Big brained Washington court eunuch take.
"Why would China do this?"
The issue is when your theory makes no sense, the first step is to reexamine the basic facts, not create ever more elaborate theories based on unfalsifiable psychological assumptions.
"Why would China do this?"
The issue is when your theory makes no sense, the first step is to reexamine the basic facts, not create ever more elaborate theories based on unfalsifiable psychological assumptions.
The first question to ask is which party is more strategically and emotionally invested in the border issue. Which country maintains 2 brigades and which maintains 10 divisions on the border? Which is the revanchist party gripped by the desire to reverse past humiliations?
Which nation had the issue nonstop on all their news channels for the past month and where is it only mentioned on page 16 of their newspapers behind a phone call with Ecuador. Who is more likely to have started shit, the party who seems to be indifferent or the ones foaming at
the mouth. Where the Washington think tank crowd and the Indian assumptions intersect is the failure to recognize that India simply isn't a Chinese priority and that Chinese policy isn't driven hostility but indifference. The Chinese don't care about the border that much, it will
however not be cowed by random chimpouts by the other party who just wants to make a scene (unlike a certain country) in order to get what they want. The other cognitive failure is that the Chinese estimates of Indian capabilities and potential are vastly divergent from neolib
think tanks and India itself. Why would China anger a potential super power can be reframed from the Chinese perspective as what is the cost-benefit of good/neutral/hostile relations with middling power who is interested in a strategic rivalry, albeit one sided.
When "good" relations with India seems to singularly take the form of willingness to absorb Indian labor surplus via immigration, and the consequences of "bad" relations seems to be inconsequential as in the case of Pakistan, China's strategic calculus becomes clearer.
