China’s recent crackdown on its tech giants brings to fore memories of Chen Yun’s ‘bird in a cage’ proposition from the years post the disastrous Great Leap Forward. The debate on whether China pursues socialism with Chinese characteristics or whether it is appropriate to call it capitalism with Chinese characteristics has been a long one …
It was a French philosopher who wrote that “we are never contemporaneous with the present”. The past lingers, even the distant past lingers in the frame, while the present is being considered. When tectonic changes take place in geopolitical plates that affect major changes, if policymakers allow conclusions valid in the past to affect the …
Disasters have had a long tumultuous relationship with China, be they natural or humanmade. Of late the line between natural and humanmade disasters has been blurring with examples ranging from the outbreak of Coronavirus in 2019 which still plagues the world; to the floods in Henan this year. In all these cases, because of the …
Since last year I have been writing that the origin of the Chinese Virus was from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). It is not a zoonotic transmission from bats to humans in the Wild Life Market at Wuhan – a hypothesis peddled by China. Firstly, virologists need to study the method of such …
For a world order firmly founded on sovereignty of individual states, big and small, the term “global governance” is an idealistic dream at best or simply a misnomer. It is a shadow global government, which seeks to be an international process of consensus building without any erosion of sovereignty of the individual states. The surrender …
The Covid-19 pandemic provided an opportunity for China to overtake the US in comprehensive global power, given that Xi Jinping has managed the aftermath of the pandemic much better than the leaders of the major countries of North America, Europe and Asia. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken very quickly echoed Henry Kissinger’s recent lament …
Formal dialogue with the ULFA (Pro-Talk)—which began in 2011 (but had stalled)—is reportedly going to kick start after the elections of 2021. By all accounts, the last round of talks ended on a positive note with the organisation expressing its satisfaction about the initiatives, which New Delhi had taken. According to an earlier press statement …
Around 200 PRC ‘fishing boats’ have entered Philippines waters and despite love calls from Duterte to his counterpart in Beijing, refuse to leave. President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte may have his faults, but a lack of confidence is not among them. So convinced was he of the persuasive impact of his charm that …
Nehru believed that he was neither ambivalent nor ambiguous, but on the side of ‘non-alignment’, whatever that was intended by him to be in practice. Friendship is tested in times of stress. In the1962 Sino-Indian conflict, offers of assistance came only after the PLA had demolished the illusion of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and …
In November 2014, this author was a member of the Indian delegation for a Track II Dialogue with Myanmar. The delegation had among others, a very senior former diplomat who had headed a particular prime minister’s Policy Planning Committee in 1984 and a former Army Commander. The author had earlier represented India in Track II …
