World
No intention to surround India in ‘string of pearl’ bases: China
Shanghai: It’s not possible for China to surround India in a ‘string of pearls’ bases as has been stated by some commentators, according to a top PLA naval official.
Senior Captain Wei Xiao Dong, chief of staff at the Shanghai Naval Garrison said that there was no reason for India to “show concern or worry about” Chinese navy vessels, including submarines, visiting countries like Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh or others.
“China does not have a policy of hegemony or is playing to be a military power in the region,” Wei told a group of visiting Indian journalists. “Our policy is defensive in nature,” he said.
He said such visits were not as common as was sometimes made out. “I have been in the navy since 1987 and I have not sailed in a warship to the Indian Ocean.”
He emphasised that there was no possibility of China creating a ‘string of pearls’ around India.
He said one need only to refer to China’s white paper on military strategy to realise that china only believes in a defensive approach and had no intention of expanding its military influence to other countries.
He said the visit to Pakistan has been noted in India with concern. But China, he added, had an enhanced level of cooperation with India too.
“Looked at another way, should we reduce our visits to Pakistan and increase them to India. In such a case will Pakistan fear our cooperation with India?” he asked. He said the relations with the two countries were only on a bilateral basis.
He said in the past four ships from India had visited the Shanghai base together and he “always looks forward” to Indian ships visiting there.
He said he did not have much information on the status of China’s aircraft carrier. It was in Qindao region for training purpose. In any case, he said the carrier was not under the jurisdiction of East China Sea Fleet which was his area of operation.
Wei said one of his mandates in Shanghai was to act as anti-terrorism force and ensure peace and tranquillity in the region, including the area’s coastal cities. He said they had not come under any terrorism-related attack, but they study such action around the world to gain information on how to react. He was responding to a question whether they feared an attack of the kind that happened in Mumbai in 2008 when terrorists came in boats from Karachi.
The visiting journalists were taken on a rare tour of a guided missile frigate Tongling docked at Shanghai and shown its fighting capabilities, including its anti-submarine and anti-air attack capacity.
Talking of Indian navy’s presence in South China Sea, which the country, deems to be its region, Wei said that he did not know what the “strategic intention” of India was in the region. Indian ships had entered the sea a few years ago when Indian public sector companies were invited to explore oil in Vietnamese waters.
On Diaoyu islands disputed between China and Japan, Wei said they were “part of” the Chinese territory and it was responsibility of the navy to protect its “sovereign areas”. He said it was “legal for china to patrol the seas around the island in order to ensure peace”.
Shanghai’s rich middle class is leading a wave of online dissent over the strict and prolonged lockdowns imposed in various parts of the country. Chinese internet censorship is struggling as patience is wearing thin in many urban centers, coming up with creative forms of online protests.
Social Media Posts Revealing Lockdown Tension in Shanghai
Drawn-out lockdowns are nothing new in China as authorities insist with the nation’s zero-Covid policy since the start of the pandemic. Currently over This time around, however, metropolitan areas like Shanghai are increasingly difficult to keep quiet, given that its more than 25 million residents have seen weeks of total isolation along with food shortages and many other service interruptions.
Dozens of towns and reportedly over 300 million Chinese citizens have been affected by lockdowns of different severity. As expected, urban netizens have been most outspoken over their difficulties by finding creative ways to get around state censorship and bans placed on topics, news comments and spontaneous campaigns.
Shanghai residents have been using mobile proxies and hijacking seemingly unrelated hashtags to talk about healthcare issues, delivery failures and the overall severity of their situation. The “positive energy” that the Chinese government wants to transmit during the recent prolonged series of lockdowns does not come naturally to those counting food supplies and online censors are working hard to filter words, trending topics and undesired social media sharing.
WeChat groups and message threads are under constant monitoring. Posts questioning the zero-Covid approach have been quickly deleted, including by leading Chinese health experts like Dr. Zhong Nanshan. Video footage is soon censored and protests and investigations are quickly made to disappear.
Where this has not worked, officials have exposed banners with warnings and outright threats like “watch your own mouth or face punishment”, while drones have been patrolling the city skies. Yet, if anything, this has led to further tensions and unspoken confrontation with Shanghai’s educated and affluent middle class.
Creative Online Solutions Harnessing Civic Energy
Announcements by Chinese social media that they would be publishing the IP addresses of users who “spread rumors” have not helped either. Tech industry research has shown that much of Asia’s tech-savvy population has a habit of using mobile proxies and other privacy tools, quickly finding workarounds to browse the internet freely and talk to the world about the hottest topics.
The sheer volume of forbidden posts is already a challenge for the very censorship system, experts explain. Unable to track all trending hashtags, state workers overlook topics that speak about the US, Ukraine or other popular news. Linking human rights elsewhere to their situation, Chinese online dissidents establish their informal channels and “hijack” the conversation to share personal or publicly relevant information about the Covid suppression in their town.
Sarcastic and satirical posts still dominate. Others hope to evade the censors by replacing words from famous poems or the national anthem. One thing is certain – social media, when harnessed with the right creativity, has proven its ability to mount pressure on the government in even some of the most strictly controlled tech environments like China.
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