may not depress China’s economic growth as much as its proponents have hoped. But as their standard of living stalls, middle-class Chinese may turn against the party.

As the economy weakens, the CCP may have to contend with the erosion of popular support resulting from a falling or stagnant standard of living. In the post-Mao era, the CCP has relied heavily on economic over performance to sustain its legitimacy. Generations born after the Cultural Revolution have experienced steadily rising living standards. A prolonged period of mediocre economic performance could severely reduce the level of popular support for the CCP, as ordinary Chinese grapple with rising unemployment and an inadequate social safety net.

 In such an adverse economic environment, signs of social unrest, such as riots, mass protests, and strikes, will become more common. The deepest threat to the regime’s stability will come from the Chinese middle class.

An economic slowdown would also disrupt the CCP’s patronage structure, the perks and favors that the government provides to cronies and collaborators. Should a dramatic slowdown occur, the Chinese government will most likely find itself confronting greater resistance in the country’s restive periphery, especially in Tibet and Xinjiang, which contain China’s most vocal ethnic minorities, and in Hong Kong, which was British territory until 1997 and retains a different system of governance with far more civil liberties.

Should the party resort to overly harsh responses to assert its control, as is likely to be the case, the country will incur international criticism and harsh new sanctions. The escalation of human rights violations in China would also help push Europe closer to the United States.

Patriotism as Shield

Recriminations from abroad, including calls to make China pay for the pandemic that began there, have triggered defensiveness on the part of many Chinese. As China tames the coronavirus epidemic now ravaging other countries, its success is giving rise to an increasingly strident blend of patriotism, nationalism and xenophobia, at a pitch many say has not been seen in decades. Xi will probably beat the drums of Chinese nationalism to counter the United States. But, Xi is unlikely to embrace this strategy. It runs against his deeply held ideological views.

Perhaps nowhere has xenophobia manifested itself more strongly than in Guangzhou, a manufacturing hub with a large African population. There are signs that the nationalism already threatens to create a backlash that could undermine China’s economic and diplomatic status.

Instead, Xi will probably beat the drums of Chinese nationalism to counter the United States. Ever since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests-which shook the party to its core and resulted in a government crackdown on dissent-the CCP has ceaselessly exploited nationalist sentiment to shore up its legitimacy. But nationalism could eventually make it harder for the party to switch to a more flexible strategy, since taking a vigorous anti-American stance will lock in conflict and constrain Beijing’s policy options. The party would then have to turn to social control and political repression.

Power Struggle

Mounting dissatisfaction within the regime could motivate senior members to organize a palace coup to replace Xi. The party, however, has adopted sophisticated coup-proofing techniques: the General Office of the Central Committee monitors communication among members of the committee, the only body that could conceivably remove Xi.

Another possible scenario is a crisis that creates a split among China’s top elites, which in turn paralyzes the regime’s fearsome repressive apparatus. But this scenario is unlikely to materialize, since the party has invested heavily in surveillance and information control and has developed effective methods to suppress mass protests.

The most likely scenario is a succession struggle that would occur if Xi were to pass away or resign owing to infirmity. End of strongman rule produces a weak interim leader. It is unlikely that Xi’s hard authoritarianism would survive the end of his rule.

In the best-case scenario, the party may succeed in transforming itself into a “kinder, gentler” regime, one that endorses economic and political reforms and seeks a geopolitical reconciliation with the United States.

In the worst-case scenario, deep institutional rot, inept leadership, and the mobilization of anti-regime movements could very well cause a hard landing.

Comments

In the last seven years, that system has been dismantled and replaced by a qualitatively different regime-one marked by a high degree of ideological rigidity, punitive policies toward ethnic minorities and political dissenters at home, and an impulsive foreign policy embodied by the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a trillion-dollar infrastructure program with dubious economic potential that has aroused intense suspicion in the West. The centralization of power under Xi has created new fragilities and has exposed the party to greater risks.

A brittleness and insecurity lies beneath the surface of Xi Jinping’s, and Beijing’s, assertions of solidity and strength. Although middle-class discontent, ethnic resistance, and pro-democracy protests will not force Xi out of power, such pervasive malaise would undoubtedly further erode his authority and cast doubts on his capacity to govern effectively.

The United States has limited means of influencing China’s closed political system, but the diplomatic, economic, and military pressure that Washington can bring to bear on Beijing will put Xi and the CCP he leads under enormous strain.

Chinese leaders have put considerable thought into the lessons of the Cold War and of the Soviet collapse. Ironically, Beijing may nevertheless be repeating some of the most consequential mistakes of the Soviet regime.

In 2018, Xi decided to abolish presidential term limits, signaling his intention to stay in power indefinitely. Since taking power in 2012, Xi has replaced collective leadership with strongman rule. He has indulged in heavy-handed purges, ousting prominent party officials under the guise of an anti-corruption drive.

China’s ruling elites maintained peace by sharing the spoils of governance. Such a regime was by no means perfect. Corruption was pervasive, and the government often delayed critical decisions and missed valuable opportunities. But the regime that preceded Xi’s centralization had one distinct advantage: a built-in propensity for pragmatism and caution.

Xi has suppressed protests in Hong Kong, arrested hundreds of human rights lawyers and activists, and imposed the tightest media censorship of the post-Mao era.  His government has constructed “reeducation” camps in Xinjiang, where it has incarcerated more than a million Uighurs, Kazakhs, and other Muslim minorities.

And it has centralized economic and political decision-making, pouring government resources into state-owned enterprises and honing its surveillance technologies.

Yet all together, these measures have made the CCP weaker: the growth of state-owned enterprises distorts the economy, and surveillance fuels resistance. The spread of the novel coronavirus has only deepened the Chinese people’s dissatisfaction with their government.

If Xi continues on this trajectory, eroding the foundations of China’s economic and political power and monopolizing responsibility and control, he will expose the CCP to cataclysmic change.

The post PANDEMIC: China May Face Internal Backlash appeared first on IMR.

–              Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Cyber has redefined the perception of inter-state borders, global politics and threat intelligence in multi layered ways and the inherent characteristics of democracy may appear to complicate matters.

On one hand 5G and Quantum internet are etching the next generational national security concerns and, on the other, the rapid evolution in technologies have led to dramatic decrease in the cost of creating, processing, disseminating and searching for information leading to strengthening the muscles of soft power.

Today’s digital era, built on the blocks of inter-connectedness at every level, is already confronting an information revolution, a vital aspect of fifth generation warfare.

What better time to influence than a period of ambiguity and crisis. The same part of the brain that processes fear is also activated in ambiguous situations, driving people to seek information to address the discomfort of uncertainty. In the absence of quality information, any answers satisfy, including rumors and disinformation.

Covid-19

The first death reported from novel Coronavirus infection by the Chinese state media was on 11 January 2020. The disease caused by this virus was named Covid-19 by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 11 February. WHO officials were denied access to the country to gauge the ground situation until Director-General Tedros Adhanom visited President Xi Jinping in the end of January.

Yet, unwittingly they already became a part of the misinformation bandwagon, especially after their tweet on 14 January saying:

 “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in Wuhan, China.”

WHO later declared Covid-19 pandemic on March11.

The analysis so far of  global disinformation pattern suggest that  it has been majorly around pro-China or anti-China narratives inclusive of various conspiracy theories related to the origins of this global pandemic. An internal document by European Union accused Russia of “aggressively exploiting the confusion and panic in Western countries over the coronavirus pandemic and pushing fake news in English, Spanish, Italian, German and French languages.”

India, too, is facing a threat of disinformation, internally and externally. Amongst many, this article will focus on the ones which have lead to an increase in the number of COVID-19 cases.

Internal

As per the Ministry of Health, the Tablighi Jamat Nizamuddin gathering and the subsequent travel of its members all across India increased the doubling rate of COVID cases from 7.4 days to 4.1 days. There were reports of incidents in various cities across India, where people from a religious community not only refused to observe self-quarantine but also exhibited hostility against government officials enforcing the lock-down and medical staff visiting the affected localities.

Multiple videos went viral where few miscreants from a particular community were repeatedly found flouting lockdown rules and giving statements like ‘Corona is from Quran’, ‘Corona won’t affect Muslims’ etc.

On 3 April, India Today reported that an investigation by a Delhi-based digital lab, Voyager Infosec, into more than 30,000 video clips in circulation on social media suggested a set pattern of targeted disinformation campaign aimed at the Muslim community in India. Voyager’s Director Jiten Jain said: “We have found a very interesting pattern where TikTok has been used as a primary medium to spread misinformation, citing fake and dubious research, which claims that coronavirus does not affect Muslims and that there has not been a single Muslim coronavirus patient in China and Italy.”

On 30 March, The Print carried an article ‘IS tries to provoke Muslims, says countries fighting Coronavirus are easy targets’ which stated: ‘The primary missive that is being circulated on the chat groups that IS runs on various social media platforms is a clipping of a note published in the terror network’s magazine called Sawt al-Hind (Voice of Hind). “Allah has made this disease a source of chaos amongst the nations of disbelief and their militaries and police have been deployed in their streets and alleys, thus making them an easy target,” Similar incidents were noted in other parts of the world.

New York-based Muslim Brotherhood activist Bahgat Saber called on the Egyptians to intentionally infect government officials and state employees with the Coronavirus. In a live session on his Facebook page, he exhorted “If you are a soldier, you can go into the defence ministry and shake hands with all the generals of the military and the police. The same is true with the justice system.” Saber, who has 143,195 followers on Facebook, said: “If you have contracted Coronavirus, you should take revenge!”

In a sermon (broadcast by Hamas TV) at the White Mosque in Gaza, Muslim Imam Jamil al-Mutawa called Coronavirus a “Soldier of Allah,” and celebrated the deaths of non-Muslims caused by Coronavirus, specifically praising Allah for deaths in California, China, Italy and Iran. He claimed that the streets of Israel were empty, while his mosque in Gaza was full. He went on to claim that Allah was protecting Muslims from Coronavirus, and that there were no confirmed cases of the virus in Gaza. The next day, unfortunately, two cases of Coronavirus were confirmed in Gaza.

At this point we need to ponder on the nature of the threat.

What are we facing?

Is it a threat from an entire religion or a threat from disinformation strategy of weaving narratives based on misinterpretation of religion with intent to create hostilities among communities and begin pocket conflicts across the country? The intentions can always be multilayered.

A period of infodemic is the perfect harvesting ground for any channeled and strategic influence operation.

We are not only looking at word of mouth or certain influencers on social media but at a combination of medium and message, where the medium is revamped with technologies like machine learning, bots, astro-turfing techniques and echo chambers used to create viral misinformation leading to an agenda setting effect which further shapes the public opinion.

The nature of the threat faced gets further convoluted as it is coupled with the foundational tenets of a religion.

One Sheikh Assim Al-Hakeem with 278,999 followers on Facebook explains to his followers that nothing can be contagious by itself unless by the permission of Allah.

Hadith

“Sahih Muslim, hadith 5513: “There is no adwa, no tiyarah (Evil Omens), No Hamah, No Safar, No Nawa, and no Ghoul, and no sick camel should be brought to a healthy Camel.”

Selectively interpreted as: There is no transitive disease and no sick person should be taken to one who is healthy.

Other Hadiths which were widely circulated during the pandemic were:

“It is a punishment that Allah sends to whom He wills. Allah has made it a mercy for the believers. There is not a servant who finds himself amidst a plague but he stays in that land in patience hoping (for Allah’s reward) and knowing that nothing can harm him except what Allah has written then this servant will be given a reward like that of a martyr.” [Bukhari]

‘If you hear about it (an outbreak of plague) in a land, do not go to it; but if plague breaks out in a country where you are staying, do not run away from it. [Bukhari]. This incidentally was also shared by Pakistani President in the context of stranded Pakistani students in Wuhan, China.

External

While social media and digital news are a new phenomenon, we always had traditional media organizations which are prone to manipulation and indulge in biased reporting. This falls more under the section of propaganda than disinformation. It has both official and unofficial channels like films, photographs, speeches, newspaper, books, pamphlets and periodicals, etc.

Media organizations like the BBC, The Guardian, Al Jazeera and The New York Times, with a history of gate-keeping bias against India, further worsen the scenario by sensationalizing biased stories and pushing the narrative of ‘Islamophobia’.

This is the juncture where the initiative born out of meager investments starts getting huge returns on investment by generalizing an entire community and planting seeds of communalism. Religion, faith and culture are the deepest emotions and, thus, attract disproportionate reactions, something the global propagandists bank upon. Needless to say that if this goes unchecked, we will be fighting a bigger pandemic for years to come.

The post PANDEMIC: Covid-19: New Chapter in Disinformation appeared first on IMR.

Weaponisation of Investments

Using Huawei Beijing had hoped to expand a 5G network across Europe and the world for intelligence. Along with the Xiaomi’s investment in London’s radio cabs, these examples serve as a case study of China’s weaponisation of financial investment as a tool of geopolitical influence-gathering purposes. Due to Covid-19, this has come under increased scrutiny from Britain and France, in particular, who accuse China of having covered up details regarding the coronavirus. Suspicions regarding Huawei’s 5G infrastructure predate the pandemic – MI6 director Alex Younger had expressed his reservations in December 2018 itself. Similarly, France has denied Huawei permission “to erect 5G antennae close to the Paris headquarters of the Ministry of Defence.” French intelligence agencies suspect that Huawei’s activities would allow China “to freeze 5G networks in the case of conflict.” The coronavirus pandemic has only exacerbated such criticism. The British Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee chairman Tom Tugendhat – a Tory MP and ex-intelligence officer – has accused China of “deliberately falsifying data” about the virus from the outset amid speculation that Whitehall aims to turn China into “a pariah state” due to such apparent misrepresen-tations. The pandemic and the subsequent anti-China hostility generated in Whitehall may force prime minister Boris Johnson to overturn his January 2020 decision allowing Huawei permission to help build Britain’s 5G network and operate unsupervised on 35 per cent of it. MI5 and MI6’s call to “ensure diversity of supply in 6G and 7G” while protecting Britain’s “‘crown jewels’ of technology, research and innovation”, coupled with news regarding a rapidly-growing hardline anti-China faction within the Conservative Party may compel Johnson to take measures against Huawei. French president Macron has also posited the possibility of a Chinese cover-up, remarking in an interview that “there are clearly things that we don’t know about.” France’s growing belligerence was visible in March 2020, when despite the pandemic, the French and Indian navies conducted joint patrols in the greater Indian Ocean Region (IOR) from Réunion Island. It was Paris’ signal that it was willing to intrude into China’s sphere of influence in response to Beijing’s smokescreen politics.

Franco-British hostility towards China in the coronavirus’ context therefore translates into strategies targeting Huawei. Evidence also suggests that given the prevailing sentiment, British authorities in particular are looking for alternatives to Chinese 5G technology, which remains a necessity as British cyber security experts warn of “economic and social risks” of deliberately ignoring 5G.

Opportunities for India

Labour Party leader Keir Starmer’s comments that Kashmir “is a bilateral issue” between India and Pakistan and that any constitutional changes regarding the state’s status are “a matter for the Indian Parliament” are as much an attempt at winning back political patronage from the influential British-Indian community as they are a veiled jab at Beijing, given his noticeable omission of any reference to China – which also claims the Aksai Chin region of the former state and had criticised Article 370’s revocation as “unlawful”. India’s sale of paracetamol tablets to Britain may, therefore, be read as an attempt to capitalise on such sentiment. Regarding 5G, while India may not yet have any reliable suppliers of such technology, the government is attempting to facilitate joint ventures between Indian and non-Indian firms to exert greater geopolitical influence worldwide. This policy may later enable Indian companies’ entry into Europe’s 5G technology market, publicising themselves as viable alternatives to Huawei. Union Minister Nitin Gadkari’s exhortation of Indian firms to “encash the golden opportunity” provided by the pandemic to enter into such joint ventures with firms currently exiting China, as well as his promise to provide required permissions “on a war footing” appears to signal that the government is working towards pursuing this line of action. The government’s support for such joint ventures would bring approximately Rs 20-25 lakh crores into India’s manufacturing sector while diminishing China’s power as a global manufacturing hub. At the same time, it is worth keeping in mind that Indian wireless and telecom companies are also building up a base in the UK and can use the lull in investment triggered by the coronavirus to formulate new policies to expand their – and India’s – geopolitical reach.

Dealing with Protests

The pandemic provides China with a convenient distraction to crack down harder against Hong Kong’s anti-Beijing protestors. The arrests of prominent anti-China figures in mid-April 2020 suggests that Beijing is taking advantage of the lull in protesting caused by the coronavirus lockdown to enforce its will in the city-state. However, signs of the curve flattening in Hong Kong in late April have encouraged further protests such as the occupation of Landmark Atrium Mall, reflecting rising hostility against China amidst Covid-19. China’s heavy-handed response in a city that was considered during the 2018 US-China trade war to be her interface with the global economy signals to Washington that following the pandemic, it will no longer need to rely on third-parties like Hong Kong, flooded with Western financial investment, to wield economic clout. Actions in Hong Kong are also aimed at warning Taiwan, whose airspace was encroached upon twice by Chinese fighter jets in 2020. Writing in 2016, British journalist Tim Marshall noted that Beijing was “playing the long game” by wooing Taiwan. He argued that one of the reasons why authorities “did not batter protestors off the streets” during the 2014 Hong Kong protests was because “the world’s cameras were there and would have captured the violence”– footage of which would have been viewed by Taiwanese audiences possibly “asking themselves how close a relationship they wanted with such a power.” The CCP’s current response to the coronavirus-fuelled hostility it faces today in Hong Kong indicates that it has dispelled with such notions.

South China Sea

China’s actions in the South China Sea/East Asia seemingly predict such an aggressive Chinese foreign policy. In late April 2020, Australian and American frigates moved into a part of the South China Sea within a part of Malaysia’s exclusive economic zone – where a Chinese vessel was conspicuously deployed. Washington and Canberra’s actions reflect their growing anti-China hostility, especially following Australia’s call for an international enquiry into the origins of the coronavirus in China. China has also used the distraction of Covid-19 to provoke countries such as Vietnam as a premonition to her increasingly aggressive post-Covid geostrategic policy. In early April 2020, a Chinese vessel sunk a Vietnamese fishing boat in a Vietnamese-claimed area of the Paracel islands, and in May 2020 published new maps with renamed underwater landforms lying close to Vietnam. Hanoi responded with a Vietnam-affiliated hacking group called APT32 which attempted to “compromise the personal and professional email accounts of staff at China’s Ministry of Emergency Management”. In South Korea, the pandemic has re-ignited dormant anti-Chinese sentiment among the public that may find expression in domestic politics.

Implications for India

While the expected post-Covid global recession will most likely dent China’s economic clout/its geopolitical standing, the rising hostility towards Beijing in East Asia and the Indo-Pacific is likely to result in China growing even more belligerent. China’s actions in this part of the world should hold great significance to India, given that the developments lie directly in India’s vicinity. Additionally, the developments also provide a taste of what a aggressive China may look like foreign-policy wise following the pandemic, allowing our policymakers to better prepare for such an eventuality.

All this has major security implications for India. India has already attempted to market herself as the antithesis to China in Southeast Asia by agreeing to sell hydroxy-chloroquine (HCQ) to Malaysia, where her exertion of soft power is presumably an attempt to gain strategic influence in the Straits of Malacca region- a choke-point which China depends on for the free passage of its trading ships. That India has started ordering cheaper Covid-19 testing kits from SD Biosensor, a South Korean company also signifies India’s eagerness to capitalise on the rising Covid-fuelled anti-China sentiment in South Korea to possibly expand her influence in the Korean peninsula. India’s rejection of faulty Chinese testing kits soon after appears to partly indicate this. Vietnam, which has called for India to step up “efforts to strengthen peace and stability in the region” by taking a harder anti-China line, has been included in a proposed US-backed coalition that also includes, among others, India, Japan and Australia and is aimed at “restructuring supply chains” – implying a broader American policy to counter China’s expansion of the Belt and Road Initiative amid anti-China hostility fuelled by Covid-19.

While such developments might allow India to expand her geopolitical clout at China’s expense, they are also fraught with complications. The mass trial of an app-based digital currency, the “e-RMB” is possibly Beijing’s attempt to prepare for a potential scenario where it becomes completely economically self-sufficient amid possible international sanctions following Covid-19. This raises questions regarding the practicality of Washington’s abovementioned proposal. In a speech in April 2020, Australian envoy to India’s predicted that he “sees a US far more cautious about exercising global leadership than in the past” as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Ambassador Farrell’s comments indicated that the pandemic had caused countries like Australia to have lost their earlier confidence Washington’s ability to act as a sufficient anti-China bulwark in Southeast Asia. Interestingly however, in the same speech he acknowledged India to be “the natural major power in the region” – one that “Australia looks to as a strategic partner”. Such comments indicate that Canberra has more faith in bilateral relations with a nearby power – in this case, India – than in a broad-based US-centric coalition. India should play upon both such anti-China hostility as well as the quietly growing mistrust of US policies in countries like Australia to focus on building up an India-led bloc in Southeast Asia based on bilateralism rather than American-style multilateralism.

If India commits itself to Mike Pompeo’s proposal of an alliance, it risks losing the advantage that she appears to have gained through the subtle shift in allegiance towards it from countries like Australia. While one may point towards the aforementioned Indo-French naval exercises in the Indian Ocean in March 2020 to indicate India’s willingness to position herself as Beijing’s antithesis in the IOR, one may also argue that they were simply a face-saving gesture following the multilateral Milan 2020 naval exercises’ postponement (the exercise was to be held in March 2020 in the Bay of Bengal). It is in this context that geostrategy’s importance in India’s fight against China’s new “Health Silk Road” initiative is underlined. Conducting fly-bys of Indian Air Force jets over Burmese-administered Grande Cocos Island, where China has a SIGINT facility targeting India, or possible maritime exercises – unilateral or otherwise – in the South China Sea would serve as India’s diplomatic force multiplier, especially now, thus, facilitating her exploitation of the predicted post-Covid hostility of countries towards China.

As the pandemic subsides, there will clearly be a backlash against China’s global influence. Despite India’s currently weaker position vis-a-vis China, it is currently in a strong position to exploit Covid-fuelled hostility to rise as a power capable of pushing back China’s geopolitical influence, or at least using this window of opportunity to cultivate that image. The effects of the Coronavirus are indeed tragic. Yet it is imperative that South Block’s policymakers seize the opportunity it provides to grow as a global power while combating the rise of India’s rival, China.

The coronavirus must not diminish but intensify India’s will to grow stronger, as hostilities against China strengthen its ability to fight for dominance against a similarly ancient, Asian civilisation in our unpredictable times. Following the end of World War 2, the US had established its economic supremacy and geopolitical dominance by establishing the US dollar as the global currency. Today, we see the increasing possibility of a post-Covid China challenging that hegemony. It is, therefore, high time that India uses its various geopolitical levers to seize the opportunity provided by the coronavirus pandemic to position itself as a third power in today’s multipolar world order.

The post PANDEMIC: Post-Covid Hostility Towards China appeared first on IMR.

China has capitalized on the world’s distraction to claim sovereignty over disputed islands in the South China Sea, intimidate Taiwan and assert more authority over Hong Kong in an attempt to quash the pro-democracy movement there.

It has taken advantage of vulnerable countries dependent on it for medical supplies, investments in the Belt & Road Initiative activities and those suffering from the adverse economic impact of the virus.

After the US suspended funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) the Chinese government pledged millions of dollars in additional support for the organization, giving China even more influence in the global health agency and allowing the country to portray itself as the new champion of multilateralism.

The incompetence of many countries around the world in preparing for and responding to COVID-19 provided China with relative gains. In many quarters, China’s initial failures have been overshadowed by the challenges faced in Europe and the incompetence of the Trump administration.

China believes that it has faced humiliations over the past century and the time is right for China to take revenge with ‘America and the West in decline’. The conflict has intensified with the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic to the rest of the world. Beijing feels confident that it has handled the outbreak better than Western democracies.

Hong Kong

Xi used the distraction of the coronavirus pandemic to exert more authority in Hong Kong and crack down on the pro-democracy movement there. On April 18, more than a dozen pro-democracy activists and lawmakers were arrested in Hong Kong, marking the largest single-day roundup in years.

In mid-April, the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, the Chinese state agency that closely oversees Hong Kong, criticized some of the city’s lawmakers for filibustering debates, which it said has led to a backlog of legislation.

Taken together, experts say Beijing is using the coronavirus as a cover to cement its authoritarian rule over Hong Kong and stamp out the pro-democracy movement once and for all.

South China Sea

Beijing has long laid claim to disputed islands in the South China Sea. To stake its claim, Chinese naval vessels have pushed other claimants, like the Philippines and Vietnam, out of the area so it can have full control of the islands and the oil and natural gas resources around them.

That practice has not stopped during the pandemic and amounts to sending a message to other countries involved in the South China Sea that China will not back down under any circumstances. Earlier this month, for example, a Chinese ship sank a Vietnamese fishing boat in the South China Sea and claimed other regional islands for itself.

Taiwan

China’s military continues to place pressure on Taiwan, including regular flights by fighter jets near Taiwanese airspace and sending flotillas close to the island. The US clearly sees an extra layer of threat in these times. US warships, which usually sail by Taiwan about once a month, have been in the area at least twice in April.

Africa

China has flexed its muscles on other continents, especially in Africa. Many African governments struggling to respond to the coronavirus asked for debt relief so they could invest more in health care, sanitation, food, and social programs to keep millions of people safe during the pandemic.

Chinese leaders asked officials from Zambia, to provide collateral, in their case Zambian copper-mining assets, sending a signal that it was not for debt forgiveness.

China foreign policy is based on give and take. It expects return on investments made even if it means acting the bully in the time of need and ignoring the racism against Africans back in China during the coronavirus crisis, when many Africans were barred from hotels, restaurants and shops.

Domination of International Bodies

Over the past several years, Beijing has systematically positioned Chinese nationals at the head of a wide range of U.N. agencies. Since 2019, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Agency has been led by Qu Dongyu, formerly China’s vice minister of agriculture. This followed the 2018 reinstatement of Zhao Houlin, who began his career in China’s Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, for a second four-year term as the secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union, a crucial body that sets technical standards for communications networks; Zhao has used his position to advance Huawei’s standing as a vendor of 5G telecommunications equipment worldwide. The previous year, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres appointed Liu Zhenmin, formerly China’s vice minister for foreign affairs, to a key position in the U.N.’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs – a body tasked with advancing the U.N.’s hallmark program to promote development, combat climate change and reduce inequality.

In part, this dominance of Chinese nationals in key U.N. agencies reflects Beijing’s savvy diplomatic maneuvering as a rising power, and its position as the world’s second-largest economy. But it’s also possible because of a void left by the United States, which under Trump has repudiated its previous leadership role in international organizations.

And as Chinese technology proliferates across the reaches of the organization, China has joined hands with Russia to institutionalize international norms around surveillance and censorship, including through the passage of a joint U.N. cybercrime resolution in November 2019 that equips authoritarian governments with broad-based authority to repress and censor political dissent online.

In March, just weeks before Trump began talking about curbing funding to the agency, China announced a $20 million donation to the WHO to fight Covid-19.

Diplomatic Offensive

Cheng Jingye, China’s ambassador to Australia, questioned whether Australia was “the best place to send” Chinese students for education, or whether Chinese consumers would want to buy Australian wine and beef, after Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for an independent review of the spread of the virus.

Vice-foreign minister Le Yucheng accused the U.S. of “political manipulation to a level beyond anyone’s imagination” in response to White House pressure over the virus.

In France, Lu Shaye, who previously served as ambassador to Canada, released a series of attacks on the “malevolence” of the French media, calling them lapdogs of the U.S.

In the Netherlands, the Chinese embassy called De Volkskrant newspaper “full of prejudice, discrimination and malice.”

Policy experts in China have explained Beijing aggressiveness was a result of Donald Trump administration manipulating the emotions of other countries to join the U.S. in strategically constraining China.

Pakistan

China exerted quiet pressure on Islamabad to flow against the global current and not blame China. It also prevailed upon Pakistan not to evacuate its nationals from Wuhan even when India offered to air lift when it evacuated its own nationals from China.

In fact, in March, just a week after the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, Pakistani President Arif Alvi met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. Alvi expressed Pakistan’s solidarity at a time when China’s global reputation was at a low point. A week later, the favour was returned when a planeload of Chinese medical face masks landed in Karachi.

In Pakistan’s media, there was a clear push to deflect blame for the pandemic away from China and to trumpet the fact that initial infections came by way of Pakistani pilgrims returning from Iran rather than from Chinese workers and goods or Pakistanis studying in China. Pakistan’s news outlets emphasized the generosity of Chinese aid, including medical supplies, technical experts and cash.

Expectations for China are clearly higher among Pakistan’s leaders and the public at large. Pakistan has appealed to Beijing directly for relief, both for debt repayment and for power purchases. Whether Beijing is actually ready or willing to deliver a truly generous dose of aid that would enable Pakistanis to better weather the storm is a moot question.

Southeast Asia

China is the most influential regional economic and politically strategic power, but large majorities worry about this influence.

China-Southeast Asia relations are unlikely to be significantly damaged by the pandemic. Southeast Asian governments have avoided pointing fingers and instead shown solidarity with China in fighting the virus. Some, like the Cambodian government, have bent over backward; Prime Minister Hun Sen visited China during the peak of the outbreak and declared that “the disease of Cambodian citizens is not a disease caused by the virus ‘corona’ but a disease of fear.” The Chinese government thanked Southeast Asian countries and reciprocated with aid. Chinese narratives portray Southeast Asia as standing with China.

On 1 February, Singapore closed its borders to all travelers from China, the first country in Southeast Asia to do so. The Singaporean government took pains to avoid offending the Chinese government with this decision. On 2 February prime minister Lee Hsien Loong said he knew “that China is doing all it can to contain the spread of the virus. … Even though the virus started in Wuhan, it doesn’t respect nationality or race. It does not check your passport before it goes into your body.”

The Chinese embassy and Chinese foundations and firms have made huge donations of medical supplies not only to Malaysian hospitals and government agencies but also to various social and cultural groups of different ethnic backgrounds. The diplomatic mileage, however, was undermined by a Chinese survey ship Haiyang Dizhi-8 spotted tagging a Malaysian exploration vessel off the coasts of Brunei and eastern Malaysia. China’s activities in the South China Sea left the impression that Beijing was taking advantage of the COVID-19 situation to advance its territorial interests in the disputed waters.

China assisted Indonesia with essential medical supplies flown back from Shanghai by the Indonesian Air Force. Meanwhile, a new ASEAN-China COVID-19 Response Fund has been established in collaboration with the ASEAN Plus Three (APT) states (China, Japan, and South Korea). Beijing has also committed to providing financial and material support through the more established ASEAN-China Cooperation and APT Cooperation Funds.

Affect on Belt and Road Initiative

The nature, pace and scope of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has also been affected, and will continue to do so in the longer-term. Despite the downturn in manufacturing and supply chain activity, the pace of digital BRI activity has ramped up..

BRI has investments across more than 100 countries and multiple sectors per country (power, railways, ports, roads and industrial parks).

All previous forecasts have been altered in the wake of COVID-19 and ongoing commercial tensions between China and the US.

Chinese state companies have turned their focus to investments in ports, power and industrial parks across Southeast Asia.

ICT companies and e-commerce platforms are seeing new opportunities for full digital value-chain under digital BRI activity opening up new avenues for companies such as Alibaba’s DingTalk, Tencent’s WeChat Work and Huawei’s WeLink to bid for market share outside of China, especially in the BRI region.

Chinese state banks are facing greater greater capital constraints, and non-performing loans are likely to rise at home, owing to COVID-19 related financial weakness. With focus turning towards the most commercially profitable supply chain related investments, BRI projects will increasingly focus on profitable supply chain related opportunities in Southeast Asia where the private sector and private capital play a greater role.

Whatever the lasting impact of COVID-19 on the economy, BRI will remain a priority for China. The financial challenges may, though, divert official attention and resources away from BRI over the next year or two.

Health Silk Road

Instead of being the irresponsible government whose failures unleashed a deadly pandemic on the world, China tried to look like the world’s savior, graciously providing critical supplies to countries in need.

China is advancing its Health Silk Road to assert global leadership, conducting diplomatic overtures to leaders across Europe, Latin America and Africa as it deploys medical equipment and aid to hard-hit countries such as Italy.

China sent medical equipment and physicians to countries in Europe that were struggling to deal with coronavirus outbreaks. It has also sent supplies and resources to Serbia, the Netherlands, and Spain. In some cases, China’s benevolence backfired. Some of the test-kits Beijing gave to European nations did not work. Spanish scientists found that testing devices from China correctly identify a positive case only 30 per cent of the time.

China’s aim is to expand its economic reach in Europe and to weaken US alliances in the region. Italy was the first major European country to sign on to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. But some countries have got fed up with Beijing’s pressure tactics and posturing.

Some 200 Italian business are now controlled by Chinese owners (not including the ones owned by Chinese living in Italy), while China’s central bank holds stakes in several Italian blue chips like Fiat, Telecom Italia, Generali and Eni, among others.

Comments

Amid the ongoing pandemic, we can expect regional international relations to be increasingly contentious over the distribution of power, the strength of bilateral relationships, choices of rules and institutions, and Chinese versus U.S. narratives of blame and culpability.

Few believe in China’s altruistic moves. Most see them as opportunistic. The US left a leadership void, and China quickly stepped in to fill it. With just a small donation, Beijing gets to look like a staunch advocate of global cooperation and a responsible partner in the public health response to the coronavirus, in contrast to the US.

Experts say this is all part of Xi’s broader strategy to dislodge America as the world’s sole superpower and expand China’s reach around the world. In other words, he’s merely exploiting the coronavirus crisis to achieve his aims even faster.

China’s aggressive attempts to exploit the pandemic for its own benefit have made it harder for governments – especially the United States – to trust and work with the country.

It is far from certain who will win the international diplomatic fight sparked by the crisis-if anyone. But if China comes out on top, it will be a public diplomacy battle that the world’s leading liberal democracies have lost, not one that China has won. The beneficiary of this race to the bottom may be the only superpower left standing: China.

===================

In early May 2017, Chinese police officers in their national uniforms started patrolling streets in Milan and Rome alongside Italian cops.

Masks and other items do not need Chinese regulatory approval before export. Many Chinese testing kits exported were found unfit.

==============

Sino-Indian Relations in Covid Times

Indians have been skeptical of China’s role in handling the coronavirus pandemic. Indian rhetoric has been measured, due primarily to its dependence on China to procure medical supplies and its desire to keep the relationship stable. But India has been concerned with the economic fallout. Many sectors in India, like pharmaceutical, are primarily dependent on China for industrial inputs and ingredients.

India has also been concerned with the pace of Chinese investment in India and Chinese entities’ taking taking advantage of the crisis to acquire vulnerable Indian companies, increase its influence in India’s neighborhood, and exerting a more assertive regional leadership role.

To circumvent hostile Chinese takeovers the government has announced restrictions on foreign direct investment from countries that share a land boundary with India-a move clearly directed against China.

In a bid to keep Chinese influence at bay, India was also active with diplomatic outreach, economic aid, technical assistance, and the provision of medical supplies to Maldives, Mauritius, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal.

India also actively engaged other countries in their fight with COVID-19. As the largest producer of anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine, initially it banned exports of the drug on March 25 and further tightened rules on April 4 to bar exports from special economic zones (SEZs). Leter, it approved the supply of the hydroxychloroquine and paracetamol, either as commercial sales or as grants, to 55 countries including US, Brazil, Israel and UAE.

India also engaged other countries in the Indo-Pacific, bilaterally and through a Quad Plus mechanism.

In the public sphere, anti-China sentiment went mainstream in a way usually reserved for India’s other rival, Pakistan. Indians largely blame China for the origin of the virus and criticize its lack of disclosure, its influence on WHO, its sidelining of Taiwan, the quality of its medical supplies, and what are seen as its efforts to take diplomatic or commercial advantage of the crisis.

The post Pandemic Ruthlessly Exploited by China appeared first on IMR.

The disruptions to industrial chains and the drastic decline in international travel are only the most visible features.

After the pandemic, there will be significant changes in international trade, investment and industrial chains. The epidemic has caused huge damage to globalisation. Global public opinion will greatly affect the re-establishment of a post-virus world order. As things stand now, those moving to take the initiative are the U.S. and China.

Australia called for an inquiry into the origin of the coronavirus. Germany and Britain hesitated about inviting in Chinese tech giant Huawei. US president Donald Trump blamed China for the contagion and sought to punish it. Some governments wanted to sue Beijing for damages and reparations.

China responded aggressively, combining medical aid to other countries with harsh nationalist rhetoric and mixing demands for gratitude with economic threats. The result only added momentum to the blowback and growing mistrust against China in Europe and Africa.

US Supply Chains

Since President Donald Trump took office in 2017, his approach to U.S.-China relations included increased pressure via tariffs and trade war rhetoric, and with the onset of an unprecedented pandemic, the stage has been set for both sides to cast aspersions on the other.

Roughly three-quarters of American companies report supply-chain disruptions in China. China’s official Xinhua News Agency threatened to exploit Beijing’s control over medical supply chains as retaliation against U.S. efforts to hold China accountable for its actions during the pandemic.

President Donald Trump, who faces elections on 3 November, has stepped up attacks on China and pledged to bring manufacturing back from overseas. The Trump administration is “turbocharging” an initiative to remove global industrial supply chains from China as it weighs new tariffs to punish Beijing for its handling of the coronavirus outbreak.  Trump had been calling the coronavirus “the Chinese virus,” although he stopped doing so later.

A new Pew Research Center survey of Americans conducted in March showed two-thirds say they have an unfavorable view of China, up nearly 20 percentage points since the start of the Trump administration. Positive views of China’s leader, President Xi Jinping, were also at historically low levels. Many saw Chinese power and influence as threat to the U.S.

The U.S. Commerce Department, State and other agencies were looking for ways to push companies to move both sourcing and manufacturing out of China. Tax incentives and potential re-shoring subsidies were among measures being considered to spur changes.

Trump’s China policy has been defined by behind-the-scenes tussles between pro-trade advisers and China hawks; now the latter say their time has come. Trump has said repeatedly that he could put new tariffs on top of the up to 25% tax on $370 billion in Chinese goods currently in place.

U.S. companies, which pay the tariffs, have been groaning, especially as sales plummeted during coronavirus lockdowns. But that does not mean Trump will balk at new ones. Other ways to punish China may include sanctions on officials or companies, and closer relations with Taiwan, the self-governing island China considers a province.

A move to block global exports of chips to blacklisted Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, for example, favoured by hawks in the administration and under consideration since November, has not yet been finalized.

Japan

Both Xi’s proposed trip to Japan and the Tokyo Olympics were postponed due to coronavirus , and Sino-Japanese relations found themselves at a crossroads.

Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe has proposed building an economy that is less dependent on one country, China, so that the nation can better avoid supply chain disruptions. Disruptions hit the procurement of auto parts and other products for which Japan relies on China, seriously impacting corporate Japan’s activities.

Of the products that rely heavily on a single country for manufacturing, “we should try to relocate high added value items to Japan,” Abe’s remarks were clear. “And for everything else, we should diversify to countries like those in ASEAN.”

Japan earmarked more than 240 billion yen (about $2.2 billion) in its supplementary budget plan for fiscal 2020 to assist domestic companies to move production back home or to diversify their production bases into Southeast Asia.

If the U.S. and Japan, the world’s biggest and third-biggest economies respectively, move away from China, it will have a huge impact on the world’s second-biggest economy.

Europe

France entered into a political battle with Beijing amid rising anti-China sentiments in the continent and aggressive diplomacy by Chinese diplomats. The French ministry of foreign affairs, in early May, summoned the Chinese ambassador for ‘objectionable’ articles on Chinese embassy’s website.

Spokesperson for Chinese embassy in Berlin, Tao Lil, published an open letter to Bild on the embassy’s website. “I followed your reporting on the corona pandemic in general and China’s alleged guilt, in particular, today. Apart from the fact that we consider it a pretty bad style to blame a country for a pandemic that is affecting the whole world and then to present an explicit account of alleged Chinese debts to Germany, the article ignores some essential facts,” stated the letter.

Julian Reichelt, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Bild criticised Chinese president Xi Jinping for his regime’s failure to come clean about the Covid-19 outbreak. In his letter to Xi, Reichelt said, “Your embassy in Berlin has addressed me in an open letter because we asked in our newspaper Bild whether China should pay for the massive economic damage the coronavirus is inflicting worldwide.””You [Xi], your government and your scientists had to know long ago that coronavirus is highly infectious, but you left the world in the dark about it. Your top experts didn’t respond when Western researchers asked to know what was going on in Wuhan. You were too proud and too nationalistic to tell the truth, which you felt was a national disgrace,” stated the letter.

Australia

Australia was presented with the explicit choice between sovereignty and money when the Chinese Communist Party publicly threatened Australia with trade boycotts for proposing an international inquiry into the global pandemic.

It is business as usual for Beijing to preach mutual respect and non-interference while intimidating countries to get its way. The prime minister declined to criticise Beijing and said China’s position was “a matter for China”.

Quad Countries

The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue is an optimal venue. Established by prime minister Abe in 2007 to discuss regional security issues, the Quad’s members are Japan, India, Australia and the U.S.

The U.S. government is working with Australia, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and Vietnam to “move the global economy forward,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said April 29. These discussions include how we restructure … supply chains to prevent something like this from ever happening again,” US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said.

Japan’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) strategy is to work with other Quad powers [Australia, India, and the United States] and Indo-Pacific developing countries to sustain regional economic development and integration under the familiar norms of the rules-based order.

Rather than seeking to bring all supply chains to the U.S. or reorder all trade, the Quad-Plus should should focus on the most critical industries so the U.S. is no longer at the mercy of Beijing for supplies in a pandemic.

Elsewhere in the World

South Korea appears to be planning to shift several important factories from China to India.

In Netherlands, the Chinese embassy accused the newspaper Volkskrant of running ‘far-fetched and malicious’ stories.

China was embroiled in social media disputes not only in Europe, but in Khazakstan, Iran and Singapore. It also argued with the Brazilian education minister over statements that Beijing planned world domination. In Sri Lanka, the Chinese embassy’s Twitter account was restored after it was shut down for allegedly being inflammatory.

China’s Concerns

President Xi, who doubles as the party’s general secretary, speaking at the China’s Politburo Standing Committee, the party’s top decision-making body, on 8 April,  said that “as the pandemic continues its global spread, the world economy faces a mounting downside risk.” He added, “Unstable and uncertain factors are notably increasing.” Xi called for “preparedness in mind and work to cope with prolonged external environment changes.” He sounded the call to prepare for “a protracted battle” while assuming the worst.

Comments

China overtook the United States as the world’s top manufacturing country in 2010, and was responsible for 28% of global output in 2018, according to United Nations data.

Many Japanese firms have “bet on China” and depend exclusively on Chinese factories and firms to provide critically important goods. The lesson is that Japanese firms must expect disruption, diversify risk, and design redundancy into supply chains, especially for products critically important to Japan’s stability and security. The other reason is that actual reshoring of strategically indispensable Japanese production – not just “China +1” supply chain management – is a key aspect of Abe’s plan. This could kill two birds with one stone. It could enhance national security and it could also benefit Japan’s small- and medium-sized firms and boost provincial redevelopment plans in ways that help the LDP’s political prospects.

China appears to be concerned that Japan’s move might negatively affect wider foreign investor sentiment. This concern reflects the fact that China needs access to rich Western economies to regain a stable growth and development path, which is critical to Xi Jinping’s legitimacy.

Much will depend on how the U.S. and China rebuild their respective virus-hit economies. If major foreign companies withdraw from China, it will become a big drag on the Middle Kingdom’s economic revival.

Excluding Beijing from a new international economic order, some call it “de-sinicisation” would also pose a protracted economic and diplomatic challenge to China in the years ahead, though it has effectively declared victory over the virus within its borders.Now it’s a zero-sum confrontation, starkly and publicly.

The Morrison government’s proposal for an independent, international inquiry into the cause and spread of the disease was “dangerous”, according to China’s ambassador to Australia, Cheng Jingye.

The proposition from Beijing was very simple. If you want to go ahead and make policies according to your own national interests, and not ours, we will cut your income – through wine, beef, tourism and education sectors.

UP Offers Facilities to Industry Moving Out of China

The Uttar Pradesh government held a video conference with nearly 100 investors and companies from the US on 29 April. US firms Lockheed Martin, Honeywell, Boston Scientific, FedEx, UPS, Cisco and Adobe were among those present. UP Minister for MSME, Investment and Exports Siddharth Nath Singh received several questions regarding the perks that the state could offer.

The state has proposed to provide several facilities to giant corporations of the US if they shift factories and bases from China to UP.

FedEx and UPS were told they could use the proposed Jewar international airport to start their operations. Siddharth Nath Singh also said that the state is willing to discuss incentives according to their requirements. Defence firms such as Lockheed Martin were told that they could use the Uttar Pradesh defence corridor.

Global companies have been assessing move of their bases out of China due to the US-China trade war, which has led to increase in the prices of products, hitting profit margins of the companies. The central and state governments want to leave no stone unturned to attract the foreign investors.

UP has already announced various incentives such as capital subsidy, land subsidy and a bouquet of incentives and there are 90 lakh MSME units which could be used for multiple purposes. The state was also considering an amendment to the state’s industrial policy to attract companies that were keen to shift their base from China.

The post PANDEMIC: Global Backlash Building Against China appeared first on IMR.