What do you get when you mash up a neo-fascist, ultra-nationalist demagogue on one side, and an imperialistic authoritarian hell-bent on bending the world to his will on the other? Well, last week, on June 15th, we got a deadly border dispute the likes which we haven’t seen in 40 years.
No, for once it’s not the US that fucked things up. This time, the price of turning the doomsday clock towards midnight goes to India and China. Some twenty Indian soldiers and an untold number of Chinese regular troops died in an honest-to-Gods melee, as a result of a conflict over some tents and a listening outpost on the disputed border between the two countries. A border dispute turned bar brawl with iron rods and spiked clubs (srsly…) that has inflamed the Indian population to the point of demanding boycotts against the world trade giant China.
Now, most people with half an insight into the global market will quickly realize that effectively boycotting China isn’t feasible, seeing as Chinese economic influence has snaked its way into almost everything. Well, most people except for the spokesperson of the “Confederation of All Indian Traders”, Praveen Khandelwan, who demanded a nation-wide termination of Chinese trade on the rhetoric that allowing trade with the red giant was tantamount to treason. In the same interview he denied that his iPhone was largely China-made, which goes to show his… capacity. But most of us understand that such a hard line is doubly hard to follow through on. A noble gesture, but too little too late to stop the onslaught of Chinese economical influence. And even though the loss of the Indian market would surely upset an already shaky Chinese economy, it won’t possibly kill the beast.
But limp threats aside, both nations have plenty of potential to cause absolute havoc…
In the north-eastern red corner: China! The most populous country in the world with a whooping 1.439 billion people. A nuclear armed, communist nation with absolutely zero tolerance for dissent. The home of the dreaded Covid-19, of dog-dick sandwiches, and a truly global force projection with funding and development efforts spanning every corner of the globe. With sweatshop production centres that have become the very backbone of the global economy, bringing us such morally questionable vices as fashionfactured consumer electronics and social media software developed to hook and exploit the young. A sovereign nation state that doesn’t mind wiping away half a generation just to put a political point across, with absolutely shameless ambitions of expansion and forceful assimilation. With concentration camps for Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang, crackdowns against pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, and a penchant for threats of invasion against neighbours such as the island nation of Taiwan unless it prostrates itself before the Mighty “People’s” Republic of Imperial China. Poised to become the one true country of the world; the One Country to rule it all.
And in the south-western orange corner; India! The second most populous country in the world with a just-as-whooping 1.380 billion people. Also brandishing a nuclear arsenal, with a military vetted on years of border disputes and wars with its Muslim-majority neighbours Bangladesh and Pakistan. With a growing militarization as seen in its harsh treatment of its disputed Kashmir region. Ruled by a neo-nationalist state under the sway of the corrupt and murderous BJP (the Bharatiya Janata Party) and its sponsor, the paramilitary RSS (the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), with the demagogue and nationalist Narendra Modi at its head. The epic home to mob violence and a global source for low-cost service industries. A nation where it can be fashionable to gang-rape and murder young women, a nation from which the west sourced its obnoxious new-ageism philosophy, and a nation which sports one of the oldest religions and civilizations still around on the face of the planet.
We feared a third War when the Orange Taint in Washington pounded his flappy chest at Iran. That was just an antagonistic wet fart in comparison to the cataclysmic potential between these two giants.
May Ares sleep soundly tonight…
/Sebastian Lindberg 23/6-2020
WastedWords 