India apprehends a Chinese soldier, stranded sailors head home, and a deep look at China's foreign aid
Welcome to today's The India China Newsletter.
India on Monday morning handed back to China a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldier who was apprehended early on Friday. The incident happened at the south bank of Pangong Lake, which has been the focus of tensions since late August. Here's where India had, in response to China's transgressions north of the lake and elsewhere along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), occupied strategic heights in a countermove that now sees India dominate China's positions there. This is also where several instances of firing of warning shots have been reported, the first such cases since 1975.
This isn't the first such instance of a soldier trespassing since last year’s crisis began. In October, China said a soldier had trespassed because he was "looking for lost yaks". That also happened in eastern Ladakh, where border tensions have flared since last year. The previous month China handed over five youth from Arunachal who had crossed, in the eastern sector.
If the "yaks" were the reason in October, this time China said it was because of "darkness and complicated geography”. Apparently the new "tactical information system" that PLA soldiers in the border are now equipped with, which the State media in China said on December 28 "allow the soldiers to comprehensively grasp the battlefield situation, boosting their combat capabilities in cold, mountainous regions," needs some tinkering as it doesn't seem to be working all that well.
We can expect more such incidents as long as the talks to disengage remain as slow-moving as they are and the LAC remains 'hot'. All this suggests the border will likely remain front and centre for the relationship in the coming months ahead.
More on the border: My colleague Vijaita Singh reports in today's The Hindu that China's build-up is now more clearly visible across the LAC than it was previously and can even be seen from border villages.
Arjun Subramaniam has a piece that I thought makes a fairly compelling case why India's counter moves to China's LAC transgressions and the loss of territory since May last year haven't been all that bad and under the unprecedented circumstances that always favour the first-mover, India has done fairly well to hold its own and give itself a decent hand at the negotiating table. He writes:
An immediate Indian military response in the form of a quid-pro-quo was among the options that was demanded by shrill voices across constituencies of strategic watchers. This was correctly not subscribed to by India’s strategic establishment, which decided instead to adopt the try-and-see approach....
If one looks at the crisis through the prism of a larger global and regional context, or even through the more focused lens of coercive diplomacy, there are several positives for Indian statecraft, particularly in the diplomatic and military realms...India has militarily recovered well, diplomatically played hard-ball and strategically postured deftly despite the constraints of the ongoing pandemic.
I recommend reading his piece in The Hindu in full.
Some good news for some of the many Indian seafarers stranded off China's ports for months now: those aboard one of the ships, the Jag Anand, will be back to India on January 14 after the ship, that's been waiting for months off a Chinese port, sailed this weekend to Japan to allow for a crew change. This is, however, only a silver lining as there are many others still stranded. As The Hindu reports, there is no breakthrough for 35 other Indian seamen stranded aboard other ships.
This issue is actually far more complicated than how it's been covered in the Indian press. A snapshot below of the general flavour of the coverage:
China, to be sure, started this whole problem by effectively banning Australian coal overnight because of their spat with Australia. The ships were essentially left in a no man's land (no man's water?). Chinese authorities have said they were quite happy for the ships to leave (so not much of a ‘hostage situation’) but didn't want the crew to disembark (probably for two reasons - COVID-19 protocols and also to prove a point to Australia and play hardball, which may have been the real reason given that it wouldn't have been all that hard to quarantine the crew).
But here was the problem: leaving would have left the shipping companies in a bind because they had already taken the coal off the hands of Australian exporters. The NYT explains how complicated the contractual arrangements are, something which was lost in the coverage in India, a situation which essentially left no one wanting to either break the complicated contracts or take responsibility:
The Jag Anand is owned by an Indian company, Great Eastern Shipping. While Great Eastern Shipping employed the crew, it says it cannot unilaterally let the ship leave because the vessel had been chartered out to another company, Cargill, which is based in Minneapolis. It, in turn, had sub-chartered the Jag Anand out to another company. On the other end of the chain are the buyers for the Australian coal on the Jag Anand: the Chinese company Tangshan Baichi Trading. It bought the cargo from an Australian supplier, Anglo American. When contacted, Great Eastern Shipping and Cargill said the buyer was ultimately responsible for deciding if the Jag Anand could move away from the Jingtang port.
Some arrangements are even more complex. Suffice it to say, when an external party (ie China) overnight voids this arrangement, a lot of moving parts fall to the ground. It seems the shipping companies felt the best bet would be to wait it out (and hope China allows the orders to go through eventually). Sadly in this case, it's those on board who have been left to pay the price. Here it led to a horrendous humanitarian situation on board too.
In a move that could have widespread ramifications on how the U.S. engages with Taiwan, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Saturday that the State Department is voiding longstanding restrictions on how U.S. diplomats and others have contact with their counterparts in Taiwan. This was announced just before America’s U.N Ambassador Kelly Craft goes to Taiwan, in another end-of-term move by Trump that guarantees not only more tensions with China but a harder task for his successor to disentangle the knots he has left.
The South China Morning Post reports on a new order issued by China on Saturday to hit back at U.S. sanctions, that will now "prohibit firms from complying with foreign laws banning transactions with Chinese companies and individuals":
The so-called Rules on Counteracting Unjustified Extraterritorial Application of Foreign Legislation and Other Measures apply to circumstances that “improperly prohibit or restrict” Chinese individuals, companies, and institutions from conducting normal economic, trade, and related activities with parties from the third countries, according to the Ministry of Commerce. “[The rules were issued] to defend national interests, avoid or mitigate the adverse impact on Chinese enterprises, and maintain the normal international economic and trade order,” the ministry said.
And finally...
China has put out a white paper that details its international development cooperation over the past five years. For those of you who may not have the stomach to read all 45 pages, here are some interesting tidbits that caught my attention:
- Concessional loans were higher than grants and interest-free loans:
From 2013 to 2018, China allocated a total of RMB270.2 billion for foreign assistance in three categories – grants, interest-free loans, and concessional loans. Grants of RMB127.8 billion, accounting for 47.3 percent of the total. Interest-free loans of RMB11.3 billion, constituting 4.18 percent of the total, were mainly allocated to help developing countries construct public facilities and launch projects for improving local people’s lives. Concessional loans of RMB131.1 billion, making up 48.52 percent of the total…
- Africa received the most:
From 2013 to 2018, China extended assistance to 20 regional and international multilateral organizations and 122 countries across the world – 30 in Asia, 53 in Africa, 9 in Oceania, 22 in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 8 in Europe.
-The BRI has become a major conduit, and it’s not just about money, it’s also about expanding China’s technical standards and digital footprint too:
China has held over 4,000 training sessions for officials from participating countries on Belt and Road topics such as infrastructure connectivity, industrial capacity, equipment standardization, trade facilitation, and technological standardization….China has assisted other countries in implementing 37 telecommunications infrastructure projects covering telecommunications networks and government information networks, to help them develop information and communications industries and narrow digital gaps. Kenya’s national fiber optic cable network, built with China’s assistance, has greatly increased transmission speed, reduced communication costs, and boosted e-commerce, marking a great leap in the development of Kenya’s information and communications industries. China assisted the construction of the police command center and government hotline in Laos, and the integrated government information system in Papua New Guinea, helping the two countries to raise their administrative efficiency and increase the application of IT in governance. China assisted the third-phase project of Bangladesh’s e-government network, extending high-speed information and communications connectivity to 64 districts, 488 sub-districts, and 2,600 unions to cover 62 percent of its territory and population.
That’s all for today, thank you for reading!