Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs
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- The recent US shooting of alleged Chinese spy balloons highlighted growing distrust between the two countries.
How US shooting of alleged Chinese spy balloons?
- There has been a lot of speculation in the media about both the balloons and the US response.
- We’ve seen arguments that the balloon was an effort to score domestic points by showing that China is no longer bullied by the US; that internal forces were unhappy about efforts to restore China US ties and tried to scuttle, and that the whole thing is an accident of wind and weather.
- The reality is that we don’t know which of these interpretations is correct, though I do feel confident that the Chinese system – by providing broad directives from the top and then leaving it to lower-level actors to decide what to do – probably contributed something to the flights.
- The US system is more transparent, so we are able to make more informed assessments.
- The shooting down of the balloon reflects a bipartisan consensus that China is a threat to the US and that strong action is required to ensure continued US predominance.
- There are certainly quiet channels of communication between the two countries, and it’s quite possible that those go on between the two countries, and we don’t know whether those channels were active during “balloon-gate”.
- But it is enormously telling that at no point in the entire episode could the leadership on one side pick up the phone, call the other side, and get this situation resolved.
Are military clashes inevitable?
- I don’t see these as mutually exclusive alternatives.
- The US and China have got to manage differences, and already there are many areas where they do.
- If they fail to manage their differences in specific policy areas, there is no reason to think that direct military conflicts will be the result.
- The greatest real risk of military conflict comes from the weak mechanisms in place for communications at moments of tension, misunderstanding or accidents, which are sure to become more common as the two militaries bump up against one another.
- That said, I think there is considerable risk of military conflict over Taiwan.
- The Russian invasion of Ukraine, China and Russia declared that the two countries had a “partnership with no limits”.
- While China has mostly supported or at least not violated the international sanctions against Russia, it has supported the Russian position in many diplomatic for a, presumably in the hope that bolstering a country it perceives as an ally, Russia, will help China in dealing with what it sees as the common threat to both, the US.
- Even as I say this, we are learning that US officials believe China intends to increase, not scale-back, its support for Russia.
- So the situation is very fluid. Regardless of how the war in Ukraine ends, one long-term legacy will be to impact Chinese thinking on the challenges of an invasion of Taiwan.
- China is a rising power, increasingly self-confident and active on abroad spectrum of domains as it becomes increasingly powerful.
- Part of this self confidence is reflected in an apparent consensus in the Chinese leadership that the US does not in every area offer an attractive model for China to follow.
- Chinese leaders are now more open about saying that they don’t see convergence with every aspect of US leadership as necessarily the right direction for China.
- At the same time, Chinese society is also changing in profound ways.
- This is a subtle way of saying that changes in Chinese political life are not something that everyone in China supports.
- The US approach to the Quad, for example, which is a major focus of US policy in the region, is really about the US’s view of the role of its allies in a broader China strategy much more than it is about India.
- But it’s hardly surprising that this is what comes across a China specialist’s radar.
SOURCE: THE HINDU, THE ECONOMIC TIMES, PIB
