Rumours have remained rumours: Chinese President Xi Jinping has not been put behind bars. In fact, he has grown into a massive dinosaur and is now thumping across Chinese civil society, chomping away at all the development that had been, starting from the time of Deng Xiaoping, slowly cultivated. China is going back into its old shell.
That’s good news for the rest of the world. Do we care, in India, if China gets regressive? If Chinese development comes to a screeching halt? Do we care if its aim at world dominance is, slowly, of no more value than the paper it is written on? Do we care if its economy collapses into itself, all this, to please one megalomaniac: Xi Jinping? No, we don’t.
Yes, Xi now wants that Chairman title, one that Mao Zedong had. Why is a title so important? In China it is. Good for them. Let them get regressive, let the rest of the world, the free world benefit from more trade, more manufacturing, more prosperity. We have no love lost vis-s-vis Xi. Let him turn into Tyrannosaurus Rex.
The Chinese culture, of course, could die a quick death. There will be no accountability, no concern about the environment, no openness. So, is China following North Korea’s model? Can that be the extent of Xi’s ambition? Pretty sad, then.
When Chinese involvement across the world recedes, there will be a vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum, and India could step in quickly to fill it, the rest of south and south-east Asia could too. All have the technology. We need the scale.
So, good for us. Let Xi turn into a T-Rex. Good for him, in isolation.
