“China is waging cognitive or psychological warfare against India,” says Prof Srikant Kondapalli of Jawaharlal Nehru University. He pointed to the activities of Victor Gao, who was an interpreter for the late supreme leader Deng Xiaoping, is a trained lawyer and banker and served in the foreign ministry.
Gao has another advantage, says Prof Kondapalli. He is fluent in English and has been used by the foreign ministry to say the kind of things that would be unthinkable for diplomats.
So Gao has hinted at China getting involved in the Indus Waters dispute between India and Pakistan while warning that Delhi’s policy of keeping it in abeyance was unacceptable. He’s also claimed that China’s border with India should begin somewhere “north of the Ganga”, which no Chinese diplomat has ever formally indicated.
How useful is such “cognitive warfare”? Does it deliver anything or does it only deepen suspicions about China’s intentions?
Prof Kondapalli says it is to keep India on edge by constantly raising issues. Some time back China claimed the Shaksgam Valley in the eastern Karakoram range. Earlier it was understood that the ownership of the valley, which it got from Pakistan in 1963, would be decided once Kashmir was settled.
There is the case of Chong Wei Wei, an academic at Fudan University who heads the Centre for the China Model. The China Model being the authoritarian style of politics and governance that it practices, which Xi Jinping wants to export to the world.
There’s an editor in the Global Times who wrote that Vladivostock is a part of China. He said the same about Kazakhstan.
There is another person from a remote area of China, he is a school teacher. who “has been very active in saying that the United States is in decline and Iran is winning the West Asian conflict, and he is there every day in the social networking sites, badmouthing everybody.”
They are all “wolf warriors”, part of China’s ecosystem that uses them to target countries, people and organisations deemed to be working against China’s interests. The wonder is why a country with a GDP of $15 trillion should be so insecure as to want to use such people.
Tune in for more in this conversation with Prof Srikant Kondapalli of Jawahalal Nehru University.
