“A journey of thousand miles begins with a single step” is a famous Chinese proverb. And China has practised it religiously.
It has doubled its territory in less than 50 years through the incursion of neighbouring countries. China is causing trouble for all its neighbours each passing day. India is facing the heat in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh every now and then. Nepal is being squeezed and bumped with economic might. The South China Sea is the cause of trouble for Japan, Korea and Vietnam, with other Pacific Rim countries. Pakistan has already gifted Gilgit and Baltistan to China. The other neighbours — Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Magnolia and Afghanistan — are also on Chinese radar for border expansion through incursions.
China is equipped not only with biological weaponry like Covid viruses but a bigger worry is its autocratic regime. Absolute power with no democracy is deadlier than anything under the Sun, that this very world has seen with Stalin, Mao & Hitler, not too long ago. It’s time to tame the dragon before it blows the entire world with its never-ending quest for supremacy and expansion spree. President Xi Jinping is the new Hitler and will remain at the helm of affairs until death.
Post-World War II, the entire world aligned into NATO and Warsaw treaties — the US and its friendly nations and the mighty USSR and its allies. The Cold War has created so many never-ending crises in the world but at the same time, it has opened new horizons of technology. The Cold War was fought on many levels e.g., weaponry, artillery, space science and of course, the most important thing that has changed our lives permanently — the internet. The Cold War was a covert operation between the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB). The might of the USSR was such that espionage became difficult, and to enter its territory came the invention of the internet inside the Pentagon — the US defence strategy base. But the traces of the Cold War are still alive in Afghanistan, the Middle East, Vietnam etc.
This Cold War ended with the complete disintegration of the USSR. How was this achieved by the US and its allies? Remember the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)? This was the first weapon deployed by the US to harm the USSR. This was done by encouraging Saudi Arabia to increase its exploration capacities manifold.
The second weapon that the US deployed was that of sub-nationalism or ethnic nationalism that existed among satellite states of the USSR. These states were Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Chechnya, Ukraine, Belarus, and nine more. The US encouraged the rise of ethnic nationalism in these USSR states and encouraged their people to become independent. This was done through Glasnost and Perestroika. The strategy worked.
The US is a federation of 50 states but it’s not easy to separate them because they have a common language, culture, and ethnicity (almost all are immigrants from Europe, Asia, Africa etc) so have no ethnic element which can bring them or break them out. Countries like India are less prone to fall to it despite efforts from China in Northeast and Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh UTs. India shares the same ethnicity thousands of years back in history. Cultural nationalism has brought the country together even after centuries of oppression by invaders, philosophies, and religious aggression.
Now let us look at China
China was a relatively small country of 4.5 million sq km till 1911, called Mainland China, and today stands at 9.597 million sq km. The rest of the area is the result of incursion and invasion of the neighbouring countries. Manchuria in the Northeast, Inner Mongolia or South Mongolia in the North, Tibet in the South, East Turkestan in the West and Yunnan in the far Southeast. The mode of invasion was agrarian incursion in those days. Millions of farmers (of the Chinese Han tribe) were forcibly settled into Manchuria and South Mongolia to increase the Mandarin-speaking people in those countries in the first decade of the 19th century. Today, the native Mongols or Manchurians are a minority. Mainland China is only 50 percent of the total area in Chinese control as on date.
The Qing dynasty of Manchuria ruled Mainland China for over three centuries (1644-1912) before China took control of it in 1912 and is still in control of it. Manchuria has a different language, culture and ethnicity.
People of East Turkistan (now Xinjiang) are ethnically connected to Turkey and Kazakh people. China took over its territory in 1882. The Uyghur Muslims are fighting today for their independence from the Chinese autocracy. Uyghur ethnic Muslims are the talk of the moment in terms of human rights issues.
South Mongolia or Inner Mongolia was an integral part of the mighty Mongol Khanate of Genghis Khan. He and his successors ruled all over Mainland China for centuries. After the fall of the Khanate, China took over it in 1911. The ethnicity and cultural attachment and belongingness of the people of Inner Mongolia is with Mongolia, not China.
Tibet (known as Trivishtap in ancient Vedic scriptures) was once part of Indian kingdoms. Tibet was the centre of Bodh practitioners of the Indian subcontinent for thousands of years and shared cultural and emotional bonding along with ethnicity. China invaded it in 1951. Tibet government-in-exile has its capital at Dharmshala in Himachal Pradesh and H H Dalai Lama took refuge in India.
Yunnan is down South of present-day China and was invaded in the year 1274. It still has more than 25 ethnic languages spoken and they relate to Burmese culture.
These are the area-wise details of the five major countries currently under Chinese occupation except Hong Kong, Macau and Taipei-
- East-Turkestan/Xinjiang 1.664 million sq km
- Tibet/Xizang 1.228 million sq km
- Manchuria 1.192 million sq km
- South Mongolia/Inner Mongolia 1.183 million sq km
- Yunnan .4 million sq km
Mainland China is only about 50 percent of the total area governed by the PRC.
Course of Action
Looking into the present-day aggression of China in Eurasia and the Far East, it’s time for the rest of the world to act in tandem to tame this dragon before it becomes more monstrous and formidable. China’s biggest weakness is its autocracy. People are being deprived of their basic rights like freedom of speech, the right to pray and practice their faith, the right to protest against the government, etc, the list is long. The Tiananmen Square student agitation and massacre of thousands of students is evidence of this autocratic and ruthless regime. People are fed up with the curbs on their basic rights. It’s time for the ethnic nationalism movement to usher in to end this 100-year-long oppression of more than 1.5 billion people.
China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is fighting at both internal and external fronts. The Uyghur Muslim unrest in Xingjian (former East Turkestan) can easily escalate with the help of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries. East Turkestan being a former part of the Turkish Ottoman empire under Ertugrul and subsequent Islamic regimes can be disintegrated with the collective efforts of these countries with the help of Russia and the US.
The Tibetan government-in-exile operates from India and the world needs to recognise it. Former US President Donald Trump passed a resolution regarding the status of Tibet during his stint. India can play a pivotal role in the religious connection with Buddha and Kailash Mansarovar. The freedom of Tibet has seen many violent protests and incidents of self-immolation by Tibetan youth for freedom from China. India needs to work on it and settle the border issues with China once and for all as the present-day leadership has the guts and people’s mandate to do it.
Japan ruled Manchuria briefly in the early 20th century. Manchuria has a separate culture, language and ethnicity from Chinese Mandarin. Manchuria can ask for freedom from Chinese occupation with the help of Japan and Korea. It will be strategically strong positioning for the rest of the world as a huge cost line comes under Manchuria.
Inner Mongolia or South Mongolia, the names themselves are reasons for them to be with Mongolia. Russia and Japan can play a big role with the help of Mongolia to move out of the People’s Republic of China.
The world is witnessing growing cultural and ethnic nationalism from all parts. People rejected the leftist theory of communism. The world’s biggest democracies have elected pro-nationalist leaders. Narendra Modi in India, Putin in Russia, Trump in the US, Shinzo Abe in Japan, Boris Johnson in England, and Netanyahu in Israel have won the elections on the issues of nationalism and preserving ethnic values. These world leaders can sync in collective energies and expertise to come along and break China into six parts to make this planet happy and liveable again.
Gopal Goswami is a researcher & Columnist, tweets @igopalgoswami. Views expressed are personal.
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