Chinese ambitions at global dominance make Hitler look modest

Remember the famous scene in the classic film The Great Dictator, with Charlie
Chaplin playing the role of Adolf Hitler kicking around a miniature globe like a football.
Had the German dictator known the ambitions of the present – day rulers of China,
he would have been ashamed of his modesty.
Wenweipo, a pro- Chinese government newspaper, in an articlein its Chinese
language edition in July 2013, set out a blueprint for of the leaders of the Communist
Party of China to be executed in a span of 40 years, between 2020 and 2060, to
dominate the world.
While invading Austria and Poland, Hitler’s excuse was unification of the German
race. China, according to this by now notorious article, wants to fight six wars in this
40-year period, attacking in succession Taiwan, Vietnam, Philippines, Japan, India,
Mongolia and Russia; all in the interest of turning China into a “unified great power,”
and thus saving the people of China, whom this newspaper article calls “the children
of the Yellow Emperor,” from “humiliation, shame and indignity.”
China would not baulk from embarking on regional wars, even total wars, to achieve
this “Chinese unification.”The Chinese plans, to say the least, are ridiculous and
doomed to fail, but these may push the world to the brink of another destructive war;
the way Hitler’s ambitions had once done. The liberal democratic world had ensured
the defeat of the German dictator.
One does not know if the contents of this article are mere bravado or an expression
of the shared collective feelings of the leaders of CPC. Going by the way China has
started threatening Taiwan in recent months and flexing its muscles in the South
China Sea, it seems the latter possibility is closer to the truth.
According to the blueprint set out in this article, China would issue an ultimatum to
Taiwan either to accept peaceful unification with China or be ready to face war.
Unable to browbeat Taipei into submission and accept its domination, China has
resorted to bullying Taiwan by sending waves of warplanes to the island territory.
Between the last week of September 2021 and the first week of October, Beijing
despatched 173 fighter aircraft as well as bombers to fly close past Taiwanese
coasts. Not to be overawed, Taiwan scrambled its own aircraft to meet the Chinese
challenge and tracked the Chinese aircraft with its own air defence artillery. This, and
a clear warning from the U. S. President Joe Biden to the President of China Xi
Jinping not to cross the red line, had a sobering effect on China and these threatening
Chinese sorties have since stopped.
According to this article, the second in the agenda of Beijing is to bring the South
China Sea under Chinese domination through the conquest of the Spratly Islands. Inthe South China Sea, Vietnam and the Philippines being the only two countries that
can challenge the domination of China; the best option for China is to attack Vietnam,
the most powerful country in the region Beijing seems to have started putting this
plan into operation by blocking supply vessels of the Philippines and using water
cannons against them. It seems China has forgotten the experience of its war with
Vietnam in 1979.
Belying the fond hope expressed in Global Times that the US military lacks the
capability to take on the Chinese military in Taiwan and South China Sea, U. S.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a recent visit to Jakarta, has asserted that the
U. S. would expand its military and economic relationships with partners in Asia to
push back China’s assertiveness in the Indo – Pacific and ensure that the U. S.
military maintains its competitive edge. Besides, U. S. naval ships are regularly
patrolling the South China Sea and Taiwan Straits.
Strategists in China do not seem to be confident enough of facing the military power
of India. The author of this article sets out the third goal of China as conquest of
“Southern Tibet,” the term which Beijing uses to extend the illegal and baseless
Chinese claim over the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. But the article admits that
if it tries to use the Chinese military to achieve this the losses would be unbearable.
The author lays down, therefore, the condemnable goal of disintegrating India,
inciting rebellion in Assam and Sikkim and helping Pakistan with advanced weapons
to take over southern Kashmir.
The next fond Chinese hope, as expressed in this article, is to deprive Japan of its
possession of the Senkaku Islands. It hopes by the middle of the 21st century China
would emerge as the true world power, with Japan and Russia declining and the U.
S. and India stagnating, and the East China Sea would turn into “the inner lake of
China.”
The most outrageous of all, perhaps, is the way the author of this article would like
China to take over Outer Mongolia. Unfortunately, the People’s Republic of China
has already recognized the independence of Outer Mongolia, admits the article. PRC
attacking Outer Mongolia would amount to “naked aggression,” so Beijing should first
take over Taiwan which is known as the Republic of China and then use the
constitution and domain of the Republic of China to attack Outer Mongolia. If
anything, this is the height of duplicity, Republic of China is a term that China abhors
under its “one China principle;”.
President of Russia Vladimir Putin may have firmed up an alliance with China in a
virtual meeting with President of China Xi Jinping on December 15, 2021, to threaten
the USA and the European Union not to block the path of Moscow’s plan to attack
Ukraine; but this article in the important Chinese – language magazine would like
Beijing to use Outer Mongolia as the launching pad to attack Russia and annex 160
million square kilometres of land which China alleges Russia had taken over fromChina illegally. A war between China and Russia, he says, is “inevitable.” The present
Sino – Russian bonhomie is only a façade, differences papered over to meet the
challenge from the United States. In reality, China and Russia are “measuring each
other” as future adversaries. Interestingly, as a pretext to attack Russia, China would
prefer to forget the constitution and domain of the Republic of China and go back to
those of the Qing dynasty.
One may dismiss the article as of no value, but even the Global Times that reflects
the official stand of the PRC is also talking in terms of building up the military
capability of China in Taiwan Straits and South China Sea. The offensive intentions
that China displayed in these areas closely follow the timetable laid down in the
controversial article. China is also putting military pressure on India all along the Sino
– Indian border, muscling into strategically important areas.
With these have come alarming reports on rearmament by China like stockpiling of
nuclear warheads and developing hypersonic missiles. The Pentagon has warned
that China has been rapidly increasing its nuclear arsenal and could have up to 700
deliverable warheads by 2027 and 1,000 by 2030. It is estimated that China now has
about 350 deliverable warheads. China is also constructing silos to house the
missiles. The U. S. military has also warned that China carried out in July 2021 a
hypersonic missile test, with a missile going around the world at more than five times
the speed of sound. This was the first time that a hypersonic missile fired by any
country had gone around the world.
China’s ambitions may trigger a global arms race, but the rulers in Beijing are still
way behind the U. S. in military strength and there is no hope of catching up with the
latter in the foreseeable future. According to a RAND Corporation study, the USA is
way ahead of China in air and naval power as well as in nuclear arsenal, in space
technology, cyber war; and still has an edge in missile technology.
Beijing is hopeful that the USA would find it difficult to challenge China’s might in the
Chinese neighbourhood.A number of regional military alliances are, however,
emerging among nations feeling threatened by China’s naked ambitions. Japan,
Australia and India are already grouped with the USA under the powerful
Quadrilateral Alliance and AUKUS, a trilateral security pact between the USA, the
United Kingdom and Australia, is billed to be the game changer in the Indo – Pacific.
Almost the whole world had finally united against the ambitions of the German
dictator to ensure his defeat. As The Strategist, a publication of the Australian
Strategy Policy Institute, has commented pithily, common people living in the
People’s Republic of China should feel more threatened by the hyper-nationalistic
rhetoric of leaders of China than the people living in places over which China wants
to extend its claims.