Cinema News: Welcome to Firstpost's Weekly Foreign Policy Fix

Sreemoy Talukdar brings you the essential cheat sheet on foreign affairs covering India and the world

Welcome to Firstpost's global brief, the final edition of this year. India-China relationship ends on a sour note and with a grim prognosis for the year ahead. Myanmar's military has been accused of gruesome murders, Xi Jinping has made a key change in leadership of Xinjiang, South Africa's moral compass, Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu has died, and China is mighty miffed with the world's richest man, Elon Musk (picture above). Wish my readers all the best in the New Year. Keep reading Globetrotter.

TOP FIVE NEWS UPDATES

China provokes India again by 'renaming' 15 places in Arunachal as year ends on a sour note for ties

Ahead of a new "land border law" that comes into effect from January 1 in the New Year, China on Thursday declared that it has released "official names" for 15 places in India's Arunachal Pradesh, indicating that it is prepared to further ratchet up tensions in bilateral ties. The latest provocation from Beijing makes it extremely unlikely that any resolution to the continuing standoff can be found in the New Year. Along with the new law, that may enable China to claim "inviolable and sacred" rights on disputed territory over which India's sovereign claims also overlap, the issuing of "standardized names" point evidently to a thinking in Beijing that it can force India to settle the border dispute in terms favourable to itself. According to Global Times, among the official names of the 15 places which were given precise coordinates and 'standardized' in Chinese characters, Tibetan and Roman alphabet — eight are residential areas, four are mountains, two are rivers and one is a mountain pass in "Zangnan" or South Tibet, China's name for Arunachal. The first batch of six places was released in 2017. The development triggered an acerbic response from India, with the external affairs ministry stating that "Arunachal Pradesh has always been and will always be an integral part of India. Assigning invented names to places in Arunachal Pradesh does not alter this fact." The larger point that emerges from China's provocations is that it wants to prolong the standoff and discourage India from building infrastructure in the border areas — a task that has seen a lot of urgency under the Narendra Modi government. On Tuesday, for instance, defence minister Rajnath Singh inaugurated 27 new roads and bridges built by the Border Roads Organization. Many are close to the border with China. The Chisumle-Demchok road at Umling La Pass, constructed at a height of over 19,000 feet in Ladakh, is the world's highest motorable road. Out of the 24 bridges, nine are in Jammu and Kashmir, five each in Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh, three in Uttarakhand and one each in Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh. Of the three roads, two are in Ladakh and one in West Bengal, reports Hindustan Times. No less noteworthy were Rajnath's comments on the occasion. The minister said: "In today's uncertain environment, the possibility of any kind of conflict cannot be ruled out," and added that "infrastructure development in border areas also strengthens our strategic capabilities. As we move forward in strengthening the border infrastructure, we must also strengthen our surveillance capacity in the same manner." The prognosis of Sino-Indian ties is grim.

Myanmar military accused of massacring over 30 civilians, US calls it 'barbaric', EU mulls more sanctions

The turmoil in Myanmar has taken a turn for the worse with its army accused of carrying out mass killing of civilians, including women and children of an ethnic village in Kayah state and then burning their bodies on Christmas eve. The horror has come to light as local human rights group and an international aid agency said they found the burnt bodies of internally displaced people, including elders, women and children killed by the military that rules Myanmar, near Mo So village of Hpruso town, a Christian community, on Saturday. Reuters puts the number of killed at more than 30. The Myanmar military did not comment, but according to state media, the army said it had shot and killed an unspecified number of "terrorists with weapons" from the opposition armed forces in the village. However, Reuters quotes the Karenni National Defence Force (KNDF), one of the largest of several civilian militias opposing the military junta that led a February 1 coup, as saying that the dead were not their members but civilians seeking refuge from the conflict. The Times, London, put the number of those killed at 38, and quoted witnesses as saying that government soldiers forced people from their cars, arrested some, killed others and burnt their bodies. "The witness said the remains were burned beyond recognition, and children's and women's clothes were found together with medical supplies and food. The bodies were tied with ropes before being set on fire," according to the report. The international community has expressed shock over the attack with the US embassy in Myanmar describing it as 'barbaric', the UN Security Council has condemned the reported killing of at least 35 people, and the European Union said on Thursday that it is ready to impose further sanctions on Myanmar's ruling military junta. While the western world has isolated Myanmar, geographical constraints and geopolitical realities have forced India to take a nuanced view. India's foreign secretary recently visited the troubled state with hopes of coaxing the military towards restoration of democracy. India is vying for influence in Myanmar with China that recently handed over one of its Ming-class diesel-electric submarines to Myanmar, further consolidating its ever-expanding influence and presence in India's immediate neighbourhood.

China replaces US sanctions target Chen Quangao, architect of Uyghur repression in Xinjiang

In an interesting move, the Chinese government has replaced the Communist Party chief of Xinjiang who has overseen a tough security crackdown in the region, including mass detentions of ethnic Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities. According to a report in The Times, London, that quoted Chinese state media, "Chen Quanguo, who has been subject to widespread western sanctions for his atrocities against Uyghurs, will now move to another role. Ma Xingrui, governor of Guangdong province which borders Hong Kong, has been named as his replacement. The Times adds that Chen, 66, moved to Xinjiang from Tibet in 2016 where he also implemented hardline policies in the name of fighting religious extremism, including increasing surveillance of Buddhist monasteries, and criminalising self-immolation by protesting Tibetan monks." South China Morning Post reports that Chen is one of the 25 members of the Politburo, and the "most senior Chinese official on the US sanctions list. In 2016, Chen was promoted to become party secretary of the region, where the United Nations estimates about one million Uygurs have been detained in re-education camps. China describes the facilities as vocational skills training centres necessary to combat 'extremism'. Ma, his replacement as Xinjiang party chief, has been governor of Guangdong since 2017 having previously served as Shenzhen party boss from 2015. The 62-year-old is also one of the country's top scientists, with a background in the aerospace industry." The change of leadership in Xinjiang comes amid a decision by US President Joe Biden on December 24 to promulgate a law banning imports from Xinjiang region over concerns about forced labor. According to CNN, "the 'Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act' is part of the US pushback against Beijing's treatment of China's Uyghur Muslim minority, which Washington has labeled genocide. Key to the legislation is a 'rebuttable presumption' that assumes all goods from Xinjiang, where Beijing has established detention camps for Uyghurs and other Muslim groups, are made with forced labor. It bars imports unless it can be proven otherwise." China has called it "a gross interference in its internal affairs" Meanwhile, Xinjiang's new Communist Party secretary Ma called for efforts to modernise the region's supply chains and improve the international business environment, as he made his first tour of the capital, Urumqi, on Monday.

Furious China complains to UN that Elon Musk's satellites came close to colliding with its space station

China is angry with Elon Musk. The world's richest man after two commercial satellites from his company SpaceX apparently "came close" to a Chinese space station, forcing astronauts to take evasive action. Beijing says it complained to the United Nations about near misses its space station allegedly had with SpaceX satellites, a sign that tensions are rising in the space race between China and the US, reports Bloomberg. Two satellites from the US company founded by Musk came close to the station in July and October, and Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said on Tuesday that the US wasn't meeting its obligations under the Outer Space Treaty. Musk, who is well known in China, also faced heavy onlne trolling from Chinese social media users. Musk, Starlink (his company that launched the satellites) and the US were heavily criticised on China's Twitter-equivalent Weibo, with users calling his company, "a pile of space junk." Musk has denied the allegations. Financial Times quoted him as saying that that there are "tens of billions" of spacecraft that orbit close to Earth. "Space is just extremely enormous, and satellites are very tiny… This is not some situation where we're effectively blocking others in any way. We've not blocked anyone from doing anything, nor do we expect to." South China Morning Post points out that one of the reasons why China reacted so strongly to Tiangong space station's near-misses with Elon Musk's satellites is that Chinese observers feel Washington wants to maintain its dominance in space. They warn that SpaceX, which has been given a contract to build a new satellite for the US military capable of tracking hypersonic missile launches, may form part of that strategy. SpaceX has sent more than 1,900 satellites into space since 2019 and will have more than 42,000 in orbit when its programme is complete. The report quoted a former PLA instructor, as saying that: "If Musk's satellites occupy large portions of (the near-Earth and sun-synchronous) orbits, it leaves little opportunity for other nations to send their own satellites."

Desmond Tutu, anti-apartheid hero and South Africa's 'moral compass', dies at 90

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and veteran of South Africa's struggle against apartheid who was revered as his nation's conscience by both Black and white, died on Sunday aged 90. Tutu won the Nobel prize in 1984 in recognition of his non-violent opposition to white minority rule. A decade later, he witnessed the end of that regime and chaired a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, set up to unearth atrocities committed under it. Tutu died "peacefully" on Sunday morning in a Cape Town nursing home, a representative of his Archbishop Desmond Tutu IP Trust said. He was last seen in public in October at St George's Cathedral in Cape Town, reports Reuters. As South Africans entered a week of mourning — Tutu's funeral service is to be held on Saturday — New York Times observes that he was "one of the most powerful voices in the anti-apartheid movement, and remained a voice of moral conscience in the decades after the system of institutionalized segregation crumbled in South Africa. Tutu's wish, BBC reports, was that there be "no ostentatiousness or lavish spending" on his funeral and he even "asked that the coffin be the cheapest available." The coffin's simplicity, according to analysts, was a "powerful rebuke" of the governing African National Congress (ANC) and its "emergent culture of opulence and decadence". His death represents a huge loss for South Africa, where many called him as "Tata" — father. Since Sunday, church bells have been rung every day in his honour and tributes and prayers have poured in from around the world. Tutu will lie in state at the cathedral on Thursday and Friday, ahead of a requiem mass funeral service on Saturday where President Cyril Ramaphosa was expected to deliver the main eulogy.

TOP ANALYSES OF THE WEEK

India lacks political will to firmly deal with China

Jabin T Jacob, associate professor at Shiv Nadar University, argues in Moneycontrol "that the Indian government lacks the political will to deal with China firmly and unambiguously. On the one hand, India is upping ties with the US which China considers its archenemy while on the other New Delhi also engages with the Chinese in talk-shops like the BRICS and the Russia-India-China trilateral under the mistaken impression that these somehow assuage Chinese concerns or buy time."

China's water crisis will create further geopolitical strife in Asia

Scholar Hal Brands of American Enterprise Institute writes in Bloomberg of China's water crisis, which he says is particularly grim. To solve its water problem, that it fears may give rise to domestic instability, the Chinese Communist Party has built a series of giant dams on the Mekong River, triggering recurring droughts and devastating floods in Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand and Laos that depend on that waterway. The diversion of rivers in Xinjiang has had devastating downstream effects in Central Asia. A growing source of tension in the Himalayas is China's plan to dam key waters before they reach India, leaving that country (and Bangladesh) the losers.

A big step forward for India's nuclear arsenal

Matt Korda, senior research associate and project manager, and Hans Kristensen, director of Nuclear Information Project write in their blog for Federation of American Scientists that India's testing of its new Agni-P medium-range ballistic missile on 18 December — the second such test — suggests that India's nuclear arsenal has taken a big leap forward.

India, Bangladesh are deepening their bond

Harsh V Pant and Aditya Gowdara Shivamurthy of Observer Research Foundation write in Hindustan Times that President Ramnath Kovind's recent state visit to attend Bangladesh's 50th Vijay Dibos commemoration served two purposes. First, it reflected the historical roots that interconnect India and Bangladesh. Second, it reflects the new realities of a deepening special and ideal relationship between both States.

Democracy summit reflected convergence of US, India's interests

Writing on Joe Biden-hosted Summit for Democracy, Dhruva Jaishankar, executive director, ORF America, argues in Hindustan Times that the summit reflected a number of areas of growing convergence between India and the US. It includes the importance of demonstrating the success of democratic governance, recognising the longer-term value of democracy, in its largest sense, even if it requires short-term modifications to accommodate national interests and perceptions on challenges to democracy which arise from misinformation and disinformation campaigns by foreign actors.

Unusual People's Daily column hints at ideological factions within CCP

Katsuji Nakazawa of Nikkei Asia points to "something unusual occurring in China". Analysing two recent columns in China's People's Daily newspaper, dubbed "the throat and tongue" of the Chinese Communist Party, the author argues the two articles — one of which written by a party heavyweight that fails to make a single mention of Xi Jinping — hint at two ideological camps within the party, with those supporting the path of Deng, Jiang and Hu on one side, and those behind Mao and Xi on the other.

CCP has learnt three key lessons from USSR's downfall

Rebecca Armitage writes in ABC News that the Chinese Communist Party has spent 30 years performing an autopsy on the fall of the USSR, determined to avoid a similar fate. Party members have written thousands of internal papers, held study sessions and even produced a documentary about the downfall of its former rival and ideological cousin. The CCP, says the author, has made three key decisions to avoid downfall. The first is embrace capitalism with 'Chinese characteristics, second is managing the flow of information within China so that 'Glasnost' never takes place and third, keeping regions on the periphery — Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet — under increasingly tight control.

Purging of Fu Zhenghua indicates Xi Jinping is covering up his tracks

Shikha Aggarwal, senior fellow at India Foundation and a tracker of Chinese elite politics, writes in Indian Express that the recent 'purging' of China's former justice minister Fu Zhenghua due to corruption charges signals the beginning of Xi Jinping's plans to cover up his tracks ahead of the 20th Party Congress. This event, she says, "heralds the second phase in Xi's mission to dominate the political-security apparatus of the Chinese Communist Party… The first part of this meticulously crafted orchestra began with the fall of China's former security tsar, Zhou Yongkang, and served as a prelude to Xi's long-drawn venture to cut off his umbilical cord with his political cradle, the Shanghai clique."

Putin's true goal is to draw red lines, not to conquer Ukraine

Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, writes in Foreign Affairs that Vladimir Putin's actions suggest that his true goal is not to conquer Ukraine and absorb it into Russia but to change the post-Cold War setup in Europe's east. That setup left Russia as a rule-taker without much say in European security, which was centered on NATO. If he manages to keep NATO out of Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova, and US intermediate-range missiles out of Europe, he thinks he could repair part of the damage Russia's security sustained after the Cold War ended.

India is charting a careful path on Myanmar

Indrani Bagchi, writing on foreign secretary Harsh V Shringla's recent Myanmar visit in Times of India, argues that India doesn't have the luxury to isolate Myanmar. "On the democracy front, India feels it is the only power in the region that can push Myanmar towards a more federal structure based on its Constitution. In their conversations, the Indian side emphasised the importance of going back to elections."

PODCAST WATCH

Nirupama Rao on Nehru's long fascination with China

Former foreign secretary Nirupama Rao, who has written a new book on the early years of India-China relationship called The Fractured Himalayas, speaks to Milan Vaishnav of Carnegie Endowment and host of Grand Tamasha podcast on Nehru's long fascination with China, his inability to settle India's border dispute with China, and his "flawed heroic" character.