In an exclusive interview with India Today TV, renowned columnist and author Gordon G Chang shared his views on the India-China military standoff in eastern Ladakh. “There many explanations but the one that I think is the most persuasive is that China is lashing out from a sense of weakness.
“India needs to reinforce its troops along the border but it also needs to hit them (China) where it hurts the most (which is) the economy,” Gordon Chang said about the military standoff in eastern Ladakh.
You got to remember that they just unleashed the coronavirus on the rest of the world,” Gordon Chang said. He adds, “I am sure they are very sensitive about it and what they are trying to do is to change the global attention away from the coronavirus pandemic.”
“Xi Jinping is just lashing out a number of countries, not just India, South China Sea, the US, Kazakhastan, Western Europe and is part of a broader project. This is extremely dangerous because if Xi Jinping faces setbacks, then he may believe that he will lose power. His threshold from the risk will be extremely low and he is capable of doing anything,” Gordon Chang who authored ‘The Coming Collapse of China’ in 2001 told India Today News Director Rahul Kanwal.
Responding to a question about the pandemic’s impact on China, Chang says that the Chinese economy will probably see the deepest contraction.
He goes on to add, “Xi has very few people to blame too because he has had close to total power. So he needs a victory. What he sees in regards to India is a possibility of grabbing territory from India and declaring it as a victory for China. The Chinese people would be able to know more if Xi Jinping’s policy was working on the border because then the state media would be trumpeting it.”
“I think what Xi’s narrative will be is that China is recovering lost territory and it has been tough. This will fit into the narrative that Beijing has been promoting all along. It is very important for the Communist Party to propagate the narrative that China is very strong and powerful,” Gordon Chang says.
About the military standoff in eastern Ladakh that resulted in casualties on both sides earlier this month, Chang said, “India needs to reinforce its troops along the border but it also needs to hit them where it hurts the most (which is) the economy. Cancel contracts of Chinese firms, don’t allow Huewai, boycott Chinese goods. When the Chinese see this new attitude, they will start respecting you. But till the time it doesn’t happen. It will continue to dismember your country.”
The American columnist whose latest book, the Great US-China Tech War was released earlier this year told India Today TV, “China knows that population is a source of power. Being the most populous country, they know it well and it is important for them as it shows their strength. They know that the Chinese population is bound to decrease over this century and India will become the most populous country. They see that the Indian economy is smartly growing and that it will soon become the most populous country and they are worried about this.”
“Remember for Chinese people, population is power and India is going to have this power in this century. China will not. The Chinese are very good at intimidation. They intimidate countries that are much stronger than them, especially the United States. The Chinese people also see that the rest of the world is not in a mood to help China and factories are moving out,” Chang believes.
Gordon Chang concludes the interview with the words, “China has a problem that its economy is export-dependent and the countries are not buying as much as they were earlier and because of Chinese aggression, countries are imposing trade barriers. China presently is seeing an unhappy people and a worsening economy and that is a sign of distress.”
