Axis of Evil

North Korea Nuclear Test Puts Pressure on China and Undercuts Xi
By JANE PERLEZ

Xi Jinping arriving on Sunday for the opening ceremony of a business forum in Fujian Province. 

BEIJING — It was supposed to be Xi Jinping’s moment to bask in global prestige, as he hosted the leaders of some of the world’s most dynamic economies at a summit meeting just weeks before a Communist Party leadership conference.
But just hours before Xi was set to address the carefully choreographed meeting on Sunday, North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, detonated his sixth nuclear bomb.
Mr. Kim has timed his nuclear tests and missile launches with exquisite precision, apparently trying to create maximum embarrassment for China. 

And on Sunday, a gathering in southeast China of leaders from Russia, Brazil, India and South Africa, members of the so-called BRICS group, was immediately overshadowed by news of the test, which shook dwellings in China and revived fears of nuclear contamination in the country’s northeast region.
This is not the first time Mr. Kim has chosen a provocative moment to flaunt his country’s weapons. In May, he launched a ballistic missile hours before Xi spoke at a gathering of world leaders in Beijing assembled to discuss China’s signature trillion dollar One Belt, One Road project.
The confluence of North Korea’s nuclear testing and Xi’s important public appearances is not a coincidence, analysts said. 

It is intended to show that Mr. Kim, the leader of a small neighboring state, can diminish Xi’s power and prestige as president of China.

In fact, some analysts contended that the latest test may have been primarily aimed at pressuring Xi, not President Trump.

“Kim knows that Xi has the real power to affect the calculus in Washington,” said Peter Hayes, the director of the Nautilus Institute, a research group that specializes in North Korea. 

“He’s putting pressure on China to say to Mr. Trump: ‘You have to sit down with Kim Jong-un.’”
What Mr. Kim wants most, Mr. Hayes said, is talks with Washington that the North Korean leader hopes will result in a deal to reduce American troops in South Korea and leave him with nuclear weapons. 

And in Mr. Kim’s calculation, China has the influence to make that negotiation happen.
While some Chinese analysts say North Korea should be made to pay a price for its contempt of China, the North’s ally and major trading partner, they were not optimistic that Sunday’s test would change Xi’s morbid determination to not get his hands sullied trying to force Mr. Kim to change his ways.
Even the North’s claim that the weapon detonated was a hydrogen bomb that could be mounted on an intercontinental ballistic missile would not sway Xi, they said.
“This sixth nuclear test should force China to do something radical; this will be a political test,” said Cheng Xiaohe, a nuclear expert at Renmin University. 

“But the mood is not moving that way.”
China’s Foreign Ministry did express “strong condemnation” of the test. 

But despite the North’s repeated incitements, the Chinese leadership sticks to its position that a nuclear-armed North Korea is less dangerous to China than the possibility of a political collapse in the North, Cheng said.

That could result in a unified Korean Peninsula under the control of the United States and its ally, South Korea.
China fears such an outcome if it uses its greatest economic leverage: cutting off the crude oil supplies that keep the North’s rudimentary economy running.
“Cutting off oil supplies could severely impact North Korean industries and undermine the regime’s stability, a solution which China and Russian have serious qualms about,” said Zhao Tong, a fellow at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing.
China has put forward a proposal that hinges on North Korea stopping its nuclear testing in exchange for an end to American military exercises around the Korean Peninsula.
But Xi is consumed at the moment with domestic matters, Chinese analysts said. 

The political machinations surrounding the Communist Party’s National Congress that will convene in Beijing in mid-October to select new members of the ruling elite are at the top of his agenda. 

Xi will be awarded his second five-year term at the meeting.
China always aims for domestic calm in the period leading up to the secretive congress, and so it is unlikely to do anything before Oct. 19, the start of the conclave, Mr. Zhao said.
The biggest concern for China’s leadership is the possibility of North Korea turning on China, the country’s only ally. 

“If cornered, North Korea could take military action against China, given the relationship has reached a historic low,” Mr. Zhao said.
China supplies more than 80 percent of the North’s crude oil, and suspending delivery would be the ultimate economic sanction, more far-reaching than those imposed, with China’s support, by the United Nations.
Even The Global Times, the nationalist, state-run newspaper, said several months ago that China should consider cutting off its oil supplies to North Korea if Mr. Kim detonated a sixth nuclear bomb. But with the party congress looming, the paper modified its position Sunday.
“The origin of the North Korean nuclear issue is the sense of uncertainty that is generated by the military actions of the U.S./South Korea military alliance,” the paper said. 

“China should not be at the front of this sharp and complicated situation.”
There were also some doubts whether severing oil supplies would make much a huge difference to the North Korean regime. 

“The economic effects will be substantial but not regime crippling,” said Mr. Hayes of the Nautilus Institute, which specializes in the North’s energy needs.
The hardships, he said, would be most felt by ordinary people, with less food getting to market and fewer people able to travel between cities in buses.
The North’s army has oil stockpiles for routine nonwartime use for at least a year, Mr. Hayes said. “They can last for about a month before they run out of fuel in wartime, at best; likely much earlier,” he said.
Another major concern for the Chinese government is the fears of residents in the northeast of the country about nuclear contamination from North Korea’s test site at Punggye-ri, not far from the Chinese border.
Many residents in Yanji in Jilin Province, which borders the North, said they felt their apartments shake after the test. 

Some posted photos of stocks of food and drinks shattered on the floors of a grocery store. 

At first residents believed the cause was an earthquake, they said, and only later in the day heard the news from state-run media that North Korea had detonated a nuclear bomb.
“I was in my study when the earthquake began,” said Sun Xingjie, an assistant professor at Jilin University in Changchun about 350 miles from the North Korean test site. 

Sun said he checked with friends on social media, and they determined from the location and the depth of the explosion that it was a nuclear test.
Even though there is no evidence of any contamination from the test reaching China, it is a worry of residents, Mr. Sun said.
“We are at the border region, so we have a sense of fear about leakage from the nuclear test,” he said.

Who blinked in China-India military standoff?

By Simon Denyer and Annie Gowen 

This 2008 photo shows a Chinese soldier next to an Indian soldier at the Nathu La border crossing between India and China in India's northeastern Sikkim state. 

BEIJING — For weeks, China’s Foreign Ministry had been vehement in its denunciations of India and insistence that New Delhi unconditionally withdraw troops that had trespassed into Chinese territory. 

Don't underestimate us, China repeatedly insisted, we are prepared for military conflict if need be.
Yet on Monday, it appeared as though Beijing, not New Delhi, had blinked.
Both sides withdrew troops to end the stand-off. 

Crucially, military sources told Indian newspapers that China has also withdrawn the bulldozers that were constructing a road on the plateau. 

That road, built on land contested between Bhutan and China, had been the reason Indian troops had entered the disputed area in the first place, in defense of its ally Bhutan.
The eventual deal allowed both sides to save face — India’s Ministry of External Affairs suggested in its statement that it had stuck to its “principled position” in the discussions, which was that road-building violated ongoing terms of a current boundary dispute between Bhutan and China.
Yet some experts said it was premature to start declaring victory and China continued to be cagey in its official remarks.
China insisted its troops would continue to patrol and garrison the disputed area, as well as continue to exercise its sovereign rights there. 

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said Tuesday that the country would make plans for road construction ‘in accordance with the situation on the ground.”
Then, on Wednesday, China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, appeared to chide India, saying “We of course hope that India could learn some lessons from this, and [hope] events similar to this one would not happen again.”
There is precedence for China not sticking to agreements. 

In 2012, China and the Philippines agreed to withdraw naval vessels around Scarborough Shoal in a deal brokered by the United States. 

The Chinese ships never left, and have controlled it since.
Two factors may have helped talk China down and away from conflict — according to Indian media, Bhutan had been quietly resolute in talks with Beijing that it considered the Chinese road to be an infringement of a 2012 deal between the two countries that neither would develop infrastructure in disputed areas.
The second was a summit of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) nations due to be hosted by China this weekend. 

Beijing sets great store in set-piece summits of this nature, and the embarrassing possibility that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi might not attend may have focused minds in Beijing. 

India said Tuesday that Modi would, in fact, be attending the summit in Fujian province Sept. 3-5.
In India, news outlets painted Monday’s stand-down as a win for Indian diplomacy and their behind-the-scenes efforts to defuse tension before bullets flew. 

In China, the state media has also tried to paint the resolution as a victory for Asia and diplomacy — while staying vague about whether that road would still be built.
On social media, though, some Netizens asked uncomfortable questions.
“India withdrawing troops is a fact, did we give up some legitimate rights such as building road, this is what citizens care about, our focus is whether India’s withdrawal is unconditional, hope there is a clear explanation,” one user on China’s social media platform Weibo posted after news of the standoff.

Brics summit in Goa: Forget Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai and get tough with China

What India should do to rein the Communist nation that has no respect for international rule of law, human rights, treaties or the global fight against terrorism, and for whom transparency is a dirty word

By Srinivasa Prasad 

Dealing with Pakistan’s export of terror is difficult enough for India. 

Add to this tragedy a third player, China, which not only backs Pakistan but even plays nasty economic games against India, and then it’s quite a tough job to handle.
That’s what Prime Minister Narendra Modi must remember as he hosts the summit of the five-nation Brics and a retreat for the leaders of the seven-nation Bimstec this weekend in Goa. 

Pakistan is part of neither Brics nor Bimstec but will be at the back of Modi’s mind when he talks to Xi Jinping in Goa.
India must reconcile to the fact that, in foreseeable future, both Pakistan and China will continue to be its adversaries. 

Having already made enough gullible attempts to turn both those countries into friends, India must now begin to find ways to “manage” its relations with the rogue country on the west and its ally on the east in a manner that would be to its best advantage.
India’s recipe to fight China must have more of economics than diplomacy. 

Then as a spin-off, India can hope for a more sober Pakistan, though there is no guarantee of that since nobody knows who is — and who will be, in future — in charge of Pakistan’s affairs.
What makes the cash route a better bet to fight China is the slow-down in China’s economy. 

The dragon is breathing less economic fire now, and though it’s not ready to have its wings clipped, it’s more vulnerable than ever before.
But it would take only a fool or a jingoist to believe that India is better off than China. 

Though India’s economy is showing impressive signs of improvement, Chinese economy, even with its present mess, is still many times larger than India’s, and the Chinese military much stronger.
It’s also preposterous to even suggest that India must curb trade ties with China, in retaliation for the latter’s brazen backing for Pakistan. 

Economically, India needs China as much as China does India.
Western economists differ on whether China’s economic troubles are subsiding, and their assessments are not proving to be reliable. 

Yet the stories that continue to come out of China of job losses, unemployment and salary cuts are good news for India.
That’s what India must leverage to perk up its own economy and to bring down its own unemployment and poverty levels, say some well-meaning experts.
Like India has replied to Pakistan’s terror in its own langue with surgical strikes, India must deal with China by employing the same methodology of chicanery that the eastern neighbour has made itself notorious for: by dropping a subtle hint here and there, and by making it clear that India will do business with China on its own terms.
Brics is a good place to start, and China is already getting the right message not only from India but other countries of the bloc as well. 

Media reports suggest that India, along with other Brics members, are showing no interest in a “Brics Free Trade Agreement” that China wants to peddle to them at this week’s summit. 

This proposal is designed in a way to further China’s own interests, not anybody else’s.
Paying for its past follies, China is indeed a desperate nation today.
AFP reported on 10 October that China’s foreign exchange reserves, the largest in the world, have fallen to a five-year-low to less than US $3.18 trillion this week. 

But India’s reserves — $371.2 billion this week, though a fraction of China’s—are showing an upward trend.
But that’s not the point. 

What matters more is what the world thinks of the Chinese and what India should do to rein the Communist nation that has no respect for international rule of law, human rights, treaties or the global fight against terrorism, and for whom transparency is a dirty word.
But even China—where most things are shrouded in a sinister secrecy and where the very composition of its foreign reserves itself is a state secret—can occasionally be candid. 

That, again, perhaps is part of the Chinese passion to surprise the enemy.
On 5 October, a Xinhua report quoted a Chinese official as having made an oblique confession that the world at large thinks of the Chinese as fraudsters who are unreliable to do business with.
The official said China’s trade remained under heavy downward pressure, partly due to “increasing trade frictions” with nations around the world
In the last eight months, he admitted, 20 countries including the US launched 85 “trade remedy probes” against Chinese deals worth US $ 10.3 billion, almost double the amount for the same period last year. 

These relate to patent or trademark infringement, misappropriation of trade secrets, false advertising and violation of antitrust laws.
A recent Reuters report said: “China’s offshore ambitions have come under increasing scrutiny this year by governments in Europe and the United States.”
The Chinese are learning, though slowly, that their policies could one day lead to their isolation in the world. 

Already, China finds itself to be somewhat of a pariah within Brics, though not to the same extent as Pakistan is in Saarc — yet.
Among Brics members, India suffers from a trade deficit of $ 52.7 billion with China. 

This means China’s exports to India far outstrip its imports from India. 

Russia has its own $-12-billion trade deficit with China. 

Though Brazil and South Africa enjoy trade surpluses with China, all four countries are suspicious of any move that China makes that they think can even remotely affect the balance unfairly.
Pakistan may be a vassal state of China, but Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa are not. 

They would be ready to call China’s economic bluff, though the four countries together don’t present a pretty picture of unity themselves.
There are some who argue that India must do more business with China to offset the security threat from Pakistan. 

One of them is, Niti Aayog’s Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariya, who told India Today: “... our economic engagement with China can trump the security engagement of China with Pakistan.”
But those like Subhash Kapila, former Indian diplomat in Japan and the US, don’t agree. 

Kapila argues in this article: “The China-Pakistan Axis with strategic underpinnings pointedly aimed at India is also an established strategic reality. India vainly keeps hoping that economics would ultimately prevail and modulate China’s patent targeting of India’s strategic rise in Indo Pacific Asia.”
The way to grapple with the China problem lies in both politics and economics in right proportions. While using its own significant economic clout, India must raise its voice against China’s hypocritical and hegemonistc advances in the region.
It is clear that, whatever Modi does or says in Goa this week, a meek surrender to the Chinese blackmail is not an option. 

The days of Jawaharlal Nehru’s gullible Hindi-Chini bhai bhai are long gone. 

Having called Pakistan’s bluff, India must now call China’s.