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Modi’s UAE visit a wake-up call for Pakistan: Daily
Islamabad: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the UAE should be a wake-up call for Pakistan as “India is on the move in the region”, said a leading Pakistani daily on Thursday.
An editorial in the Dawn said that Modi’s August 16-17 visit to the United Arab Emirates, and the joint communiqué issued afterwards, “should be nothing less than a wake-up call for Pakistan”.
“Both countries have agreed to enhance their economic cooperation and set specific targets, including bringing UAE investment into Indian infrastructure up to $75 billion and raising their bilateral trade by 60 percent in five years,” it said.
The communiqué also goes to some lengths to “condemn efforts, including by states, to use religion to justify, support and sponsor terrorism against other countries”, dilating upon this commitment with a specificity and sweep that almost betrays a sense of relish with which the words were written.
“The language is being widely interpreted to be pointed towards Pakistan,” said the daily.
The editorial said that by itself, the growing closeness between India and the UAE would be cause for little more than some alarm.
“But given the diplomatic moves under way in the region it highlights how the conduct of foreign policy is changing in profound ways.”
It added: “…India is on the move in the region, keeping countries as diverse as the UAE, Iran, China and the United States on board as it spins a web of connectivity from the Middle East to Southeast Asia.”
The daily went on to say this should be enough to wake Pakistan’s foreign policy community up to the fact that their game has changed fundamentally.
“Lingering territorial disputes are no longer the driving force behind foreign policy. Instead, the foreign interests of states are now, more than ever before, viewed through an economic lens. States can be rivals in one sphere and partners in another,” it said.
“The game is no longer about pushing a single-agenda item, but the meticulous placement of pieces on an increasingly complex and interconnected chessboard. For Pakistan, remaining wedded to an old foreign policy template developed in the early Cold War years – which saw friends and masters in its search for a big brother who would help solve problems in return for a geopolitical alliance – is no longer a viable option,” the daily noted.
The editorial called for maturity in Pakistan’s foreign policy and said that “as a thaw with Iran opens up opportunities to the west, and the possibility of building an economic partnership with India to the east – however remote it might seem at the moment – remains a viable foreign policy goal. It’s time to emerge from the old world, and recognise the changes happening in our region before it’s too late”.
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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