Amongst the most noteworthy rise in the history of great power nations, has certainly been the swift rise of the Chinese state in the 21st century. With a staggering billion plus population, it is hard to imagine the amount of governance and management that would be required to channelise the true potential of a nation. Certainly, China has been on a war path of elevating its status from a regional developing country to a nation that has threaten many of its contemporaries with its economic and militaristic powers. Yet, a rise to the helms of the global world, that perhaps should have been a matter of great celebration for many decolonised developing and under-developed countries, has today become a serious cause for concern for the rest of the world.
October 1st is generally celebrated as China’s National Day; a day filled with widespread celebration around the country based on the ideological preaching of Mao Zedong. Historically, on the 1st of October in 1949, China’s newly declared Premier, Mao Zedong hoisted the Chinese flag on the Tiananmen Square and declared the birth of a new communist nation, The People’s Republic of China. This was preceded by a prolonged war for liberation between the leader of the Nationalist Party and the Chinese Communist Party, which was pushed underground by the nationalist forces, side-lining them in their effort to building a communist state. Yet the CCP’s strategies triumphed the tactics of the opposing side, leading to the foundation of one of the mightiest economic powerhouses in the world. Soon after the declaration of China as a communist regime, on 2nd October 1949, the new government passed the resolution on the National day leading to October 1st of each year being celebrated as the country’s National Day. Every year, celebration for the whole week begins with the raising of the flag by the uniformed soldiers at the now infamous Tiananmen Square.
Around the globe, Tiananmen Square however, is not remembered for its celebratory statues and festivities of 1st October, but is rather synonymous for its horrendous massacre in China’s independent history. The brutal massacre of protesters surely does not require any recounting, yet at the same time it is an important reminder of what the Chinese Communist Party has come to be in these modern times. A totalitarian government riding on repression of its own citizens and a hawkish nature with the world is what summarises the projection of China in front of the rest of the world. These words however are not as shallow as Chinese promises to economically vulnerable countries, in the following sections ahead, we shall attempt to discuss each of the aspects due to which the state of China has come to be known as the same.
China’s Authoritarian Approach with its Citizens
The Chinese government has been historically known to be a state with authoritative demeaners, yet a prominent aspect of the same can be described through its approach to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic within its geographical regions. The Chinese administration for the past two years has been utilizing authoritarian policies to monitor the people it wishes to keep an eye on. Very recently the zero covid policy implemented in Tibet and the Xinjiang region has been a prominent example in the same context. Local residents of the extended Chinese region have been fearing the adverse effects of such measures and has led to widespread dissent amongst them in the recent past. Moreover, the pretext of eradicating covid infections is very well understood to be a mechanism to increase surveillance on those who seem to have caught the Chinese Communist Party’s attention.
The Chinese state in order to increase their restriction and surveillance has been notorious on various occasions to call upon the security apparatus that have been deployed to curb and handle protests against the Chinese Communist Party previously. This in any case is a clear indication of how China is attempting to increase their surveillances upon citizens and locals it views as a threat to its stronghold in the region. Moreover, the Xinjiang region over the years has seen perhaps the worst of Chinese tactics, where more than 1 million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim ethnic minority groups have been subjugated to mass internment, torture, labour and forced sterilizations. This has however become a Chinese pattern; minority groups in the Tibetan region to have historically been subjugated to such horrific practices and thus what we see today in the Xinjiang region is nothing but a continuation of practices that prove China’s totalitarian and authoritative nature.
China’s Neo-Imperialist tendencies
The Chinese dragon’s effort of extending its sphere of influence is not only limited to its neighbourhood only; it also extends to other strategic and resourceful regions as well. The era of colonization might have ended decades ago, but the art of modern-day neo-imperialism has certainly been mastered by the Chinese state as whole. Economic aid to financially vulnerable nations has been China’s go to strategy to imperialise countries under Chinese dictates. Example in the Southeast and South Asia are spoken aplenty about by observers who claim Chinese tactics may lead to bankruptcy of the countries concerned. Though China’s neo-imperialist tactics do not intend to financially crimple vulnerable nations, they however surely intend to take over valuable and strategic assets of the countries concerned. Sri Lanka, Uganda, Ethiopia, Zambia, Pakistan and many others are a testimony to such sinister Chinese plans. Loans amounting to billions of dollars that the CCP had dispersed have led to incremental burden on countries leading them to defaulting on their debts. This has not only sunk economies around the world but has also pushed countries to seeking more financial relief from China due to its excessive debt burdens. Yet instead of extending a helping hand, China has blatantly refused to restructure debts it wishes to recover from countries struggling to stay afloat on the economic front. Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Zambia are a few of those examples where nations have had to ask the international financial institutions for respite due to interests on Chinese funds extending to an all-time high.
Militaristic Ambitions of the CCP
The Chinese hawkish outlook has been one of aggressive territorial encroachments with its neighbouring countries. It is no secret that China on various occasions has invigorated territorial disputes with many of the nations it faces boundary disputes with. As of today, the number of territorial disagreements currently stands at a staggering 17 disputes with its boundary sharing nations. At least 7 of these seem to be disputes related to land cover. There is no country in China’s neighbourhood that it has not clashed with regarding its land or maritime cover. From India, Nepal, Bhutan, Russia, Pakistan to the ASEAN counties and Japan; all have been on the receiving end of Chinese inflated ambitions of desiring to be fearful nation at a certain time in history. This has thus invariably created a lot of conflict on China’s military, diplomatic and political end to gain any sort of legitimacy for its want of securing a position as an advocate of the Asian continent. Thus, observers from Asia are not mistaken when they display disappointment in China’s rise; for the once aspiring nation of China, has perhaps created more hurdles for the world altogether, instead of leading a peaceful rise fuelled by the ideology of harmony a co-existence. Yet, to the dismay of many, China’s rise has been one embedded in petrifying its neighbours and imperialising less developed countries. Thus, the National Day of China celebrated on 1st October, may be one of grand celebrations within the country based on a forceful idea of how the world should perceive the nation, yet what stands true in the global world’s reality, is perhaps quite contradictory to what the CCP would want to world to celebrate upon.