As world leaders assemble in New Delhi, Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is staying back in Beijing, will have plenty of time to contemplate the ancient Chinese proverb: “When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills.”
In the absence of any official statement, theories flourish about why the Chinese supremo has skipped the Bharat edition of the G20 summit.
Some experts say there’s a threat to Xi’s position as the self-declared “president for life” given the growing public antipathy in China. Earlier this year Chinese citizens stridently demonstrated against Xi’s absurd zero-COVID policy. Now, there are increasing reports of public discontent at the hardships induced by China’s flagging economy. Others suggest Xi wants to snub India for trying to challenge China in the Indo-Pacific.
But, given that Xi travelled to the BRICS summit earlier in the month, his no-show in Delhi is most likely because he’s finding it increasingly difficult in getting his way in the assemblies of global governance. Indeed, under Xi, China is being contained: outflanked on the diplomatic mainstage and now drifting further away from global supply chains.
Indeed, “near-shoring” or “friend-shoring” is taking off. For the uninitiated, the terms loosely apply to the concept of shortening supply chains to cut down logistical inefficiency and prop up reliability by bringing manufacturing closer to home. Till recently, it was thought that multinational companies would not readily embrace the disruption. But for a variety of compelling reasons, they have.
For the first time in 17 years, the US, once China’s largest trade partner, has imported its smallest share of Chinese goods. Analysts say that China is expecting a net-zero investment inflow and that outward capital will total $180 billion for 2023.
As the Chinese economy slumps (GDP is at an unprecedented 3% and projected to decrease further) even Chinese companies are diversifying out of the country, further inflating the level of outward capital flow.
But China’s loss has been India’s gain.
Bloomberg reported that in July Japan’s Nidec, the world’s biggest maker of electric motors, plans to manufacture cutting tools in India and South Korea’s Hyundai Motor plans to sink $2.4 billion to help construct electric vehicles in India. The financial major also observes that it’s not just capital that’s on the move, but India is eyeing overseas human resource talent too as a manufacturing ecosystem takes shape around the country.
If the world is witnessing the humbling of China, then much of the blame must lie at Beijing’s door. Ever since he took over, Xi has taken a hammer to the rule-based global order.
The Chinese supremo has been obsessed with the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” To that end and to ensure that China takes “centre stage in the world” he has ignored existing diplomatic forums in favour of others (BRICS, SCO) that can be manipulated into exclusively furthering Chinese interests.
In March 2023, Xi codified the new foreign policy doctrine with a 24-character formula covering the “dare to fight” phrase. In doing so Xi abandoned the “strategic patience” doctrine pronounced by the late reform-minded leader Deng Xiaoping more than 30 years earlier. Deng had wanted China to provide a stabilising alternative vision for the world by working within the framework of global governance. Deng had realised that pursuing muscular diplomacy could spell severe consequences for China’s credibility in a rapidly flattening world.
But Xi has abandoned the Deng way. His expansionist instincts have propelled the People’s Liberation Army to undermine the territorial integrity of almost all of China’s neighbours.
On the diplomatic front, Xi has chosen to project China’s influence through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI promises to lock China and other nations into a mutually beneficial trading ecosystem to bring prosperity to regions of the world that are left behind by the inadequate Western patented globalisation project. But far from being an instrument of uplift or equity, the BRI, as many governments around the world are now realising, is a stratagem designed to reduce them to the status of a Chinese client-state. These nations are now going to assemble in Beijing in a few days - not as equals but as supplicants.
More so, the realisation Beijing was not a friend in times of need was reinforced during the pandemic. Instead of building windmills, Xi’s China built metaphorical walls. And when it did reach out from behind its defences it did so on punishing terms fashioned to nudge the needy into further servitude to Beijing. Its response to the pandemic unmasked China’s ruse of being a benign super-power committed to global do-gooding.
Misled by China and left behind in the promise of globalisation, many nations are now yearning for a third way. Their quest has brought them to India.
Unlike Xi’s China, a rapidly rising India under Modi has shown a willingness to work within the rule-based order to revive and reform globalisation. Be it vaccine diplomacy or championing the rights of the global subaltern through inclusive diplomacy founded on the ancient philosophical principle, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, Bharat has shown that it can walk the talk. This is drawing appreciative comparisons to the mean-spiritedness of China.
So long as the Indian windmill is powered by an ethical and inclusive dharma, it will continue to power the winds of positive change that could blow across the globe.
