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Opinion

When ambition clashes with reality

Chinese engagement in South Asia in the Omicron Pandemic requires more efforts
Xuehan Shang/Zhang Sheng

Xuehan Shang/Zhang Sheng

 |  Washington

Recently, India announced that it has canceled the Air Suvidha forms for international passengers to arrive in India, which makes it very convenient for international tourists and businessmen to visit India for their personal or professional businesses. This step has been widely seen as a sign of India stepping out from the COVID-19 pandemic and the start of its preparation for the post-COVID-19 era.

Similarly, Japan opened up its border for international tourists in October, and the United States and Europe have also increasingly loosened their restrictions related to COVID-19 as the death rate of Omicron variants decreases. Vietnam has achieved remarkable economic development and a low death rate after it opened up its society in a scientific order and has become one of the most successful states of the world in handling the COVID-19 pandemic. Even Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, loosened its control and opened up its society in the wave of Omicron.

 While almost every state marches toward the post-COVID-19 world, the only exception moving against this common trend or zeitgeist is China, which still imposes the draconian zero-COVID-19 policy at this moment. As Omicron strikes China heavily, the Chinese traditional strategy which almost entirely depends on locking down the city seems no longer functional to handle the challenge of Omicron, and shortcomings of this traditional strategy, such as the low rate of vaccination among the seniors, the debate over the vaccines, and insufficiency of medical resources, soon broke out. As the result, most major cities in China are still locked down or semi-locked down in a quite chaotic manner and the Chinese border is still largely closed.

We are not experts in public health and this article does not intend to discuss the zero-COVID-19 policy itself, but it is indeed very urgent for China to think of how to handle the challenges caused by its zero-COVID-19 policy on Chinese engagement in South Asia. Despite its prolonged historical ties with South Asia in the ancient era, China, as a modern state, is still a relative newcomer to South Asia. Compared to India, China lacks an intimate shared of culture, language, and historical memories among the common people, and thus the major advantage of China in the eyes of South Asian states is not its soft power, but hard power especially economic power.

Chinese remarkable economic development in the last forty years, particularly its fascinating infrastructure, is quite impressive to South Asian intellectuals, and Chinese economic aid and investment in South Asia are its most important vehicles for projecting its influence in the region. This basic reality has determined that China at this stage can only rely on economic projects, such as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), to enhance its relations with South Asian states and to make up for its shortcomings in soft power and ideological influence.

 The current conundrum for China, however, is that its domestic policies are creating a huge challenge for its international trade and communication with the outside world, further decreasing the Chinese ability to projecting influence to South Asia through the means of economic mechanisms such as the BRI. Ever since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019, China has imposed quite draconian restrictions on international travel and basically closed its land border.

This policy has caused quite severe difficulty for the trade between China and Nepal, and made previous Chinese promises of investment in Nepal including the construction of the China-Nepal Railway, seem quite a remote and empty in the eyes of many Nepalis. The Tatopani and Rasuwagadhi checkpoints, major trade ports between China and Nepal, have been closed for this long time, and even though China opened them during the summer after the visit of high-ranked Chinese officials to Kathmandu as a gesture of friendship, China soon again closed it in less than two weeks because of its zero-COVID-19 policy.

According to our research and conversations with Nepali intellectuals and people, it is quite obvious that the Chinese close to the border have made many people in Nepal lose faith in the future prospect of the China-Nepal trade. Among the Nepali intellectuals and the common people, many people also hold the opinion that insufficient Chinese activities in Nepal in the last three years have shown that Chinese commitment in the region, especially commitment to helping Nepal to become a land-linked state, is not as solid as the Chinese claim. As supporters of the BRI and that of closer China-Nepal relations, we are deeply worried about this dangerous trend, and as other states increasingly return to normal while China remains distant from the world, this trend of divergence of the Chinese and Nepali priorities may continue to exacerbate in a worrisome speed.

As Chinese diplomats always say, diplomacy is an extension of domestic politics. In the age of globalization, diplomacy and domestic politics have become unprecedentedly closely linked to each other. Because of the lockdowns of major cities, disturbance of the global supply chains, and the general back economic atmosphere globally, the Chinese economy this year has been facing severe challenges, and the economic growth rate has been much lower than expected.

A weaker economy means that the Chinese budget for foreign investment and foreign aid will also decrease, and the Chinese practice of utilizing economic mechanisms for projecting influence in South Asia will face an unprecedented challenge. As the Chinese budget for spending decreases, whether China can still maintain some degree of presence and influence in South Asia will be a question and challenge for Chinese international relations experts to handle.

Meanwhile, the coming year of 2023 would mark the 10th anniversary of the Chinese announcement of the BRI. Due to the unique political atmosphere of China, it is almost certain that the Chinese government will try to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the BRI as a self-perceived great victory, and the Chinese government is very likely to enhance its investment in the BRI project in order to keep it going, despite quite severe economic challenge China is facing this year caused by its zero-COVID-19 policy. The challenge, however, is that the ambitious dream of global governance represented by the BRI may clash with the dire reality of the global economic recession and the Chinese economic slump.

In that scenario, how to keep the BRI going in order to assure China’s international friends’ faith in Chinese commitment to the region without causing too much disturbance to the Chinese domestic budget and irritating too many Chinese common citizens struggling in an economic slump, would be a major challenge for China in the year of 2023.

(Xuehan Shang is currently affiliated to the International Affairs program of the George Washington University, US and Zhang Sheng is an alumnus of Harvard University and he holds non-residential research fellowship from several Chinese and Nepalese academic institutions and think tanks.)



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