Xi a mystery man, decode him to know China: Expert

Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 8

In what is a significant assertion, a “China-watcher” on Saturday suggested it is imperative to “decode” Chinese President Xi Jinping to understand modern China and termed him as a “mysterious person”.

Major General Govind Dwivedi (retd), a former Defence Attache to China and North Korea who is now with the Faculty of International Studies, Aligarh Muslim University, while speaking at the Military Literature Festival, used a phrase from the early 20th century and termed the present regime as ‘Xi — the Long March’. The ‘long march’ is a term used for the tactic used by Army Generals of China in the 1910s.

“Until you decode Xi you cannot understand China. He is the ‘new emperor’ and President for Life (China okayed an amendment in March this year to remove the two-term cap on Presidents). The West thought China will fail, but China is not going to fail,” he said at a session ‘Overhang of the Sino-India war in 1962 and today’.

China, he said, was on a mission to ‘buy’ and ‘rent out’ friends, the obvious reference to China funding smaller countries in Africa.

Claude Arpi, a noted France-born author, who is now holding the Field Marshal KM Cariappa chair of excellence at the United Service Institution of India, for his research on the Indian presence in Tibet during 1947-1962, suggested “India should declassify all papers relating to Tibet. At present, we (researchers) depend on CIA (US spy agency) documents. Today you can get more Chinese documents than Indian documents”. He went on to warn “China will select its own Dalai Lama, be prepared”.

In another key opinion, Shiv Kunal Verma, author of 1962: The War That Wasn’t asserted there was “no point in talking what Nehru did, it’s like today saying a Brigade Commander will hinge his actions on what Nirmala Sitharaman is doing or what (Narendra) Modi is doing. We need to understand what happened. Time has come to hold a mirror to our face. We need to wipe the slate clean and look at China differently”.

In his opinion, “had a one brigade commander stood up, we would have a different story to tell (of the 1962 war).” Maj Gen PJS Sandhu (retd), who authored 1962: A view from the other side of the hill, said several questions prevail why India did not use air power. “There was unrealistic assessment of Chinese air capabilities by intelligence”.