The Indian intellectual class has a favorite pastime. Glorifying China and offering detailed analysis of the degeneration of American society. They have strong opinions about how the US as a society is fast deteriorating and how Washington over the years has unfairly demonized China. America is decadent and China ascendant.

Surprisingly, this set of people passionately follow developments in the US, and talk about everything wrong about that country. How racism is still a problem, how excessive greed has created an economic system which is unsustainable, how the US has been dominating the world through a web of manipulations, and so on.

So far, so good. After all, everyone is entitled to have an opinion.

And everyone is also entitled to hypocrisy. So the folks who bemoan the rise of racism in America, the depravity of its corporations, etc., also send their kids there for higher education. Still better if they also get employed there, in an American multinational corporation.

When they get sick, they go to the US for treatment if they have resources.

America is bad for every possible reason, except when it pertains to their own—education, employment, health, anything. Decadence is bad in theory, good in practice.

And China is good in every possible manner, but not for studying, working, or settling down there.

Sample this. In June, when the US suspended H-1B visas along with all other types of foreign work visas till the end of 2020, all hell broke loose. While for the Trump administration, the aim was to protect jobs for the locals there, this came as a shock for a large number of Indians, many of them lal-salaam types.

Detailed reports came out in the media showing how this will impact India and the anxiety levels were palpable.

The Indian intellectual class has painstakingly built a narrative, showcasing discipline, vigor, sense of direction of the Chinese. You will often hear them say how these qualities have put them right on top of the global map. How the Chinese are far superior to us, how the Chinese have transformed their cities, and we haven’t. They are staunch votaries of democratic rights and freedom of expression but show little remorse for the happenings in Hong Kong.

In fact, the leaning towards the communist China is so intense that the mainstream media and the intellectual class have been showcasing the Kerala model which managed to contain the coronavirus after its initial outbreak. While the Left-led Kerala was not the only state to have managed to contain the spread of the disease, the focus was on the measures taken by the state government.

It almost seemed as though Kerala was a different country. Equally shocking was to note that many people, whether or not we openly accept it, almost had a sense of relief that the pandemic spread its wings fast in the other parts of the country, bringing life to a near halt for many weeks.

Not surprising that the for the same set of people, black lives matter, as they should, but the plight of Uighur Muslims go unnoticed. The India mainstream media covered the Black Lives Matter protests and developments in details but how many times have we read or discussed the miseries of the Uighur Muslims in China?

But then as we said, everyone is also entitled to their hypocrisy..