1/17: Just covered this webinar discussion on stepping up to current-time China featuring a cross-continental panel (incl. a new member of the #MilkTeaAlliance). Here I'll be highlighting some key comments made by each speaker here:
(Link: )
(Link: )
2/17: @ProfSuryaDeva: India commented on the HK situation which was uncharacteristic but welcome and reflective of its current conflict with China. However, it didn't join the 27 countries to condemn the HKNSL. Prof Deva explained that it mightn't want to overplay the tactic.
3/17: @ProfSuryaDeva: HK is a test case for a battle between 2 political systems. It’s going to unfold anywhere. However, it's not easy to push ours onto China. Making human rights, which has long been put at the back burner, the first term in our interactions with China is key.
4/17: @ProfSuryaDeva: No country is powerful in isolation. China gains its power from being interconnected with the global economy. The CCP is resilient. But what kind of democracy have we become? What kind of leadership have we created? This is a time for self-reflection too.
5/17: @ProfSuryaDeva: China has been overconfident and has opened too many battlefronts at the same time. Its use of power is becoming unsustainable. Power dynamics: there needs to be multiple centres of power to ensure that China (being one of those) behaves responsibly.
6/17: @AMFChina: China policies by the West have been too reductionist/binary (the naive camp vs. the containment camp). Incentives + deterrence + punishment = #constrainment. A line needs to be drawn against China's authoritarian overreach e.g. in HK, or Taiwan will be next.
7/17: @AMFChina: Article 38 of the HKNSL is striking. An example of China's authoritarian overreach. This provision itself will cause the int'l community to take stands against China. (Me: Or will it physically isolate HK from int'l observers and turn it into a blindspot?)
8/17: @AMFChina: The UK has, to many's surprise, turned into the regional leader against China on HK in Europe. Responses have been weak from Brussels and Berlin. Merkel may be an obstacle to a strong China policy by Germany.
9/17: @AMFChina: India's predicament (caused by its unrealistic expectation of engagement with China) is like the EU’s (minus the shared border): both are dealing with expansionism. (Me: And people don’t seem to believe that this can happen nowadays.)
10/17: @AMFChina: Merkel has lost touch of reality for staying in her position and in a close circle of a few trusted aides for too long. ‘Dialogue’ under condition of censorship is fanciful. Without a free choice of our terms, 'cooperation' isn't worthy of its name.
11/17: @AMFChina: Europeans' favorite term 'multilateralism' sounds good but Xi’s take on it is different and Europeans aren’t mindful of that. They need to sober up like their Indian counterpart. Their naiveté has failed. The West also takes the CCP as a god-given reality.
12/17: @AMFChina: The CCP's lifetime is just a blip on the radar. Other Chinese communities in the periphery have demonstrated that democracy can work in the Chinese cultural context. The unresolved structural problems in the mainland might cause an end to the CCP's unitary rule.
13/17: @anderscorr: India has shown that one needs to start shooting to push back on China's incrementalism/salami-slicing tactic. If you're not willing to take risks, when China grabs your territories/infiltrates, you’ll lose ground. Sitting on the fence is self-defeating.
14/17: @anderscorr: We can’t be complacent and assume that China's loss of support globally is its own goal. It's extending its extraterritorial legal reach globally. Just some legislation is not enough. We need to make it just as globally illegal to restrict freedoms.
15/17: @anderscorr: China is hard to control because of elite capture and that it's been pouring hard currencies/junk products into the world of exchange. Our elites and powers are sold out to the CCP. We need to remove the lever that China can use on our politicians.
16/17: @anderscorr: China is bribing its way through global politics (Me: As they're used to in China) and should be denied access to intergovernmental cooperation spaces until it plays by the rules. But our elites aren’t signalling to Beijing that its behaviour is not allowed.
17/17: At one point in the discussion they explored the imaginaries of if/how the CCP might/would end. As a HKer I found that particularly salient as I do see it as the only chance of a way out for HK now. Wish what @AMFChina predicted would actually come true...
