Have a break, have a Chit Chat - Page 27

NSA Ajit Doval leaves for Beijing to confer with his opposite number on the Special Representative-level talks to resolve the border dispute, the State Counselor Yang Jiechi. But Doval is being welcomed by a barrage, to add to the verbal fusillade by the Chinese defence ministry, of rhetorical escalation now involving the Foreign Minister Wang Yi. In a censorious tone that almost sounds comical, he asked Delhi to "conscientiously withdraw its troops. Yes, there has been an invasion, as Beijing claims, but it is by the Peoples Liberation Army elements on Bhutanese territory, and the sooner the Zhongnanhai recovers a bit of sanity and restores the status quo ante, the better it will be for China. Because already it has gone way out on a limb and, with most of the small and big states in Asia and elsewhere watching, has more face to lose when eventually it backs down from an untenable position, as it will have to.

For the first time the Indian government has shown some spine and, more, displayed considerable cunning in giving Beijing a very big stage to publicly make a fool of itself. The initial resolve to ensure the intruding PLA troops don't have their way on the Doklam Plateau and the Indian jawans and officers standing their ground, backed by a determined build-up in the rear areas, was as powerful a move as it was unexpected, especially to the Chinese. The confusion it sowed in the Chinese ranks bubbled up all the way through the Xigatze, Chengdu military commands to Beijing and is manifested in precisely the spate of nervously impolitic statements issued by all and sundry. China has been pushed on to the backfoot and it will be good to keep it there.

This is a great call made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and his moves to-date where his government has played it so cool, have been unerringly right. The question is what has he advised Doval to do? One only hopes he has told the NSA to stick by the line laid down at the PM's behest by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj in Parliament of no preconditions and simultaneous withdrawal by the PLA to the Batang La perimeter and the Indian troops to their start-off points before any talks. There should be no flexibility, no give, in this respect because the Chinese can take a mile when offered an inch. There's, moreover, no time guillotine coming down to arrive at a hurried compromise. It is the PLA unit out of the sub-regional command that is at the end of a fairly long logistics chain, while the Indian forward supply system is arrayed on a shorter, tighter, grid. So, if the Chinese want their soldiers to spend the coming winter at the Dok La heights, it is no skin off our backs. But the principle of the inviolability of the Bhutan border and Thimpu's territorial claims has to be maintained at all cost by India.

So, what's the problem? As always it is the Mandarin-speaking veterans of MEA who have pulled long stints in China and suffer from the Beijing syndrome' the diplomatic equivalent of the Stockholm syndrome', wherein Indian diplomats begin so empathizing with the Chinese and their point of view, that they end up pushing the Beijing line to the govt of India, through the China Desk at the MEA and the China Study Circle' (CSC), which should long ago have been disbanded but is persisted with by the powers that be. These China-lovers are pushing for a compromise that will hurt the Indian national interest, and that's the problem. This band of China lovers have reached top positions (NSA, Foreign Secretary), monopolized India's China policy, and made a mess of it over the last 50 years, because their instincts are to adjust, accommodate, compromise, and surrender. It was CSC, for instance, that advocated participation in Xi Jinping's OBOR project until they were firmly over-ruled by Modi. Hope the PM does not at this stage succumb to CSC advice.

Modi and India have gained a lot of admiration in Asia and the world by showing, for a change, some spirit. It shouldn't be frittered away in the false hope that concessions by Doval will lead to peace on the border. It won't but will rather only lead to more demands, more truculence and gross misbehaviour. Ask Yangbon, Hanoi, Taipei, Tokyo, Seoul.

A sideline issue, but yesterday evening I heard some commentators on TV talk about this country not being up on the public relations game compared to China. Actually, one of the great pluses of the Indian policy so far is exactly that the Modi government hasn't been voluble or over-hyped the situation. It's been low key and low to the ground, leaving it to China to blow the whole thing out of proportion and face regional and global ridicule. Nothing reduces a big power as much as ridicule. The Doklam confrontation is a subject matter that the numerous comedy outfits on Indian social media should make a meal of. Much fun can be had there.

When the National People's Congress (NPC), the Chinese Parliament and top legislative body, convenes in Beijing on March 5 for its annual session, it will be bringing together not only China's most powerful political leaders but also some of the nation's wealthiest individuals. The net worth of the 70 richest delegates at the NPC, the country's 3,000-member legislative house, rose by a stunning $11.5 billion last year, according to a new report from Hurun, a Shanghai-based company that publishes a Chinese rich-list every year.

The 70 richest delegates' net worth was $89.8 billion, or 565.8 billion yuan, in 2011.

These figures would perhaps make even India's parliamentarians blush. The total declared assets of India's 36 riches Members of Parliament in the Lok Sabha was $252 million, or Rs.1,238 crore as of 2009, according to the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), which describes itself as a non-political group that campaigns for electoral reforms. It compiled a list of India's richest politicians based on affidavits filed before the 2009 elections. According to the ADR's figures, India's politicians are, however, fast catching up with their Chinese counterparts. Their assets rose by 186 per cent between 2004 when Indian politicians were first required to file affidavits stating their net worth and 2009, when the number of crorepatis in the Lok Sabha doubled to 315.

Comparing China's NPC and the Lok Sabha is not an exact exercise on several levels. For one, the Lok Sabha's MPs are elected, while the NPC's delegates are chosen by the Communist Party of China (CPC) through often opaque internal arrangements. The NPC is often described as a "rubber-stamp legislature, which holds far less power than the Lok Sabha. It rarely denies, or even strongly debates, the draft laws put forward by the government. Increasingly, NPC delegates have been drawn from China's biggest State-run and private enterprises, which explains their riches six of China's 10 richest individuals serve on either the NPC or the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), a political advisory body that could be loosely compared to the Rajya Sabha.

Corruption and inequality

According to the Hurun, 173 individuals, representing 12 per cent of the list, serve on government advisory bodies. Among them is Zong Qinghou, chairman of the Hangzhou Wahaha Group, a beverage company, who is China's second-richest person. Others include heads of real estate companies, steel companies, construction giants and financial enterprises. Their appointment to government bodies, Hurun noted, "handed them a powerful platform in a business climate which values official contacts. The practice of bringing in China's wealthiest individuals into political advisory bodies largely began during the previous Jiang Zemin government (1993-2002). It served two purposes. For the party, giving the business elite a voice in policy decisions was seen as a way of securing their political support. For the businessmen, there was "strong incentive to become within system' due to the relative weakness in the rule of law and of property rights, as Victor Shih, a professor of Chinese politics at Northwestern University, told Bloomberg News, which reported on Hurun's findings last week.

Public resentment

As different as the Indian and Chinese political systems are, the marriage of business and politics that takes place at the highest levels of both governments has increasingly become a source of public anger and debate in both countries. This has been reflected in the growing resentment towards official corruption and renewed calls for economic reforms, amid concerns about fast-rising inequality. Earlier this month, as China marked the twentieth anniversary of Deng Xiaoping's famous "southern tour which gave the push for the reform and opening up, a number of Chinese scholars called on the government to continue what they described as a "stalled process.

"[China's] market development has been distorted by a lack of understanding toward the rule of law, upon which any sound market system is based, and weak institutional controls that fail to prevent the collusion of big power and big money, wrote Caixin, an influential magazine, in an editorial this month. "We must not shut our eyes to the powerful, vested interests that have been monopolising the benefits of China's reform and opening movement, thus impeding deeper reform. Today's leaders must act as Deng did.

Caixin's views have been echoed by a number of other scholars on China's political Right. But those on the Left say reforms are not the answer. They see the marriage of business and political interests at the government's highest levels as the legacy of economic liberalisation that took place without the mechanisms in place to ensure balanced growth.

Cui Zhiyuan, professor from the School of Public Administration at Tsinghua University, wrote in an article that "some have preconceived ideas that reform relates to privatisation.

"I think the core of reform we need is not about opening coastal cities to boost the economy but about paying more attention to people's social welfare, he argued, calling for a combination of "socialism with innovative reforms. He says "balancing urban and rural development and reforming the household registration system, which denies migrant workers access to social welfare when they move to cities, should top the NPC's agenda when it convenes next week. How its millionaire delegates will respond remains to be seen.