Keeping an eye on Communist, Totalitarian China, and its influence both globally, and we as Canadians. I have come to the opinion that we are rarely privy to truth regarding the real goal, the agenda of China, it's ambitions for Canada [including special focus on the UK, US & Australia]. No more can we trust the legacy media as there appears to be increasing censorship applied to the topic of communist China. I ask why. Here is what I find.
AS ESPIONAGE fears dog China’s biggest smartphone makers, there are concerns the country’s influence in Australia could leave us vulnerable.
Jan 15 2018
IT hasn’t been a good start to 2018 for China’s biggest smartphone manufacturers as they battle against fears their technology could be used in the ever-present threat of state espionage.
Huawei has become the world’s third largest smart phone manufacturer in recent years but the company faces headwinds in its expansion plans due to its close links with the Chinese communist party.
The Asian tech giant — which was founded by former People’s Liberation Army engineer Ren Zhengfei — and fellow Chinese smartphone maker ZTE have been singled out in a new US bill which aims to ban US government agencies from using phones and equipment from the Chinese tech companies.
The legislation was proposed last week by Texas lawmaker Mike Conaway because using such devices “would be inviting Chinese surveillance into all aspects of our lives,” he said.
The bill came just days after major US mobile carrier AT&T dramatically walked away from a deal to sell Huawei’s new flagship Mate10 device (recently reviewed by news.com.au) in its stores after congress reportedly raised national security concerns with regulators.
While any suggestion Huawei engages in any espionage activities on behalf of Beijing are “factually tenuous and unproven,” said Nigel Phair, “the reality is in the modern day of cyber security and espionage you can never be too careful.”
Mr Phair is the director of the Canberra-based Centre for internet Safety and said governments need to approach such issues from “a risk management perspective.”
“I don’t think you can be too cautious,” he said.
However while the US is proving to be exceedingly careful, some believe the growing influence China wields in Australia could prevent similar decisions from being made at home.
“Any electronic product containing software manufactured overseas potentially has security issues for the purchaser,” ANU Professor and defence intelligence and security expert Clive Williams said.
“We trust the Five-Eyes partners not to exploit that trust when we buy their equipment although clearly the US often has covert trapdoors into US products.”
The Australian Signals Directorate is responsible for overseeing the security of the government’s communications but Prof Wilson warns that China’s growing influence among our politicians could mean it is unlikely Australia takes the level of precautions recently seen in the US.
“There is sometimes powerful lobbying through former federal politicians, whose influence has been bought by China, to buy Chinese products,” he said in an e-mail to news.com.au. “In other words, they are putting their financial interests in front of Australia’s national security interests.”
On Tuesday, Reuters reported that US policymakers are urging carriers to cut commercial ties with the Chinese tech giants altogether — including any involvement in 5G development. According to the report, lawmakers warned that firms who have any ties to either Huawei or China Mobile could hamper their ability to do business with government agencies.
Visitors attend a launch event for the Huawei MateBook in Beijing. Picture: Mark SchiefelbeinSource:AP
Although there has been no evidence, and steadfast denials from Huawei, that the Chinese tech company eavesdrops on behalf of Beijing, for a number of years the US has prohibited Huawei from bidding for government contracts out of fears for national security.
Such moves are not uncommon when it comes to telecommunications infrastructure and certain software services.
Australia has also exercised such caution when it comes to allowing investment projects. Both Labor and Liberal government blocked Huawei from tendering for the National Broadband Network in 2012 and 2013. And last year the government raised concerns over Huawei’s involvement in building internet cables in the Pacific region.
In June, Huawei phones were approved for use by Defence officials and top diplomats — in a move that raised eyebrows among officials and politicians.
In September, similar concerns were again raised over the fact the Telstra Tough T55 handset which is made by ZTE was available on the secure ParlICT website to order. The phone was listed for $195 on the ordering system available to all who work in Parliament House.
But most interestingly, the latest concerns expressed by US politicians extend to the consumer market as they stepped in to sour the deal between AT&T and Huawei.
According to The New York Times, AT&T walked away from a deal to sell the Mate10 smartphone to US customers after politicians wrote a letter to regulators saying congress had “long been concerned about Chinese espionage in general, and Huawei’s role in that espionage in particular.”
Chinese telecom giant's pursuit of building the next generation of digital networks in the U.S. prompts outcry in Washington
Oct 2012
CBS News) U.S. companies have largely left the telecommunications business to foreigners, but can we trust the Chinese to build and maintain the critical data infrastructure that government and industry rely on without spying on us? Steve Kroft investigates.
The following is a script from "Huawei" which aired on Oct. 7, 2012. Steve Kroft is the correspondent. Graham Messick, producer.
If you're concerned about the decline of American economic power and the rise of China, then there is no better case study than Huawei. Chances are you've never heard of this Chinese technology giant, but in the space of 25 years it's become the largest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment in the world; everything from smart phones to switchers and routers that form the backbone of the global communications network. It's an industry the U.S. invented and once dominated, but no more.
Now, Huawei is aggressively pursuing a foothold in the United States, hoping to build the next generation of digital networks here. It's prompted an outcry in Washington, and a year-long investigation by the House Intelligence Committee that has raised concerns about national security, Chinese espionage, and Huawei's murky connections to the Chinese government.
Huawei's world headquarters is located on this sprawling Google-esque campus in Shenzhen, not far from Hong Kong. China's first international conglomerate is a private company, ostensibly owned by its 140,000 employees, but exactly how that works and other details of corporate governance are closely held secrets.
What we do know is that Huawei is now the world leader in designing and building fourth generation communication networks, known as 4G, the latest technology for moving high volumes of phone calls, data, and high definition video. Its innovative low cost systems have already captured markets in Africa, Latin America and Europe.
Now with Huawei eyeing potential customers in the U.S., congressional leaders and the national security establishment are doing everything they can to prevent it from happening.
Steve Kroft: Do we trust the Chinese?
Mike Rogers: If I were an American company today, and I'll tell you this as the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and you are looking at Huawei, I would find another vendor if you care about your intellectual property, if you care about your consumers' privacy, and you care about the national security of the United States of America.
Republican Congressman Mike Rogers and the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Dutch Ruppersberger, believe that letting a Chinese company build and maintain critical communication infrastructure here would be a serious mistake.
Dutch Ruppersberger: One of the main reasons we are having this investigation is to educate the citizens in business in the United States of America. In the telecommunications world, once you get the camel's nose in the tent, you can go anywhere.
Their overriding concern is this: that the Chinese government could exploit Huawei's presence on U.S. networks to intercept high level communications, gather intelligence, wage cyber war, and shut down or disrupt critical services in times of national emergency.
Jim Lewis: This is a strategic industry. And it's like aircraft or space launch, or computers, IT. It's a strategic industry in the sense that an opponent can gain serious advantage, can gain serious benefit from being able to exploit the telecommunications network.
Jim Lewis has followed Huawei's explosive growth for years from the State Department and the Commerce Department, where his job was to identify foreign technologies that might pose a threat to national security.
Steve Kroft: How did they get so big and so cheap, so quickly?
Jim Lewis: Two answers. First, steady, extensive support from the Chinese government. If you're willing to funnel hundreds of millions, maybe even billions of dollars to a company, they're going to be able to grow. The second reason is industrial espionage. And Huawei was famous in their developing years for taking other people's technology.
Steve Kroft: You mean stealing?
Jim Lewis: I guess technically, yes, it would be theft.
Cisco accused Huawei of copying one of its network routers, right down to the design flaws and typos in the manual. And Motorola alleged that Huawei recruited its employees to steal company secrets.
Both cases were settled out of court. But the Pentagon and the director of National Intelligence have both identified Chinese actors as the world's most active and persistent perpetrators of economic espionage.
Bill Plummer: Huawei is Huawei. Huawei is not China.
Bill Plummer is the American face of Huawei, the company's U.S. vice president of external relations and the only executive the home office in Shenzhen would let us speak to. We met him at Huawei's North American headquarters in Plano, Texas.
Bill Plummer: We have the responsibility to clean up 10 years of misinformation and innuendo.
Steve Kroft: What's the misinformation and innuendo?
Bill Plummer: The suggestion that a company by virtue of its heritage or flag of headquarters is somehow more vulnerable than any other company to some sort of mischief.
Plummer told us that Huawei is just another multinational corporation doing business in the United States, no different than Siemens, Samsung or Hyundai.
Bill Plummer: This room is a clean room.
He says Huawei buys six billion dollars in components from American suppliers every year and indirectly employs 35,000 Americans. And he says that the latest telecom gear Huawai hopes to sell in the U.S. poses no threat.
Steve Kroft: One national security expert said that if you build a network like this in another country, you basically have the keys to intercepting their communications. Is that a true statement?
Bill Plummer: Part of that might be a little bit fantastical. But you know, Huawei is a business in the business of doing business -- $32.4 billion in revenues last year across 150 different markets, 70 percent of our business outside of China. Huawei is not going to jeopardize its commercial success for any government, period.
Steve Kroft: What's the relationship between Huawei and the Chinese government?
Bill Plummer: We have a Beijing office. So, you know, we're a regulated industry the same as we are here. You need to be able to interface with government.
Steve Kroft: So you're saying the Chinese government has no influence over Huawei.
Bill Plummer: We're another business doing business in China.
Steve Kroft: If you look at Huawei, it looks like just a big international company with an American face.
Chris Johnson: Yep. And that's the intent.
Until last spring, Chris Johnson was the CIA's top analyst on China, and he's briefed the last three presidents on what's been happening behind the scenes in Beijing. He tells a different story than Huawei's Bill Plummer.
Chris Johnson: The problem I think is really it boils down to an issue of will the company take some steps to make themselves, you know, more transparent about their operations, and what their ultimate goal is, especially this relationship with the Chinese government, with the Chinese Communist Party and with the People's Liberation Army.
Johnson says the military has always played a role in Chinese telecommunications, and that Huawei's reclusive CEO served as an army major in telecommunications research before he retired and founded Huawei, supposedly with a few thousand dollars in savings and no help from the Chinese government.
Steve Kroft: What could you tell me about the guy that runs this company? Ren?
Chris Johnson: Ren Zhengfei, yeah. He's a very mysterious figure. And, you know, there really isn't that much known about him.
Steve Kroft: Has he ever given an interview?
Chris Johnson: Not that I'm aware of. Of course it does generate these concerns about why he won't give an interview and why he won't say something about his role in the company and his philosophy of how the company operates.
Unlike Western companies that are usually regulated and scrutinized, about the only entity privy to the inner-workings of Huawei is a Communist Party Committee, which has offices inside the company's headquarters.
Chris Johnson: You know, at the end of the day, the Communist Party controls the entire economy. They ultimately decide who the winners and losers are. The ultimate leverage that they have over these type of companies is that they can, you know, launch a corruption investigation against the chairman, for example.
Steve Kroft: If the Chinese government told Huawei that they wanted them to spy on the U.S. telecommunication system, and extract information, could Huawei say no?
Chris Johnson: It'd be very difficult for them, given the nature of their system.
Jim Lewis: Here, companies are used to, you know, throwing their weight around and telling the government what to do. In China, a company is a Chia pet. The state tells them what to do, and they do it.
There is no hard evidence that's happened with Huawei, but the Obama administration has been unwilling to take the risk. Two years ago, when it appeared that Huawei might land its first big American deal -- a five billion dollar contract to build Sprint's new 4G wireless network -- the U.S. government stepped in.
Jim Lewis: You had the Secretary of Commerce call the CEO of Sprint and lay out the U.S. concerns. Say that the U.S. was really worried about Huawei. And they would be a lot happier if Sprint didn't do the deal.
Steve Kroft: And Sprint said, "OK."
Jim Lewis: Sprint said, "OK."
Since then, Huawei has blanketed U.S. airways with commercials and hired an army of lobbyists and public relations firms to help it get a foothold into the world's largest telecom market.
Jim Lewis: They're determined. They're in it for the long haul. The line that most people think about is, Mao had a strategy called "Win the countryside, surround the cities, and then the cities will fall." And Huawei seems to be following that Maoist strategy.
In the last couple of years, Huawei has managed to install and maintain a handful of networks in U.S. rural markets, including a vast quadrant of southwestern Kansas. Craig Mock is the president and general manager of United Wireless, based in the historic cowboy town of Dodge City.
Craig Mock: We're trying to reach out as far as we can into rural areas.
Mock told us the new Huawei network delivers some of the fastest Internet speeds in the country. But last spring after the deal had been signed with Huawei, Mock received an unwelcome visit from two federal agents.
Steve Kroft: Who were they? Intelligence people?
Craig Mock: Not gonna say.
Steve Kroft: Why did they come out here?
Craig Mock: I think they would've preferred that we bought equipment from somebody else.
Steve Kroft: What was your reaction? Were you upset that they came out?
Craig Mock: I was not pleased.
Steve Kroft: Because?
Craig Mock: Because I saw it as interference in our operations. If we're not able to buy the very best equipment and deploy it in an efficient manner, then everybody suffers.
Steve Kroft: Were there any American companies that bid on this?
Craig Mock: I don't know of any American companies that makes this equipment.
About the only real U.S. competitor Huawei has left is Cisco, which is still a worldwide player, but doesn't produce all the equipment necessary to construct a 4G network. The only companies that do are all foreign: Huawei, Ericsson, which is Swedish, and the French company Alcatel-Lucent.
Jim Lewis: That's where we've ended up. We now depend entirely on foreign suppliers. Three European, two Chinese. No Americans.
Steve Kroft: The United States used to dominate this field.
Jim Lewis: Yeah it's true. You know, I guess we just were asleep at the switch.
Steve Kroft: What happened?
Jim Lewis: Some of it was just bad planning at the company level. Some of it was a lack of attention by the government. I mean, we would not have let the space industry go out of business. We would not say, "Oh, we'll depend on foreign companies to launch our satellites." But we didn't do that for telecom.
Concerned and suspicious of what it calls continued Chinese penetration of U.S. telecommunications market, the House Intelligence Committee called Huawei executive Charles Ding to answer questions about the company's corporate structure, ownership, finances, and management. The committee seemed to get nowhere.
Mike Rogers: The committee has been disappointed that the companies provided little actual evidence to ameliorate the committee's concerns.
Huawei's Bill Plummer says the company bears some responsibility for the lack of communication.
Bill Plummer: You're right that over the 10 years of explosive growth we were not as good at communicating about ourselves as we could or should have been. But over the last couple of years we've really stepped that up. I mean, you want to know more about us, we're an open book.
Steve Kroft: Really?
Bill Plummer: Yeah.
Steve Kroft: Has Mr. Ren ever given an interview?
Bill Plummer: Mr. Ren is not terribly well-known for his, his, his-- getting out in front of the media.
Steve Kroft: But we requested interviews various points along the way with company officials both in China and here. And we got their most important spokesman and lobbyist here in the United States. But it's not like they swung open the doors and said, you know, "We're an open book."
Bill Plummer: Well I think that--
Steve Kroft: You allowed our camera crews into your facilities in Shenzhen and there was a big banner saying, "Welcome 60 Minutes." But we weren't allowed to talk to anybody. To speak to anybody.
Bill Plummer: The goal of the visit to Shenzhen was to give a really rich and visual impression of the company. It is a company that has experienced a history of not fully balanced treatment by the media. And that's created a sense of wariness.
Huawei is not going to like the treatment it receives from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence any better. Its final report is due tomorrow.
The 350,000 Chinese students in the U.S. "are here legitimately and doing great research and helping the global economy," said Bill Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, but others are used as tools to facilitate nefarious activity. (Associated Press/File)
A senior U.S. counterintelligence official recently said publicly what many officials and experts have been warning privately for years: China is using its large student population in the United States to spy.
Bill Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, a DNI agency, said recently thatChinaposes a broad-ranging foreign intelligence threat that includes the use of academics, students, cyber espionage and human agents to steal secrets from the government and private sectors.
“I look at the China threat from a counterintelligence perspective as a whole-of-government threat by China against us,” Mr. Evanina told a conference last week at The Aspen Institute.
“We allow 350,000 or so Chinese students here every year,” he said. “That’s a lot. We have a very liberal visa policy for them. Ninety-nine point nine percent of those students are here legitimately and doing great research and helping the global economy. But it is a tool that is used by the Chinese government to facilitate nefarious activity here in the U.S.”
Mr. Evanina said the Trump administration is more engaged in counterintelligence than the Obama administration, based on the fact that many current leaders had more experience in the private sector. A particular concern driving greater counterespionage against China is Beijing’s spending of $80 billion annually on investment in the United States, he said.
“I believe our administration now, due to the makeup, is more interested in that number and how that impacts across the U.S. country than the previous administration,” Mr. Evanina said. “If the Chinese government is buying up key aspects of our critical infrastructure and our technology base, is that a long-term national security threat for our country? I believe it is.”
Michelle Van Cleave, a former counterintelligence official, testified to a House subcommittee earlier this month that China poses the most significant threat to steal advanced American technology from universities and other research centers.
“It’s not just that there are a lot of Chinese nationals working in American companies or laboratories, or studying or teaching at American universities, picking up whatever happens to come their way,” Ms. Van Cleave said. “No. As the Defense Department has reported, China has a government-directed, multifaceted secret program whose primary task is technology acquisition.”
Michael Wessel, chairman of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, also told Congress that China in 2006 launched two programs seeking to recruit up to 4,000 foreign specialists, mainly among ethnic Chinese, in such programs as “Project 111” and “Thousand Talents Program.”
Mr. Wessel said about 20 percent of the staff at the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab at the University of California Berkeley, which conducts research in advanced machine learning, are Chinese nationals.
At the University of Maryland’s Bing Research Group, 30 of the 38 postdoctoral researchers and graduate students are from China, Mr. Wessel testified.
NORTH KOREA STATEMENT
The announcement last weekend from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un outlining a plan to close the country’s underground nuclear test site and halt nuclear and long-range missile tests left many Korea watchers in and out of government hopeful that Pyongyang will agree to give up its nuclear arsenal after the upcoming summit between President Trump and Mr. Kim.
A careful reading of Mr. Kim’s six-point announcement, however, reveals troubling signs that the Kim regime has no intention of giving up its newly developed ability to target the United States with nuclear-tipped missiles. The announcement carried by the official KCNA news agency makes clear that Pyongyang’s development of nuclear warheads small enough to be launched on ICBMs was a “great victory.”
In fact, Mr. Kim “declare[d] solemnly” that the nuclear missile program was achieved through “great struggle,” involving nuclear tests, miniaturizing and reducing the weight of nuclear warheads, and building an “ultra-large nuclear weapon” and the means to deliver it.
Those steps “sequentially and faithfully realized the nuclear weaponization,” Mr. Kim stated.
Additionally, the North Korean leader said Pyongyang would limit the use of its nuclear arsenal to counter a “nuclear threat or nuclear provocation” and will not transfer nuclear weapons abroad.
U.S. intelligence agencies estimate that North Korea has 20 weapons.
The references to nuclear weapons’ use and a promise not to transfer the arms are widely viewed by skeptical analysts as indications that the North Korean leader has no intention of giving up the weapons despite renewed negotiations with the United States and South Korea.
Mr. Trump on Tuesday said his efforts to pressure North Korea are bringing results, specifically in talks on denuclearization and some concessions by Pyongyang.
“This should have been resolved by other presidents and by other leaders of other countries a long time ago,” Mr. Trump said. “With that being said, I think we’re doing very well. Meetings are being set up, and I want to see denuclearization of North Korea.”
The president also said the talks with North Korea may fail. “So the end result is, we’ll see,” he said. “Maybe good things will happen, and maybe we’re all wasting a lot of time. But hopefully it will be good for everybody concerned.”
Pacom nominee on Chinese submarines
Adm. Philip Davidson, nominated to be the next commander of the Pacific Command, said in prepared testimony this month that China is advancing its submarine warfare programs but still lags behind the Navy.
“The United States maintains a significant asymmetric advantage in undersea warfare, but the PLA is making progress,” Adm. Davidson said of China’s People’s Liberation Army.
According to the four-star admiral, China has put a priority on developing advanced submarines and capabilities to counter U.S. submarines, including building underwater drones.
“The Chinese are investing in a range of platforms, including quieter submarines armed with increasingly sophisticated weapons, unmanned underwater vehicles, new sensors and new fixed-wing and rotary-wing submarine-hunting aircraft,” said Adm. Davidson, who was confirmed by the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday and is awaiting a vote by the full Senate.
“Ultimately, this is a perishable advantage for the United States,” he added. “Absent sustained, consistent investment and constant innovation, the PLA will catch the United States in this critical regime.”
The Pentagon’s latest annual report on China’s military power made no mention of China’s underwater drones.
The report said in June 2016 that a Chinese national pleaded guilty to illegally acting as a Chinese agent in supplying U.S. components to the Harbin Engineering University for use in developing unmanned underwater vehicles, remotely operated vehicles and autonomous underwater vehicles.
MILITARY GETS FASTER INTERNET
The Defense Information Systems Agency announced this week that the Pentagon is upgrading its networks to move information at speeds 10 times faster than current data transfer rates.
The agency is updating the Defense Information Systems Network optical transport system from the current transfer rate of 10 gigabytes per second to 100 gigabytes per second.
A program called the Next Generation Optical Transport network will boost U.S. combat command networks with improved security.
“This is a critical infrastructure upgrade that will benefit unified commanders and combat forces worldwide,” said Johnathan Bunting, chief of the global projects branch at DISA’s Infrastructure Directorate. “This will eliminate network outages due to single-event occurrences and improve our availability to key Department of Defense applications and services.”
Huawei & Telus: Is our Data & DNA at Risk at their 5G “Living Lab”?
“5G, microcells, the internet of things, and the “smart” revolution might make telecoms and industry a lot of dollars, but for the rest of us, they just don’t make sense.”
SALT SPRING, February 17 2018
Citizens for Safe Technology
Vancouverites may very well be guinea pigs in the experiment of the century. Instead of offering secure, safe, and healthy fiber optics direct to the premises, Telus and Chinese tech giant Huawei have created a “living lab” in Vancouver where they are testing their planned rollout of 5G. Telus is already using 4G microcells manufactured by Huawei across BC to gather and transmit our data.
This week, six top US security chiefs, including directors of the CIA, FBI, and the NSA, warned that Huawei has shared sensitive information with China, and that Chinese security agencies can access private US business communications using Huawei’s equipment. All six said they do not recommend private citizens use products made by Huawei.
Even if these statements are rooted in trade protectionism as Huawei claims, the number of unanswered questions accompanying this pending 5G-rollout make it clear our government should be taking a precautionary approach. The one we committed to when we signed onto the Wingspread Precautionary Principle in 1998.
So where does this leave Canadians? Besides the serious health and environmental implications of 5G (to learn more about how it affects our DNA click here), we must now be concerned about what Huawei is doing with our personal data. And there will be plenty of it. (See this Tucker Carlson FOX news report on what he calls “surveillance capitalism” and how Google tracks us even when our phones are in airplane mode, and this journalist’s intimate look at how her smart home spied on her.)
Once the “smart” home revolution is in full swing, a whole lot of very private information will be gathered and transmitted by the Huawei microcells Telus has been busily installing – without our consent or often knowledge - right by our homes across the nation.
The sad – or perhaps sadder – part? Even though 5G will never be as fast or as safe as a direct fiber-to-the-premise wired connection, ISED Canada is allowing these microcells to be installed without any public input, and our government is erroneously telling us we need them to “cross the digital divide.”
True 21st century smart city applications like creating sustainable transportation, energy, and water systems, accessing education, and upgrading our emergency and public health care services are much better served by community-owned fiber optic networks. This groundbreaking February 2018 report: Re-Inventing Wires: The Future of Landlines and Networks explains why.
Pure and simple – 5G, microcells, the internet of things, and the “smart” revolution might make telecoms and industry a lot of dollars, but for the rest of us, they just don’t make sense.
Sorry but this is reality,there's no other way of exposing it other than this candid walk through with a video camera. Notice no one wears gloves when handling meat and fish? Also smoking with with cigarettes hanging permanently from mouths; coughing and spitting commonplace.
China wants to expand its influence in South Asia -- in all of it, the land, the sea, and the air. That’s why Beijing is spending billions of dollars to build long-stretch highways like CPEC and taking over Sri Lanka’s and Pakistan’s ports.
That’s something foreign investors should watch closely, as a clash between India and China would have devastating effects on the economic integration of South Asia and the performance of the financial markets of the region.
Officially, China and India are moving closer to addressing old and new issues that divide them, with high profile meetings like the one at the end of this week, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet with the Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The two leaders are expected to bridge the “gap of trust” between the two countries, as some media sources in both countries interpret the high-level summit. But unofficially, India and China are moving further apart, due to Beijing’s miscalculation of India’s capability to spoil its plans.
“Beijing’s miscalculations regarding India have created conflict with a regional power that has the capability and desire to disrupt China’s outward push,” explains Raffaello Pantucci in “China’s South Asian Miscalculation,” published recently in CURRENT HISTORY (April 24, 2018). It is a calculation that could cause serious complications for China’s broader South Asian vision, and ultimately provoke a clash between the two Asian giants.”
What makes this confrontation more likely is the rise of hawkish voices in both countries, especially In India where there’s a growing sense that China is trying to encircle and strangle it.
“The story is one of growing confrontation, as hawkish national security establishments on both sides increasingly outflank economic pragmatists who want to take advantage of the potential benefits of a more cooperative relationship between the two Asian giants,” adds Pantucci.
Then there’s a shift in fortunes of the economies of the two countries. India’s economy is gaining momentum, as China’s economy loses steam.
That could certainly provide India the resources to push back against China with its own checkbook (ie, South Asia diplomacy), further intensifying the antagonism between the two countries.
The Indian economy is expected to grow at an annual rate of 7.4% in 2018 and 7.8% in 2019, according to a recently releasedIMF Economic Outlook. India’s projected 2018-19 growth rates are well above China’s 6.6% and 6.4% over the same period. And things could get even worse for Chinese economic growth over the long-term, due to the continued rise of the country’s nonfinancial debt.
A strong Indian economy will further help India strengthen its naval capabilities and up its participation in joint naval exercises with America, Japan and Australia in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, irking China.
