IN THE DRAGON'S FIRING LINE

CHINA’S INCREASING PENCHANT FOR ESCALATING CRISES AND LIVING WITH ANTAGONISTIC RELATIONSHIPS ON MULTIPLE FRONTS PROMISES A TURBULENT YEAR AHEAD FOR SOUTH ASIA, WITH INDIA AT THE HEART OF IT

- Andrew Small

China analysts are increasingly used to revisiting from scratch what Beijing is likely to do in a given situation rather than assuming it will follow precedent. The overturning of longstanding foreign policy norms and agreements has itself become a predictable feature of the Chinese approach in South Asia, as elsewhere.

In theory, 2022 should be a more stable year than the last two. An upcoming Party Congress would typically see any Chinese Communist Party general secretary seeking to maintain a calm external environment. Yet even this cannot be taken for granted. There will certainly be attempts to ensure that Xi Jinping experiences no nasty surprises in the autumn as he enters the next phase of his consolidation of power. But as Chinese behaviour during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic illustrated, periods of defensiveness and insecurity are now prone to translate into belligerence and ever more creative forms of coercion rather than efforts to settle differences on mutually acceptable terms.

China has a greater appetite for escalating crises than it did in the past, and evidently believes itself capable of living with antagonistic relationships on multiple fronts. The fact that the lead-up to the last Party Congress was overshadowed by the Doklam standoff will not be forgotten. We are likely to see heightened Chinese paranoia about its Himalayan borders, and a determination not to repeat what Beijing sees as mistakes it made that year, when it felt it was on the back foot.