Fallout from China's border village, a curious India China spy story, and the scandal making news in China today
Welcome to today's The India China Newsletter (and a very distracted issue today with thoughts very much still dwelling on India's incredible Test win in Australia this morning.)
In yesterday’s newsletter I discussed NDTV's story on China constructing a border village on what India sees as its territory in Arunachal. I'd also said I would expect people to play down the development citing China's long-time control over this area. That's broadly been the point made by Indian officials today, who said, as The Hindu reports, this area has been under effective Chinese control since 1959.
Snehesh Philip at The Print has a useful historical overview of this particular region and developments there, and the PLA setting up a base there, also on what India sees as its territory, two years ago:
In the late 1990s and early 2000, the Chinese PLA had started a campaign to improve its border roads, especially in eastern Tibet, close to the Chumbi Valley, Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh. In the same period, in the Tsari Chu area, the PLA had established a company-level post at least 3 km inside Indian territory. At the time, the post was hardly an administrative barracks, with a jeep track serving it.
Located on the eastern side of the river, at a height of 2700 m, the post had three barracks arranged in a C-shape, with a small listening post slightly ahead. With the passage of time and India’s continued indifference, the PLA was encouraged to extend the track further with a bridge and another hut at around 2600m height on the west side of the river.
Leaders of the Congress party in India have, nevertheless, asked the government to explain the developments which have caused quite a storm on social media, as The Hindu reports.
As I said yesterday, I still think the development is significant regardless of the area being under effective Chinese control for so long. A military outpost in disputed territory is one thing, settling in civilians there is something else, which almost all but effectively rules out any meaningful negotiation in the future to what is still, remember, an ongoing dispute (a different matter that meaningful negotiations on the boundary dispute aren't really happening at all). It also reinforces, in my view, a new Chinese approach which, as I said yesterday, doesn't bode very well for managing the border and the immediate future of the relationship.
Four months after Rajeev Sharma, a fairly well known journalist in Delhi, was arrested and accused of spying for China, there is still little clarity on what exactly he was (allegedly) upto.
The Hindu reports today that the police in Delhi have “failed to identify the source” of his information. The report also says Delhi police believe he was “passing information about the Dalai Lama’s movement to a Chinese intelligence official through the Telegram app.”
The website Newslaundry earlier had a detailed piece looking into the case and raising some questions on the allegations.
I’ve read Sharma’s byline frequently in the Global Times where he was an occasional columnist. The Hindu reported earlier that officials believe he was contacted by Chinese intelligence on LinkedIn (LinkedIn!) after they read his columns, and that he had visited Maldives and Laos to meet with agents and briefed them, which if he did, should be fairly easy to prove. The latest claim reported today on the Dalai Lama angle is somewhat different to the initial allegation that was reported saying he was passing on defence secrets and India’s military deployment. Of course, it could be possible he was passing on both, but we don’t know. If there is evidence against Sharma - and if he was travelling abroad to meet Chinese agents - one would think authorities have had enough time to come forward with making a strong case for why they arrested him which should be fairly easy to prove. Four months on, they haven’t done that, and until they do so, expect more questions to be asked.
The South China Morning Post reports today on the latest Chinese official media report announcing something new about the PLA’s border capabilities (these are becoming ever more frequent), this time on a “new all-terrain vehicle for Tibet”:
China’s military has a new all-terrain vehicle to help deliver supplies to troops in high-altitude regions like Tibet, according to state media. The vehicle has a metalloid tank tread, or caterpillar track, and can negotiate 35-degree slopes and carry up to 1.5 tonnes of goods, state broadcaster CCTV’s military channel reported on Saturday. It was commissioned by the People’s Liberation Army for logistics support in the challenging terrain of plateau regions above 5,000 metres (16,400 ft) like Tibet, and comes as China and India have been locked in a stand-off on their disputed border in the Himalayas since May. “Many plateau troops have set up camps in locations with altitudes higher than 5,000 metres, and to solve the problem of delivering supplies and transport, a new all-terrain vehicle is being used,” the report said.
Here is what it looks like:
The always excellent China Media Project, the best site out there tracking Chinese media, says Chinese State media outlets have been taking a hit on social media platforms such as Twitter after they began to be marked with “state affiliated” labels:
The three accounts with the most followers, belonging to state broadcaster CGTN, state news agency Xinhua, and the People’s Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, all saw drops of over 20 percent per tweet. The numbers for China Daily and the Global Times, English-language newspapers published by the Information Office of the State Council and the People’s Daily respectively, also shrank by double digits. Tweets by the latter, a national tabloid long known for its often provocative comments on world affairs, received 31 percent fewer likes after the labeling.
The Communist Party’s official magazine, Qiushi, has just published on its English-language website the full text of what I think is perhaps the most significant speech Xi Jinping gave last year. With the rather catchy headline “Major Issues Concerning China's Strategies for Mid-to-Long-Term Economic and Social Development” (they’re clearly in it for the social media clicks), this was given in April last year to the Central Financial and Economic Commission, and presents what I think very usefully captures how the leadership sees the current post pandemic moment and the road ahead for the Chinese economy. You can read it in full here. This paragraph particularly caught my attention:
This battle against Covid-19 has made us realize that we must safeguard industrial and supply chains as global public goods and resolutely oppose their politicization and weaponization. We need to formulate in the course of international trade and economic negotiations an international consensus and norms on protecting global industrial and supply chains and eliminating the influence of non-economic factors, and we must strive through international cooperation to foil attempts to undermine global industrial and supply chains.
And finally…
In case you’re wondering what’s the biggest story in China right now, it’s not the border dispute. It is Chinese actress Zheng Shuang, who has created one enormous scandal after deciding to have two kids in the US through surrogacy (which many Chinese do, since it’s illegal in China) but then broke up with her partner leaving him alone with the kids in the US and stranded there for a year (she’s now in China). This has cost her an ambassadorship with Prada, plus lots of online fury, reports WWD:
Chinese actress Zheng Shuang, who last week appeared in the brand’s Chinese New Year campaign alongside Chung Xia and Cai Xukun as a new ambassador, was accused by her ex-boyfriend, producer Zhang Heng, of considering forcing the U.S. surrogate carrying their child to terminate her seven-month pregnancy in 2019 because their relationship came to an end. Zhang said in a Weibo post on Monday that he has been stranded in the U.S. for over a year because he and his family “must take care of and protect two young and innocent lives.”
Later, a self-claimed friend of Zhang shared a recording with the media in which the two and their parents allegedly discuss what to do with the then-unborn children. Zheng allegedly can be heard saying that she is gutted that the fetuses can’t be aborted since they are seven months old inside their surrogate mothers. Her father allegedly proposed to give them up for adoption, while her mother added they wish never to see the two children. While abortion is a sensitive topic, Zheng’s attitude during the alleged call and the fact that she allegedly considered forcing the surrogate mothers to terminate their pregnancies because she doesn’t want the babies — even though it might not be illegal in China as the surrogacy happened in the U.S. — has caused heavy criticism online.
Thank you for reading.