Curb imports to check China trade gap

Abhijit Bhattacharyya

Commentator and Author

THE irreversible destruction of India through “deep penetration” by Chinese citizens and cellphone companies is wreaking havoc in the Hindustan heartland. Masterminded by the Xi Jinping-led Communist Party of China (CPC) and its conscripted militia-type People’s Liberation Army (PLA), it’s the ugliest Delhi has ever seen. We are seeing some sordid live samples in the neighbourhood, too, where the CPC-PLA’s fatal charm offensive destroyed India’s southern neighbour and two more in the north could be gobbled up soon.

Indeed, what began with forced occupation of independent Tibet-land in the 1950s by the Marx-Mao ideology-indoctrinated military of Beijing, it traversed long to diversify aggression, targeting Delhi’s destruction from within, through multi-million dollar fraud, cheating and scam, clinically implemented. So much so, that even the Indian Capital is now in the grip of trained Chinese duping citizens thereof worth hundreds of crores from within, and far from the India-China borderland.

The “critical” part of the story is familiar but real, the Indians themselves are conniving and conspiring with a foe.

Thus, instances of Chinese nationals’ crimes in India are so many that it is impossible to list them, except to suggest a few points to ponder.

How has this floodgate of Chinese crime and criminals opened? Why India isn’t stopping the entry of all Chinese, lock stock and barrel? Especially, when Indians have not been getting the visa to China since 2020? When China ruined the career of thousands of Indian students? Why this suicidal benign attitude? Why doesn’t India hit where it matters the most: at the money-making points and joints of the CPC-PLA?

Contextually, can a single Indian commit even a minor crime inside China and go unpunished? How come the Chinese overstay in India for years? What are the checks and balances in place? Why aren’t they put behind the bars for the same number of days, matching with their overstay, and prosecuted for crime records in India?

Regrettably, on the eve of 75 years of Independence in August 2022, one is constrained to recall a 39-year-old August 1983 landmark Hindi movie Ardh Satya (Half Truth), depicting the wide public perception (nay, conviction) of the harsh reality of contemporary Indian polity, societal and law enforcement agencies’ crass deficiencies, wherein the “half truth” inevitably emerges as the “real truth”. Half-truth harmfully eclipses the truth.

In this background, let’s explore the “satya” (truth) of the India-China politico-diplomatic trajectory and bilateral military chemistry. Factually, independent India (August 1947) is two years and one and a half month senior to independent China (October 1949). And, while India began her sovereign journey with a defensive war against unprovoked Pakistani aggression on J&K, followed by tackling the violent secessionist movement of Junagadh and Hyderabad, the godless Communist China started life with brutal offensive operations against a weak and meek Buddhist Tibet in October 1950 and slyly penetrated through India’s Ladakh-land to connect occupied-Tibet with an autonomous Xinjiang in the mid-1950s.

Thus, in one stroke, J&K turned from an Indo-Pak bilateral issue to an India-Pakistan-China trilateral one, thereby permanently destroying Indian sovereignty. And, all later-day Chinese schemes — BRI/OBOR/CPEC etc — came up as a new game of the imperialism of the CPC-PLA clique to capture resources, land and economics of the great Euro-Asian heartland with Communist cash, thereby decimating India’s honour and prestige in the international arena.

The worst of Chinese malice and perfidy, however, came in October 1962 with dictator Mao Zedong-led CPC and its militia-like conscripted “supari” (outsourced) killers of underworld’s “hire-for-fire” olive green uniform force, fancifully referred to as the PLA.

Understandably, the inevitable followed. Delhi and the Dragon’s bilateral diplomatic accreditation ceased to exist — from July 1961 to July 1976. Both Nehru, during his last days, and his political successor and daughter Indira Gandhi, rightly toughened the stance against the Marx-Mao cocktail of deception, deceitful diplomacy and congenital dance of disinformation, leading to lies, and more lies and resulting in a chronic ardh satya.

Nevertheless, during the last 46 years (1976-2022) of “normal” diplomacy, too, the CPC-PLA duo never ever allowed India to live peacefully. Instead, the Hans kept India in a state of eternal turmoil, contemptuously holding Delhi low in everything.

Unfortunately, however, three Indian PMs misjudged the gravity of the Han threat and the CPC-PLA mind and motive. The Chinese invaded India in 1962. India was smashed. Yet, India made the first high-level politico-diplomatic move to visit China’s “Forbidden City” in 1978. The Chinese took it as official Indian “kow-tow” (act in an excessively subservient manner) before the Beijing durbar. Two more Indian PMs’ initiatives in the 1980s and 1990s opened the CPC-PLA door to the Indian market, which today have brought her commerce and economics to the precipice.

The bilateral commerce, starting with a negative figure of $743.85 million in 1999-2000, shot up to $72.9 billion in 2021.22, thereby proving ruinous to India’s current account deficit (CAD). It’s an incredible one-way trade profit for the Hans and a proportionately disastrous figure for Hindustan. Making matters worse, India’s foreign exchange reserves dwindled from a record $642 billion in September 2021 to $572 billion now, thanks to the India-China trade deficit.

It is, therefore, time India drastically curbed import under two broad categories — “essential” and “non-essential” — as was done by Indira Gandhi in the 1970s and 80s. The ballooning trade gap puts enormous pressure on the Indian currency, too, along with other financial and economic parameters.

The CPC-PLA-run Beijing started rising on the back of a ruthless curbing of the import of “non-essential” items, thereby turning its negative trade balance into a surplus one. In May 2022, Europe’s economic powerhouse Germany posted a trade deficit of $1 billion for the first time in more than three decades, essentially owing to the Ukraine war. And the Germans resent it! They are already acting to turn deficit into surplus.

Coming back to the Chinese shenanigans, it’s a mindboggling multi-front assault on India. From the border, it has escalated to cities; satellite towns like Gurugram, Noida and Ghaziabad and, now, Delhi, with the Chinese running a multi-crore loan application fraud and extortion racket.

The worst part is that 149 Indian staff were employed to help run the Chinese racket. Obviously, these 149 are the urban unemployed who have been cunningly engaged, taking advantage of a weak job market of Delhi’s economics.

Thus, the ardh satya continues unabated for Chinese penetration into India. Since India is unlikely to pay heed to an Indian, at least she could hear what the Royal Navy First Sea Lord stated: “China is a more dangerous foe than Russia.” India could also note the US-UK spy chiefs’ joint statement: “The threat from Chinese spies is paramount in Washington and London, and it only continues to grow.”

Aren’t there numerous Chinese criminals/spies all over India too?

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#China #xi jinping