Xi offensive triggers unprecedented backlash against Chinese

Thousands of Chinese nationals living in other countries, including India, have been hit by a spurt of panic and uncertainty as the dragon’s military and economic offensive increase. A foreign policy analyst said that “animosity” towards the Chinese community has risen because of President Xi Jinping’s military and economic offensive.

About 11 million Chinese live outside China. Sources said that many of them had returned home during December-January 2019-20 had returned home for the Lunar New Year’s celebration. While most of them have continued to stay on in China amid the coronavirus pandemic, many of those who are outside are keen to return as global backlash against the country increases.

“Beijing’s ongoing domestic crackdown—evidenced by the internment of at least a million Uighurs in China’s Xinjiang Province and ongoing protests in Hong Kong—and discriminatory trade and economic policies, coercive foreign policy practices, ‘Wolf Warrior’–inspired diplomacy abroad, and military expansion in its direct periphery have heightened this global pushback and scrutiny,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said. Wolf War diplomacy refers to a strategy which is based on aggression and excessive national pride.

Even as the US-China trade war triggered uncertainty relating to disruption of global supply chain, it had little bearing on overall global politics.

<a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/06/10/how-world-is-responding-to-changing-china-pub-82039">https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/06/10/how-world-is-responding-to-changing-china-pub-82039</a>

Last week, The Indian Express highlighted that a Shenzen-based technology company, with links to the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party, has been monitoring over 10,000 Indian individuals including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, President Ram Nath Kovind, interim Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, prominent industrialists and public figures, and organizations in its global database of foreign targets.

“Many Chinese living in India have now gone underground. They are not willing to come out of their homes as bilateral relations between the two countries have nosedived,” Sanjeev K. Ahuja, editor, Asian Community News (ACN), said.

The picture was different even after the Galwan Valley clash across the Line of Actual Control (LAC). “Even in June just after the Galwan Valley clash, things were fine and many dismissed it as just one of the many incidents but the situation has become bad to worse and now the expats are keen on getting back,” Ahuja said.

Sources said that in the situation is the same even in the US and many other European countries.

<strong>China’s ties with countries deteriorate fast</strong>

It is not just India that has witnessed souring of bilateral ties with its populous neighbor China; the dragon is losing friends fast all across the globe. Its relationship with the European Union and other economies such as Australia, Japan and Taiwan is on a decline with President Xi going on a military and economic offensive in the last few months, especially after the coronavirus pandemic hit the world.

“China is left with almost no friends today. There is a rise in suspicion and mistrust as far as China goes, and it is not just with India. The world over there is a rising anti-China sentiment,” said Ashwani Mahajan, national co-convener of Swadeshi Jagran Manch. “Many other countries are now getting more and more protective about their own economic interests and this will also have an impact on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) deal, which was to be signed. It is unlikely that the deal will see the light of the day.”

<strong>Xi is undoing groundwork of his predecessors</strong>

China, which had emerged as a global economic power, acquired friends and allies over the last three decades and had managed to integrate into the world order after its leader Deng Xiaoping carefully crafted a new foreign and economic policy since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

Anti-China sentiments across the world had risen exponentially in the wake of the protests with many countries issuing sanctions against the dragon. However, Deng ushered in a new regime and abandoned the “ideological strictures of the past,” as Washington Post put it. The country embraced new policies, which “unleashed the creative and entrepreneurial potential of the Chinese people and allowed China to break out of its self-imposed isolation.”

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/12/19/40-years-ago-deng-xiaoping-changed-china-and-the-world/">https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/12/19/40-years-ago-deng-xiaoping-changed-china-and-the-world/</a>

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