Editorial: China’s duplicity

Boycott of G20 meeting shows China can stoop to desperate levels in collusion with Pakistan

Hyderabad: It is a delicious irony that China chose to stay away from the G20 Tourism Working Group meeting in Srinagar on the ground that it is a ‘disputed territory’. For a country that has made territorial hegemony its core strategy—blatantly flexing its muscles, encroaching and grabbing lands in the region and systematically forcing some countries into a debt trap, it is preposterous to take high moral ground on an issue that involves no dispute at all. It is an undeniable truth that Kashmir has been and will remain an integral part of India. By referring to J&K as ‘disputed territory’, Beijing has displayed laughable ignorance about the sub-continent history. It is obvious that China wants to please Pakistan which is ever ready to do its bidding at international forums. Fortunately, the international community is able to see through this malicious game plan and is well aware of the dubious nexus between Beijing and Islamabad. Even as New Delhi has been rightly asserting that the union territory of Jammu & Kashmir ‘is and will always be an integral and inalienable part of India’, China is using every occasion to question India’s decision on abrogation of Article 370 and the bifurcation of the State. A country notorious for grabbing its neighbours’ land voicing concern over ‘disputed’ territories is like devils quoting the scriptures. In February last year, the Ministry of External Affairs informed the Lok Sabha that China had been in illegal occupation of about 38,000 sq km of Indian territory in the union Territory of Ladakh for the past six decades.

The ministry had stated that under the 1963 China-Pakistan Boundary Agreement — which India has never recognised — Pakistan ceded 5,180 sq km of illegally occupied Indian territory in Shaksgam Valley to China. The fact that China’s high-stakes Belt and Road Initiative — a multinational, multimodal infrastructure development project — passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir makes it obvious that Beijing has no respect for India’s territorial integrity. China has repeatedly said that the Kashmir dispute should be resolved in accordance with the UN Charter, Security Council resolutions and bilateral agreements. Beijing’s own record of honouring pacts with India is pathetic. India recently told China in no uncertain terms that the violation of these agreements had eroded the basis of bilateral ties. The boycott of the G20 meeting shows that duplicitous China can stoop to desperate levels in collusion with Pakistan. However, this own goal scored by Beijing has bolstered, rather than undermined, India’s credentials as the G20 president. This is not the first time the Beijing-Islamabad nexus is on display at an international forum. On several occasions in the past, China had blocked the attempts at the United Nations to list the terrorists operating from Pakistani soil as designated global terrorists. China’s consistent strategy to politicise the fight against global terrorism exposes its duplicity.

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