It is foolhardy of the Congress to see in China’s fourth technical hold on the proposal to list the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist at the United Nations a failure of the Narendra Modi government’s foreign policy. The predictably jaundiced approach of the Congress to any action of the government has robbed the party of basic credibility and positioned it as a party that is governed by self-interest at the expense of national interest.
Considering that the first; technical hold at China’s behest on this matter came in 2009 when a UPA government led by the Congress was in power, the Congress stand looks stark and childish. Consequently, to infer that Prime Minister Modi is scared of his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping as Congress president Rahul Gandhi has done is indeed outrageous.
To India, the Chinese stand is hardly surprising since it is an extension of Beijing’s game of viewing Pakistan as a “strategic weapon” against New Delhi and part of its larger design of gaining crucial access to the sea through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor with the motivation to rule the international waters. Union finance minister Arun Jaitley alluded to this in a TV interview recently when he warned Pakistan against falling into a Chinese debt trap for loans taken in the building of the corridor.
That China has shielded Masood Azhar from being declared a global terrorist for two decades is primarily because it needs Islamabad in furtherance of its designs to gain access to the sea through the Gwadar port in Pakistan which would become a cost-effective route for Chinese goods to go into the international market. Yet, seeing the support India evinced internationally on wanting Masood Azhar to be declared a global terrorist, the Chinese are only seeking to postpone the blinking until the economic corridor becomes a virtual fait accompli.
With the Americans having created high tariff walls against Chinese exports to US, the Chinese see huge potential for pushing more goods into India and would not like to go the whole hog in evoking resentment in India over its Masood Azhar stand. It would predictably not go beyond a point in dumping the ‘Wuhan spirit’ which is being called to question in India by the Opposition with elections round the corner. Typically, China has sought more time to study the Masood Azhar ban rather than rejecting it outright. Evidently, it has left the door open for reconsideration.
must be defined.
