Tibet Today brings Tibet closer to you

Gandhigiri against China’s dadagiri
by Prakash Nanda

W ith each passing day, all those who believe in the values of human dignity and democracy are aghast at the way the Chinese government is dealing with the Tibetans. The Dalai Lama has said a number of times that he is more than prepared to go to Beijing for a dialogue. He is not demanding independence for Tibet . All that he is saying is that the Tibetans must be given autonomy within China so that they preserve their culture, history, environment and political institutions.

However, all these pleas of the Dalai Lama and various world leaders have gone in vain. India, the country which is most affected by any unrest in Tibet – after all, it houses the Dalai Lama and his followers and all those who are forced to migrate from Tibet into India because of the Chinese oppression – is being insulted by China.

The Chinese authorities summon lady ambassador in Beijing at 2 a.m. in the night. The Chinese ambassador in Delhi threatens our home minister that China may not allow the Olympic torch to pass through India on its way from Athens to Beijing , the venue of this year’s Olympics.

All this proves that China , which has made rapid progress over the last 40 years and aspires to be the next super power of the world, is increasingly becoming an arrogant power. The theory, hither to propagated the most by American analysts, including President George Bush, has been that as China reforms its economy and develops, there will be inevitably more room for a democratic and responsible Chinese regime. This is certainly not working.

On the contrary, the Chinese Communist leaders, who operate under a one-party system, have become stronger and more arrogant. In China , state dominance has meant that the ‘princelings,’ relatives of leading Communist Party members, have gained control of some of the nation’s most powerful companies.

Even a Chinese government study admits that of the 3,000 of the nation’s richest businesspeople, a significant majority are related to top officials.

What is worse, the world is increasingly becoming helpless in countering this Chinese arrogance. Because, in what could be called reverse –colonialism, the Chinese leaders are flexing their economic muscles in achieving their objectives everywhere.

First, China has become the third-largest economy in the world. China ’s foreign currency reserves are now the largest in world economic history, having multiplied more than six-fold since the end of 2001. Secondly, in partnership with other major East Asian central banks, the People’s Bank of China effectively controls American interest rates and the value of the dollar, the currency on which the global financial system continues to be dependent.

Thirdly, in order to pressurise the American economy, on which the stability of the global economy as a whole is also dependent, the Chinese have established control of the formerly American-owned Panama Canal . A Hong Kong tycoon regarded as a Beijing surrogate has bought the key ports at either end.

He also controls ports on Mexico ’s Pacific coast that are playing an increasing role in shipping Chinese goods to the American market. Fourthly, the Chinese and their business partners now largely control the network of satellites and undersea cables that makes up the international telecommunications system. The system had been under American control until the high-technology stock crash, when dozens of American telecommunications companies on the verge of bankruptcy were bought by China-controlled enterprises.

In fact, over the past 25 years, while keeping firm control over its economy, China has adopted many of the tools of capitalism – ceding some operational power to a Western-trained executive class, inviting foreign investment and partnerships, and buying and selling on the global open market. Beijing has also selected a range of strategic industries to develop, from oil to elecommunications to automobiles.

Economic power always contributes to a nation’s political power. That explains why the world is being forced to tolerate Chinese misdeeds. But how long can the world afford to do so? After all, it needs to be realised that China is an authoritarian country. And as history has shown always, authoritarian states rarely use their power responsibly. The leaders in these countries are not accountable for their actions to the people. That being the case, it is time that the rest of the world, particularly the democratic world, did something to restrain Chinese power.

The main component of rising Chinese power is its economic strength, particularly its foreign exchange reserve, that is, dollars. And this the Chinese have earned through export of their goods, which they produce cheaply by their cheap labour, in markets all over the world.

In fact, for the most part, the Chinese enjoyed a system of “one-way free trade” in open markets of the Western countries while protecting its own market against western goods under some pretext or the other. As a result, the balance of trade was always in favour of China , and, that, in turn, endowed it with more and more dollars. This is the case even now.

In this age of the WTO, which ensures free trade, there cannot be any ideological ground to stop Chinese goods entering any country. But what we can do here is to adopt the Gandhian tool of boycott. Let us pledge ourselves not to buy Chinese goods. Once this Gandhian practice gains momentum, that is, if more and more people in the world, particularly in the United States – the biggest market for the Chinese goods, voluntarily stop buying Chinese products, it will have a salutary impact on the Chinese rulers.

The lopsidedness of the Chinese economy is so acute that an overwhelming majority of the Chinese people themselves continue to be too poor to buy their own country’s products. Once the Chinese rulers are unable to find buyers for their goods, their economic power will decline and their arrogance will evaporate. Let “Gandhigiri” prevail over Chinese “dadagiri”.