West factor in China’s propaganda against India

Anita Inder Singh

Founding Professor, Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution, New Delhi

AUTHORITARIAN China’s official media echoes and explains much about the Chinese government’s views on foreign affairs. And the disengagement of Indian and Chinese troops in eastern Ladakh does not dissuade China’s state-steered press from indulging in its habitual criticism of any sign of growing closeness between India and the US.

For instance, the recent mix of news about India’ first indigenous aircraft carrier INS Vikrant. New Delhi’s assertion that the talk of Asia for Asians only reflects chauvinism and that America’s presence is necessary to secure freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific; and India’s emergence as the world’s fifth largest economy, but having fallen to the 132nd place on the Human Development Index, has led the state mouthpiece, the Global Times, to warn India editorially against falling for American flattery about its progress or influence, while asserting China’s status as the leader of the developing world.

As for the meeting of the America-led Indo-Pacific Economic Forum (IPEF) in San Francisco held on September 9, which India had joined with several other countries, China’s media is quite right, at one level, in saying that it is aimed at bolstering the US economy. True, the White House has asserted that expanding US economic leadership in the region is good for American workers and businesses as well as for the people of the region. The IPEF will help lower costs by making America’s supply chains more resilient in the long term.

But what Chinese propaganda ignores is that US foreign direct investment in the Indo-Pacific totalled more than $969 billion in 2020, that the US is the leading exporter of services to the region and is helping fuel growth in its countries.

6.092 cmThe IPEF also gives India the chance to engage with member countries in different areas of mutual interest. Indeed, India should seriously consider how it can increase trade and investment ties with the Indo-Pacific countries as they would be the largest contributors to global growth over the next 30 years.

China shrugs off news that India has broken into the top five suppliers of Christmas decorative items and T-shirts to the US, alleging that the US is trying to hype the competition between India and China. India’s manufacturing development, it declares, cannot be isolated from China’s manufacturing and “Make in India” cannot replace “Made in China”. And it reminds India of its slow economic advance: Having lagged far behind China for decades, can India replicate China’s success in the GDP ranking in the foreseeable future?

On the security front, the Global Times has reacted sharply to reports that INS Vikrant has put India in the league of global naval powers, capable of countering China’s growing military assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific. Beijing warns India that the western strategy is Machiavellian. By depicting China’s much larger and growing fleet as the major target of Vikrant, western agencies are trying to push India into an anti-China front. India should “stay sober amid western flattery that is aimed at luring India into an anti-China cannon fodder.” The implication here is that an insecure India can be taken in by western praise.

Meanwhile, Chinese military experts say that India hasn’t achieved all that much; that China is ahead of India in terms of both number and technology of aircraft carriers and certain technologies are still dependent on foreign countries, which will limit Vikrant’s combat-effectiveness and supporting power.

At the same time, a different strand of thinking, in the form of praise for India’s strategic autonomy also appears in official Chinese media.

The Global Times admits that nonalignment means that India maintains friendly cooperation with its fellow members in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and in the Chinese-led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, which will meet in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, in mid-September.

India also participated in the Russian naval drill in the Pacific, which included several former Soviet republics, China, Laos, Mongolia, Nicaragua and Syria. At this level, India is perceived as “one of the few major powers that can still gain advantages from both sides under the international environment that witnesses increasingly severe division and confrontation.”

Regarding the status of China-India relations, President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have reached a consensus on “no threat to each other” and “development opportunities for each other.” The latter part of the statement sounds right, at least in part, given that the Sino-Indian trade continues to increase, despite the two nations’ border conflict.

What does China want from India? It wants India to cooperate with China in global affairs and articulate the demands of developing countries, which will constrain the hegemony of the US, and jointly promote “more democratic international relations and a fairer international order.” On this rare occasion, the official media does not say that China already claims leadership of the developing world. So, China’s praise for the Indian strategic autonomy tacitly amounts to saying that India should stand in line behind China if it wants to enhance its regional status: “If India fully falls into the western orbit circles of the US and West, then how could India talk about its goal of becoming a powerful country?”

In contrast, as two ancient civilisations, two emerging economies and two neighbouring countries, the two nations share common interests that are far larger than their differences. The two sides have the wisdom to achieve a “dance of the Dragon and elephant” rather than “consume” each other. This does not quite square with India’s view that their border dispute remains the greatest obstacle to bettering ties and the creation of an Asian century, which neither the Chinese foreign ministry nor the media mention. China’s foreign ministry merely claims that the two countries have an effective dialogue mechanism to resolve their territorial dispute.

Despite warnings about the US exploitation of India, Chinese experts claim that India’s insistence on strategic autonomy would prevent it from dancing to the western tune. But with India welcoming US’ presence in Asia, despite growing trade ties with China, it is clear that India will not follow the Dragon. Indeed, it will have to strengthen itself economically in order to resist China’s propaganda, its aggressiveness in the North-East and the broader Indo-Pacific.

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