Chinese threat

The editorial in the latest issue of the Organiser, titled “Time to ask China (to) shut up,” says: “An editorial on China in The Economist (October 3, 2009) commented, ‘...the image that it would like to cultivate... is constantly being undercut by two of its leaders’ habits. One is the knee-jerk resort to hysterical propaganda and reprisals when a foreign country displeases it by criticising its appalling treatment of political dissidents, or accepts a visit from the Dalai Lama or other objects of the Communist Party’s venom. The other is the readiness to put its perceived economic self-interest ahead of strategic common sense.’ China has an unfinished business of Taiwan, towards which, according to this edit, China has pointed some 1,000 missiles. It has not reached an agreement with Japan over disputed islands; it has similar border disputes with Vietnam, Russia and all its other neighbours in the vicinity. Indian media and politicians are mostly debating what China wants and what India can give. From a purely nationalist perspective, it is time India made claims in its geopolitical interest and stopped playing a victim all the time”.

The editorial adds: “Great countries live in the present and look to the future for the welfare of their people. Harking back on history to make expansionist moves is a dangerous game. If India is to take a lesson from China, it can also make a lot of unsettling noises on China. That Chinese emperors were beholden to Great Ashoka is well known. Less publicised are the facts that the Chinese emperors used to pay tributes and send emissaries with lavish gifts to the courts of the glorious Kushana emperor Kanishka in the second century AD, in the third and fourth century to the great Samudragupta and Chandragupta Vikramaditya and later emperor Harsha.

... contd.