UNEASE OVER XI BOOSTS SECURITY LINKAGES WITHIN THE INDO-PACIFIC

Xi has built around him a network of advisors who are almost entirely different from individuals who were influential during the decade each in power of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, and even among such persons, turnover is very high.

- MADHAV NALAPAT

Within the ASEAN, a club that India refused to join in the 1960s in a demonstration of another of the many self-goals scored in matters of foreign policy in the past, there is considerable interest in developing strong ties with the world's most populous democracy. For the first time ever, Vietnam is carrying out joint military exercises with India, a country that supported its struggle against France, then the US and now the coercive means being used by China to deny Vietnam access to its own waters in the South China Sea. Unease has been developing within the policymaking circles of countries neighbouring the People's Republic of China as a consequence of some domestic and international actions ordered by the presently all-powerful General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping. Policymakers in all these countries have over the years built up extensive networks of friends and contacts within the CCP, the only institution with any real authority in the PRC, but these are shrugging their shoulders in helplessness and saying that they are unable to predict what the CCP General Secretary will do next. They say that he has built around him a network of advisors who are almost entirely different from individuals who were influential during the decade each in power of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, and that even among such persons, turnover is very high. "The closer a person is to Xi and the more his contact with the General Secretary, the higher the risk of the most powerful Emperor after Mao of the ruling Red Dynasty abruptly changing his opinion about the advisor, and either shuttling him off to an inconsequential charge, or worse, punishing him for misdeeds that exist only in the mind" of Xi. They add there appears to be no pattern in such changed assessments, and no predictable roster of reasons why an individual should in a matter of not days but hours fall out of favour. "Being close to Xi may bring short term benefit in terms of position, but it also