China’s neighbours have long been familiar with its proclivity for easy aggression. With India and Vietnam — despite the fact that the latter is a communist state like China — there has even been a clash of arms, although not of long duration. This might suggest in both cases that Beijing only wished to make a political statement through the use of howitzers. In both cases, Beijing determined that the quickest way to settle an argument was not through discussion but with the use of guns, not unlike warlords of yore.

With respect to Taiwan — which Beijing claims to be a part of China — it has lined up missiles as a show of force and invited countervailing action by the Americans, theoretically bringing the region to war between what arguably are two of the most advanced fighting forces of the world, without heeding the wider consequences of such brinkmanship. Acts of this nature on the part of China have naturally made all of its neighbours wary in their conduct toward this country. Not without reason, it turns out. A recent article in the influential journal Qiushi (Seek The Truth), published by the Chinese Communist Party, makes plain that China loves war.
“Throughout the history of the new China (China since 1949, or communist China), peace in China has never been gained by giving in, only through war. Safeguarding national interests is never achieved by mere negotiations, but by war,” notes the write-up. Viewpoints such as these bear kinship with the notion of the “gunboat diplomacy” of colonial powers in the 19th century and in the early part of the 20th. Consanguinity between this belief and the American doctrine of “pre-emptive war” is not hard to establish. Is it hubris that makes China — whose rise India gullibly supported in the late Forties and the early Fifties, going to the extent of engineering its installation as a permanent member of the UN Security Council — articulate militaristic ideas such as this in an official magazine of the party that runs the Chinese state which has many features of a military dictatorship? A Chinese foreign or security policy stance based on the belief-system espoused through the Qiushi write-up conceivably implies that the countless rounds of boundary discussions between New Delhi and Beijing have been a waste of time and that the communists across the Himalayas would agree to a final border demarcation only on their terms, settling the latter through recourse to military means. It can be argued that the above is an ideological-political write-up, not crystallised government policy. But an article in which seven of China’s neighbours — besides this country, Japan, Vietnam, Australia, the Philippines, Indonesia and the Koreas — are named as being servitors of an American plan to “contain” China is unlikely to be seen as passing thoughts of a party hack in vigour mode.
“We must send a clear signal to our neighbouring countries that we don’t fear war, and we are prepared at any time to go to war to safeguard our national interests,” the article also notes. This may be seen as a hysterical re-statement of the age-old reality that all nations must be prepared for war if all else fails. But is it more since the advocacy is in favour of “sending a clear signal”? Either way, the neighbours that Beijing is not shy to name are unlikely to look upon such bitter outpourings with equanimity. They would naturally seek to make their own preparations — political, diplomatic and military — in order to dissuade the authoritarian Chinese leadership from emitting signals of war. Some may be inclined to take a benign view of the sabre-rattling. It is argued that when the communist power is in the midst of a leadership change, contention at the top can cause muscle-flexing in some quarters. Nevertheless, as they say, it never hurts to be prepared.