THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 20 June 2020 (Beijing should note (Indian Express))



Beijing should note (Indian Express)



Mains Paper 2:International Relations 
Prelims level: India-China relations 
Mains level: About recent clashes with Chinese troops in Galwan of Valley of eastern Ladakh and its implications on India China relations 

Context:

  • In pushing India to a tipping point, China is close to losing the hard-won trust of the world’s second most populous nation and a large neighbour. 
  • If the 1962 war saw the freezing of bilateral relations for the next quarter of a century, the current crisis could lead to a chill that lasts longer. 
  • Keeping India’s trust, however, might look like a trivial matter to the current Chinese Communist Party leadership. 
  • India might be the world’s fifth largest economy, but it is one-fifth the size of China’s. 
  • Beijing is acutely sensitive to power differentials, and sees an India that is struggling to find an effective response to the Chinese manoeuvre in Ladakh. 
  • Of course, Communist China’s disdain is not exclusively for India.  

Flexing muscles:

  • By all accounts, Beijing feels confident that it can confront all the major powers simultaneously. 
  • It bets that economic interdependence and political influence operations can easily break up any potential hostile coalition that might emerge within and among them. 
  • Coming to the Asian neighbours, the CCP believes that it owes no explanation for taking territories and waters that it claims as its own. 
  • It is convinced that China’s “historic rights” take precedence over international law and good neighbourliness — whether it is in the South China Sea or in the Himalayas. 
  • The sensitivities of its neighbours — from Japan to Indonesia and...................

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Learning from the past:

  • Appealing to China’s better angels at this juncture, then, might be futile. 
  • Yet, the CCP should know that China is not the first power to be overwhelmed by narcissism and hubris. 
  • Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany believed they were unstoppable in Asia and Europe in the run-up to the Second World War. 
  • Soviet Russia, too, believed in the late 1970s that America was in irreversible decline after its humiliating defeat in Vietnam and a string of socialist revolutions, from Cambodia to Namibia and from Afghanistan to Mozambique. 
  • But the tide eventually turned against all the three great powers that ended up in history’s dustbin. 
  • Just as India struggles to understand the power impulses that drive China, the CCP could never fathom India’s political culture.  

Conclusion:

  • It has been easy for Beijing to underestimate India’s strategic resilience that produces unity amidst crises. 
  • The CCP might also be under-estimating India’s tradition of “non-cooperation”. 
  • If Beijing does not step back and restore the status quo ante that existed prior to the crisis that began in May, it will compel Delhi to embark on a radical reorientation of its China policy. 
  • The CCP ought to have no doubt that the Indian people can and will step up to such a recalibration.

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Prelims Questions:

Q.1)With reference to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s discussion paper on Governance in Commercial Banks in India, consider the following statements:
1. Board members should not be a member of any other bank’s board or the RBI and should not be either a Member of Parliament or State Legislature or Municipality or other local bodies. 
2. The board shall meet at least twelve times a year and at least once every 30 days.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 only
(c) Both 1 and 2
(d) Neither 1 nor 2

Answer..............

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Mains Questions:
Q.1)What are the measures that India can expect from China to improve their bilateral relations?