THG 28: China Cools Down, India Heats up
And Nepal gets singed
If you think this is a bad news-good news story, disappointment is in store. While China’s economy is cooling off, India’s communal polarization is heading skywards as the general elections of 2024 approach. Lodged between the two countries, I am mourning both the developments. As an old Nepali saying goes: sharing burden lessens it, sharing joy multiples it. This post is my attempt to share that burden.
First there was a flurry of news and views in the international media about the economic headwinds facing China right now. This reminded me of a line from the 2020 Foreign Affairs essay by estranged Chinese scholar Cai Xia. There she quotes a senior ‘establishment scholar’ who tells a journalist off the record in 2012 just before Xi Jinping’s ascent to power that ‘Xi suffers from inadequate knowledge’.
That is indeed a scary statement. To me, a despotic and paranoid Xi is scary enough and the whole world—including the Chinese people—is still learning to live with him. But an incompetent Xi? That would be scary at another level because this person is going to potentially rule the world’s second most populous country with second largest economy for rest of his life.
Meanwhile, I came across a video footage in which two armed forces in India almost opened fire at one another. That was emblematic of the total and abject failure of the Modi government to solve the burning crisis in the state of Manipur. The sheer indifference and insensitivity of India’s ruling dispensation towards the suffering of civilians in the North-East of India is by now clear to everyone. But even the brewing conflict between the Manipur’s state police and the cental paramilitary force Assam Rifles seems to have failed to move the needle in New Delhi.
What kind of a ruler tolerates and brushes off a raging conflict decimating lives of his own people, shattering the social fabric of a huge geographical region and threatening to further entrench itself and metastasize to other parts of the country? That too because of a cynical calculation about the potential electoral gains to be reaped by supporting a wardlord-like figure ruling the province and throwing kerosene to the conflict?
Over the past two weeks, the civil war-like situation from India’s Manipur was recreated in the heartland in the state of Haryana just south of the national capital. First there were communal riots instigated by criminals protected and promoted by the state. Then there was the organized, Nazi-style demolition of houses and properties belonging to the minority Muslim community by the state on either side of a highway stretching over more than 50 kilometers. By the time courts could act to stop it, the super-efficient bulldozers of Modi regime had done their job.
Meanwhile, the television channel belonging to Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man was busy calling for outright ‘permanent solution’ for the stone-throwers—namely Muslims—the Nazi way.
Let me avoid burdening you with more ghastly information from my neighborhood. Here are the resources for today.
China cools down:
The party that failed by Cai Xia at Foreign Affairs:
The other group of skeptics consisted of establishment scholars. More than a month before the 18th Party Congress of November 2012, when Xi would be formally unveiled as the CCP’s new general secretary, I was chatting with a veteran reporter from a major Chinese magazine and a leading professor at my school who had observed Xi’s career for a long time. The two had just wrapped up an interview, and before leaving, the reporter tossed out a question: “I hear that Xi Jinping lived in the Central Party School compound for a period of time. Now he’s about to become the party’s general secretary. What do you think of him?” The professor’s lip twitched, and he said with disdain that Xi suffered from “inadequate knowledge.” The reporter and I were stunned at this blunt pronouncement.
Dan Wang on his latest piece on China in his website:
A gradual slowdown in economic growth won’t break technological momentum. But politics might.
Noah Smith:
My video take on China growth story (Nepali):
From the archives:
India heats up, Nepal gets singed
As Indian rulers rachet up the communal tension and manufacture hatred in the country to consolidate the Hindu vote bank for the upcoming elections, some of that is sure to overflow the national boudaries. As Nepal borders Indian territory on three sides, we are uniquely vulnerable to the seeping communal poison and Nazi propaganda from India.
Indeed the early attempts to drag Nepali society along the same poisoned path of rampant societal polarization and Nazification have already started. Earlier this week, a flamboyant godman known for his silly face-reading tricks and flagrantly promoting superstitions, bulldozer justice and the so called ‘Hindu Rashtra’ was in Nepal. He was invited by Nepal’s own Ambanis from the largest industrialist family in the country named Chaudhary Group.
Because of that event, I have been in the firefighting mode over the past ten days. I published a long piece in Setopati before the arrival of the godman and a piece each for Ukaalo and Kantipur after he left.
Eventually, I plan to synthesize all the threads on India’s Modi rule and China’s Xi rule in a long piece (in Nepali) titled: The Hazard from Two Failing Tyrants.
Meanwhile, though, I have a sincere plea to all of you (especially the Nepali speakers). With the explosion of the AV medium in the new media landscape, I have decided to try my luck with Youtube and Tiktok. As I had to tansfer the trademark daily Clubhouse show NewsGuff to Twitter Space because of technical reasons, I piloted the Youtube live for the main section of the show. So far, I am happy with the experiment of creating 15-30 minutes long live videos on the most pressing issue of the day. Please check this out about the godman that I am talking about in this post:
If this clicks for you, please consider subscribing my channel so that you get my videos regularly in your Youtube feed. You can search my Tiktok channel—named after my book—by looking for Nun-Tel.
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