China is celebrating its national day on 1st October. This day commemorates the formal establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) under the Chinese communist party. It is presenting itself as a rising superpower. It’s challenging US hegemony and flexing its military and economic muscle but at what cost China is rising?
China tries to show that it is a democracy, it works for the welfare of people and wants friendly relations with countries. But the reality is exactly the opposite. In this article, we will discuss various aspects of the reality of PRC. We will see how the People’s republic of China is itself based upon lies, exploitation, coercion and deception. We will expose the hypocrisy of China in various aspects like its polity, economy, international relations, military strategy, etc.
About People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Chinese communist party (CCP)
In the 1930s and 1940s, China was ruled by Kuomintang under its leader Chiang Kai Shek. In the 1930s Mao Zedong started a communist movement to overthrow this government. This led to an intense civil war in China. As a result of this civil war, Kuomintang fled and CCP captured power in 1949. The people’s Republic of China came into existence. Kuomintang continued to rule on Formosa island known as Taiwan. Even today Taiwan doesn’t consider the PRC as the legitimate government of China.
Polity of People’s Republic of China: Full of Hypocrisy
The political system of the People’s Republic of China is full of myths and hypocrisy. They claim to be a socialist democracy. Actually, it’s neither socialist nor a democracy.
Socialism implies that all the resources are equally divided among people. In PRC, the government owns everything. Thus it is actually a communist model. In the communist model, the government is expected to treat people equally and provide them with basic services. However, China exploits its own people as a cheap workforce.
Democracy is another lie of China. Actually, CCP runs the country. It is a single-party authoritarian state. Even there is no democracy inside CCP. Entry into the party and progress in its ranks is totally dependent upon performance and assessment by senior leaders. People have no say in choosing their leader. Consequently, they don’t have any say in policymaking.
Freedom of speech is curbed. People can’t talk anything against the state. Even if they do so the process to punish isn’t a transparent one. We know in this year how a Chinese businessman Jack Ma went missing for several days and upon coming back, shares of his company were taken over by the government. We can imagine fate of common people if billionaires are being treated like this.
Chinese media is totally controlled by the government. Be it the Global Times or the China Daily, they are actually mouthpieces of CCP. It is expanding its control over Hong Kong as well. Recently the Apple Daily, Hong Kong’s pro-democracy newspaper was forced to close down by the Chinese government. Even global internet and social media platforms like Google and Facebook are not allowed there. Due to such restrictions on media and the internet, China can easily cover up the exploitation of its own people.
Economy: The Capitalism Of Communist China
China claims to be a communist country but when it comes to the economy they are as capitalist as any other western country. From 1949 to 1980, China tried different economic models and programmes. One such programme, the Great Leap forward caused massive famine and took the lives of around 3 to 5 crore people. Around the same time, India was moving towards self-sufficiency in food production.
In 1980, China liberalized its economy and moved to capitalism. The economic progress of is PRC is due to this hybrid model i.e. politically communist and economically capitalist. Thus China has nothing to do with ideology. It has only one aim i.e. benefit of self at any cost.
Many companies shifted their production units to China in the last 30 years. This was due to lower production costs there due to strict government control and cheap labour as a result of their exploitation. But the Chinese virus i.e. covid-19 pandemic last year disrupted the global supply chains. The world got to know how unreliable China is.
International Relations: Wolf Warrior Diplomacy
Chinese President Hu Jintao has said that China’s rise will be a peaceful one. But now the world is getting to know that this was only a deception. Chinese continued this deception technique till it was developing economically and militarily. Once it thinks it has accumulated enough power, China’s true colours are out in open.
China’s border disputes with neighbouring countries are intensified. It is claiming the whole South China Sea as it’s own by the nine-dash line totally ignoring the other nations and the international laws. China’s bullying tactics against Taiwan are creating tensions in the region. In the initial years, it illegally captured regions like Tibet but now it’s expanding in seas.
China’s support for terrorism is a new issue. China doesn’t want Islamic extremism in its own land. Already such movements are going on in its Xinxiang region. It is suppressing them with force and even doing atrocities on common people there. However when it comes to terrorism in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Chinese are much happy in supporting them with arms and money. In August PRC hosted the Taliban leaders. This showed that China’s only aim is its own economic interest. For this, they are ready to join hands even with terrorists.
Chinese Military
Like its polity and economy, China’s military is also based on lies. Soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army are recruited on conscript i.e. they have to do compulsory military service. Due to this, they lack morale. A video was surfaced on social media last year showing how Chinese soldiers were crying when they were getting deployed in the region opposite to Ladakh.
Weapons and platforms in Chinese armed forces are mostly copied. China acquires some weapons and performs reverse engineer on them. The Chinese military is full of such copied platforms like J-16 copied from Russian Su-30, J-10 copied from IAI Lavi of Israel. Many countries have blacklisted China for this. However, it doesn’t make any difference to Chinese as the words like ethics and morality are not there in China’s dictionary.
Apart from conventional military power, China’s NBC (Nuclear, Biological and chemical) capabilities are issues of concern. China has no first use policy about nukes but the threat of biological weapons is a real one. Many theories about the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic from Wuhan are suggesting that actually, it was a biological weapon designed by China.
Conclusion
China’s rise as a superpower is going to be much different from other superpowers in history. Powers like Britain and the USA are democracies. They are open societies. They were responsible to at least their citizens. However Chinese has no such answerability. It is an authoritarian dictatorship. This makes the rise of China as a global superpower much more dangerous. The covid-19 pandemic has helped in exposing China to an extent. Now it’s up to major powers like India and the USA to expose the lies of China.
