Doesn't attacking India before attacking Taiwan make more sense for China?
So right now what's happened is that before Speaker of the US House of Representatives Mrs. Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan the Chinese made a lot of noise on social media, they did a lot of saber rattling, they used a lot of strong words like we will shoot down the the Pelosi’s aircraft, you’re crossing the red line, it’s a final warning etc.
But ever after so many threats from Chinese government, Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the Taiwan, the Americans called the Chinese bluff and the Chinese were able to do nothing. They just sat and watched she came over there under their noses she did whatever she wanted to do and then she left.
So that is a loss of face for Chinese, that is a public humiliation, that is indeed you cannot put it in any other way. In short the Chinese have been publicly humiliated their so called threats have been shown to be empty and we have to remember that in November this year Mr. Xi Jinping is due to be re-elected, re-selected or re-appointed as the supreme leader of China. So that is a critical event for Mr. Xi and for the Chinese leadership, now if a leader of Mr. Xi Jinping's stature is publicly humiliated if he loses face then he will lose credibility and will become difficult for him to be reappointed. There is a lot of internal politics in the Chinese Communist Party it's a very dog-eat-dog world or it's a it's a cut-throat environment the people who rise to the top in the Chinese Communist Party do that at the expense of lots of others Mr. Xi has left a lot of people in his wake and during his rise to the top, in the initial phase of his leadership he had launched the war on corruption in which he destroyed a lot of his political rivals so any leader who reaches that position within the CCP will have a lot of enemies. Simply as long as the leader is strong and is performing well the descent will be kept under the carpet but once some kind of public humiliation happens and a loss of face happens there's going to be trouble and knives are going to be sharpened. So the entire procedure of re-appointment is extremely important for Mr. Xi Jinping.
But right now what's happened to Mr. Xi is a humiliation and the people of China are very angry right now, they are venting their anger on Chinese social media and Twitter so it makes the CCP look weak it makes the leader look weak which is very dangerous for the leader and also for the CCP as well. The Chinese Communist Party have the unspoken and unwritten social contract with the Chinese people that you will accept our dictatorship and we will make China great in return for you and we will improve your standards of living and all that and it is all built on a plank of hyper nationalism that china is the greatest nation on earth and we're going to outpace the Americans we're going to replace and displace the Americans as the global superpower and so on. So this is the promise that is made repeatedly to the Chinese people by the CCP’s Chinese government. If Mr. Xi loses credibility the Chinese Communist Party will quietly replace him his career will be over so now if he does not show the Chinese people again that I’m man or the only Chinese leader who can take China forward then there could be a coup in China within the CCP. Basically if things go wrong the Chinese Communist Party will blame the leader.
But what can Chinese president Mr. Xi Jinping do about this?
We know that Chinese are blockading Taiwan but is that enough to avenge the humiliation or does China need to show something more in order to restore the prestige and the credibility of Mr. Xi?
So that is why the option of some kind of misadventure with India is open. If Mr. Xi and all the Chinese leadership calculates that they can get away with some kind of short sharp war with India in which India loses more territory then the Chinese public could be placated so that option is always open and obviously the Chinese do not want a strong government in India, if India loses a short sharp war with the Chinese in which India is humiliated by losing more territory then it could conceivably lead to the fall of the strong Modi government in the next 2024 Lok Sabha elections, so the Chinese could end up killing two birds with one stone they could restore his lost prestige and they could also engineer a fall of the current Indian government led by Shri Narendra Modi and then there could be some coalition government in India with all the all those regional parties that do nothing and then India would be much more amenable to Chinese colonization or whatever the Chinese want so that is a very attractive option in my opinion for the Chinese but the question is according to Chinese calculations is it worth the risk.
If they were to start something with India they would do it in the Sikkim Siliguri Corridor region.
If they can take over the Sikkim Siliguri Corridor region then that would cut off the far east of India from Indian control and that would be a massive global humiliation for India so that is typically where they would go or they would go into encroaching further into the Ladakh region or in Arunachal Pradesh. So these are the various options the Chinese have, they are always actively considering this.
The question is do they believe that they can get away with it because I can guarantee that the New Delhi is also very much aware of the options that the Chinese have and the fact that right now Mr. Xi is kind of desperate to restore his credibility and he could be tempted to do something with this. The other thing is that the Chinese could go into Bhutan possibly but that is not a big enough thing for them they want to throw a few punches at a much bigger geopolitical actor and India is the good option for them.
But it is not at all that if China attack India then will not be able to do nothing, the Chinese positions in Tibet are pretty much exposed we have satellites and other assets in place which can monitor PLA’s activities in real time even at night and if the Chinese do anything their military bases and their military monitoring centers are within easy reach of our missiles and aircrafts and the Indian Army & Air Force has more experience than the PLA in fighting the High Altitude Warfare so therefore China may have to bear the equal loss to India or more than India so India has multiple advantages and of course the Chinese know that they cannot go too far with a nuclear-armed nation otherwise they're going to lose much more than they will gain.
Look the foreign policy is always a reflection of internal affairs or internal politics always whether it's the US whether it’s the India whether it’s the other nations. So yes we are going through a kind of a dangerous time right now what's happening in Taiwan could have repercussions in other parts of Asia and other parts of the world as well.
- Poorvam Tomar, OSCP Hacker, Cryptographer and Geopolitical Observer.
Jai Hind 🇮🇳