International News
Xi Jinping expects to be in command till 2035
Certainly, some critique put him on a par with Deng Xiaoping or even Mao Zedong. Some years ago, Xi Jinping had made a classic statement – “One must build a good cage. If the cage is too loose, or is very good but the door is not closed, and one is free to go in and out, then that is of no use.”
Now, the Communists party in China moves on to a new central task — to achieve the “second centenary goal of building China into a great modern socialist country in all respects and to advance the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on all fronts through a Chinese path to modernisation.
The mega Chinese goal is tied to the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China — which would be 2049 — but Xi has pushed the date for “basically” realizing this goal forward to 2035.
Conveniently, that leaves the door open for Xi to still be in command of the party at the big celebration 13 years from now.
Marxists in once upon a time Red forte Tripura – used to often say the line from a play. The line of the play was of course penned obviously with a pro-Left liberal sentiment:
“Every war or struggle is for power; and power can never do good to anybody”.
The economic policy that Xi has put forward contains a similar sort of contradiction.
The central idea of the “dual circulation” policy is that China should increase its trade surplus with the wider world, while simultaneously becoming more dependent on its domestic economy to drive consumption.
Many economists think that this will be a hard balance to manage. But, in a sense, the strategy should not be seen as an exercise in economics but in politics. It mirrors precisely the idea of being highly connected to the world while closed to it physically.
But compared with real openness, it is one that would leave both sides poorer.
“China remains connected to the outside world largely through the virtual environment, in particular social media and video apps. Yet the vision of the world created within the country is very partial. State media pumps out images of the west still devastated by the virus,” says an article ‘The Guardian’.
China, Xi – And Peace in India’s North East
This is one of the most perilous periods in international history. There’s something big happening everywhere — China, Ukraine, Indo Pacific and of course Britain where Liz Truss had the shortest stint ever in history as Prime Minister.
On the last day of Communists Party Congress in China on Saturday, Oct 22, former President Hu Jintao, was ‘removed’ unceremoniously and by force by so-called ‘unnamed Chinese communist agents’.
Both China and the Chinese communists have many admirers in India and also in the northeast closer home as well.
To them New Delhi ‘could not be trusted’ but Xi Jinping’s polity should be applauded.
China is that country which has seen almost 30 years of 9 and 10 per cent of average growth even till fiscal 2016-17.
This was surely an unprecedented performance by any country at the global stage.
Importantly, during this period, around 50 per cent of global growth came from China and India was by default and otherwise part of the beneficiary list.
The drop in Chinese growth rate had impacted global trade and commerce too. In fact, the global trade shrunk as a result of the negative impact on China’s own growth graph.
At one time even India benefited and the country’s global trade was growing at an average of seven percent a year.
The politics of China and also the other global challenges make a lot of sense even in the neighbourhood.
It would impact now and it impacted regional politics even in the past.
In the context of northeast India, Mon and Tuensang were the battlefields of various ultra groups.
In the eighties, Indian security force reports used to suggest that communist China’s help and logistic support was crucial at least for one camp
Even the church lobby was unhappy.
One such internal security analysis had said that the league of western Christian countries led by the US and the United Kingdom were bemused while the Indian jawans reportedly watched from a distance what they called a snake-mongoose fight.
But enough water has flown in river Dhansiri near Dimapur since then. ‘Christ’ and his principles and values are now a public pledge. ‘Nagaland for Christ’ – as they put it.
However, it is altogether a different chapter that violence and threats pursue at different levels.
According to the annual report of the Ministry of Home Affairs, 2020, incidents of insurgency in six out of eight northeastern states declined by 80 per cent since 2014 and civilian deaths were down by 99 per cent.
The year 2020 also had recorded the lowest insurgency incidents and casualties among civilians and security forces in the last decades. This was the year of the Galwan valley conflict nevertheless.
But around September 2020, in a retort to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement aimed at China that — the era of expansionism is over — the rebels also had issued a joint statement saying, as the entire world has made up its mind against expansionism, the people of West Southeast Asia are also countering the expansionism of India.
One must study these statements based on the availability of Chinese-made arms in the Northeast.
In 2020, when it was realised at the Government of India level that the Naga peace talks had been stalled, as expected the apprehension was Chinese hands.
On September 18, 2020, there was a clear setback to all efforts for reconciliation as the NSCN-IM issued a statement from its headquarters saying a separate Naga flag and constitution “must form a part of the Indo-Naga political solution”.
Given the contest, one source had said even during the UPA regime in 2011-12, Chinese agents including a woman posing as a TV journalist reportedly visited the headquarters of the NSCN-IM near Dimapur and held a three-hour-long meeting with top NSCN-IM leaders.
On September 28, 2022, NSCN-IM issued a statement alleging that the government of India has “hindered” the peace parleys.
It also said, “therefore there is an imperative need for third party intervention” in Naga talks.
Tehran, May 5: Five civilians were killed in US attacks on cargo boats, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Tuesday.
Following the claim by the US military that it had targeted six Iranian speedboats, and given that none of Iran’s combat vessels was hit, local sources were consulted to verify the nature of the incident, according to Xinhua, which quoted the report.
It was determined that US forces had attacked two small civilian cargo boats, which were travelling from Khasab along the Omani coast toward Iran, killing five civilian passengers onboard, it said.
Brad Cooper, chief of US Central Command, said on Monday that the US military had sunk six Iranian small boats in the Strait of Hormuz.
The Iranian boats were struck by US Apache and MH-60 Seahawk helicopters, Cooper told a news conference.
Meanwhile, two US Navy destroyers have passed through the Strait of Hormuz and entered the Gulf after navigating an Iranian barrage, US media outlet CBS News reported.
The USS Truxtun and USS Mason, supported by Apache helicopters and other aircraft, faced a series of coordinated threats during the passage, said the report, citing Pentagon officials, who spoke under condition of anonymity, on Monday night (local time).
No US warship was struck, though Iran launched small boats, missiles and drones against them as a sustained barrage, the officials were quoted as saying.
None of the projectiles launched by Iran reached the US vessels, they said, adding that the US military’s assisting efforts, bolstered by air support, successfully intercepted or deterred each incoming threat, reports Xinhua news agency.
US President Donald Trump told Fox News on Monday that the Iranians are “more malleable” than they were before.
In a phone interview with Fox News, the president threatened that if Iran targets US ships in the Strait of Hormuz as the Pentagon begins operations to restore commercial shipping transit through the strait, they would be “blown off the face of the Earth.”
However, in another phone interview with ABC News on Monday, Trump stopped short of saying Iran’s Monday attacks had violated the US-Iran ceasefire.
“[It was] not heavy firing,” Trump said, downplaying the attacks.
Brad Cooper, chief of the US Central Command, told reporters earlier on Monday that Iranian forces had launched “multiple cruise missiles, drones, and small boats at ships we are protecting.”
US forces have sunk six Iranian small boats targeting civilian vessels in the Strait of Hormuz and intercepted several Iranian missiles and drones, said Cooper.
Iran later rejected the US claims, saying that “no commercial vessels or oil tankers” have transited the Strait of Hormuz, the semi-official Tasnim News Agency reported.
On February 28, the United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Tehran and other Iranian cities, killing then-Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, senior military commanders and civilians. Iran responded with waves of missile and drone attacks on Israel and US targets across the region and restricted passage through the Strait of Hormuz for vessels linked to Israel and the United States.
A ceasefire took effect on April 8, followed by talks between Iranian and US delegations in Islamabad that ended without a deal.
Tehran, May 4: The Navy of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) on Monday claimed that it hit a US Navy frigate with two missiles that sought to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
The US frigate, which had set sail near Iran’s southern port city of Jask to cross the Strait of Hormuz “in violation of the traffic and shipping security,” was hit after ignoring the Iranian naval forces’ warning, Fars cited local sources as saying.
It added that after being struck, the frigate was forced to retreat and flee from the region.
However, according to a subsequent report by Axios, a senior US official denied that a US ship was hit by Iranian missiles, Xinhua news agency reported.
Iran has repeatedly announced that no movement is possible through the Strait of Hormuz without its official permission, and ignoring this warning will be met with a decisive response from the Iranian armed forces, according to Fars.
US President Donald Trump said Sunday the United States will guide ships stranded in the Strait of Hormuz safely out of the restricted waterway on Monday.
In response to Trump’s claim, Iran’s main military command, Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, warned on Monday that “any foreign armed forces, especially the aggressive US army, will be attacked if they intend to approach and enter the Strait of Hormuz,” according to the official news agency IRNA.
Iran tightened its grip on the Strait of Hormuz beginning February 28, when it barred safe passage to vessels belonging to or affiliated with Israel and the United States following joint strikes on Iranian territory.
The United States imposed its anti-Iran blockade on the Strait of Hormuz after post-ceasefire negotiations with Tehran on April 11 and 12 failed to lead to an agreement.
Tehran, May 3: Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei condemned US President Donald Trump’s remarks that called the US seizure of Iranian vessels “piracy.”
“The president of the United States has openly described the unlawful seizure of Iranian vessels as ‘piracy,’ brazenly boasting that ‘we act like pirates,'” Baghaei said in an X post.
“This was no verbal slip. It was a direct and damning admission of the criminal nature of their actions against international maritime navigation,” Baghaei added.
Trump on Friday bragged that the US Navy acted “like pirates” in its blockade of Iranian ports. “We took over the ship, we took over the cargo, we took over the oil. It’s a very profitable business,” Trump said at an event in Florida, Xinhua news agency reported.
Baghaei called on the international community, UN member states, and the UN secretary-general to firmly reject any normalization of such “blatant violations” of international law.
The United States imposed its anti-Iran blockade on the Strait of Hormuz after post-ceasefire negotiations with Tehran in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad on April 11-12 failed to yield an agreement.
The ceasefire between Iran, the United States and Israel took effect on April 8 following 40 days of fighting. On February 28, the United States and Israel launched joint attacks on Tehran and other Iranian cities, killing Iran’s then-Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, senior commanders and civilians.
Iran responded with waves of missile and drone strikes targeting Israel and US bases and assets in the Middle East, while tightening its grip on the Strait of Hormuz and denying safe passage to vessels linked to Israel and the United States.
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