The Chinese Kiss of Death

Justice Markandey Katju-

 

It is believed that if a mafia leader kisses you, you are marked for death (see Godfather 2).

So also, if a Chinese leader approaches you, you should be sure it is with some evil design.

The Indian Prime Minister Modi is meeting the Chinese President Xi Jinping tomorrow ( 11th October ) in Chennai, India and I would advise the Indian leader to be vigilant. Why do I say this ?

To understand the political situation in the world today one must have some idea of economics, for, as Lenin said, politics is concentrated economics.

Today China has a foreign exchange reserve of over $ 3.2 trillion. This is a huge amount of hot money hungrily looking for investment avenues. The truth is that after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976 and accession to supreme power of Deng Xiaobing, China  is not a communist country, it is capitalist, and it is in the nature of capital that after a certain stage of development a country becomes imperialist, that is, it seeks avenues for overseas investment, markets,  raw materials and cheap labour. For this it becomes aggressive and expansionist, like Britain and France in the 19th century.

However, in the 1930s and 40s the main danger for the world was not British or French imperialism, it was the imperialism of Hitler Germany. That was because at that time German imperialism was aggressive and expanding imperialism, while British and French imperialism were on the defensive. In other words, while the latter only wanted to hold on to their colonies without seeking more, the former wanted to conquer and enslave other countries. So Hitler’s Germany was the greatest danger to world peace at that time.

Today, the Chinese are the greatest danger to world peace, not America or any other country. This is because in pursuit of avenues for profitable investment, markets, raw materials etc they have become virulently aggressive and expansionist ( though their expansionism is not yet militant but economic ).

As pointed out in detail in my article ‘ Trump’s opposition to Chinese imperialism overshadows his defects ‘ published in the portal outlookindia.com ( see online ), today the Chinese have expanded everywhere, penetrating Asia, Africa and Latin America ( the Monroe Doctrine has been cast to the winds by the Chinese ), apart from their capture of markets of Western countries. Their Belt and Road Initiative is only one of the Chinese moves. They have captured ports ( e.g. Gwadar port in Pakistan ), infrastructure, etc of many countries, as stated in my article. Details have been given in that article, and so I am not repeating the same here.

The ‘ kiss of death ‘ seems to have been given to Pakistan by the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and huge Chinese investments in Pakistan, which are nothing but a sugar coated poison pill, as noted by Panos Mourdoukoutas, Professor of Economics in Long Island University, New York in his article ‘ What is China doing to Pakistan ? The same thing it did to Sri Lanka ‘. In other words, Pakistan will soon be riddled with debt it will owe to China, and become a Chinese semi colony.

One can only hope that in the Xi-Modi meeting in Chennai a kiss of death is not given to India too.

I submit that all the countries in the world now realize the Chinese danger to the whole world, as Winston Churchill understood about the Nazi danger, and put up a stout opposition to Chinese imperialism, instead of behaving like Neville Chamberlain., who thought appeasement policy could bring peace.

 

[Justice Markandey Katju is former Judge, Supreme Court of India, and former Chairman, Press Council of India. The views expressed are his own.]

 

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