The killing of 20 Indian soldiers by China’s PLA in Ladakh has intensified anti-China sentiment that initially flared with the surge of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic.
“They have made a permanent enemy out of India. It’ll take a minimum of two generations to have a friendly China response from us,” retired Brig. Rumel Dahiya, a veteran who had worked for the joint staff of the Indian forces, told The Epoch Times.
Dahiya said China can forget about any kind of support from India on the international forums. He particularly highlighted “human rights forums” and said India will change its import policy and will take steps to control Chinese investment into Indian startups, China’s purchase of Indian real estate, and the purchase of shares in the Indian stock market by the Chinese companies.
“Certain sectors will be closed for China on security grounds … Efforts will be to diversify imports and systematically reduce imports from China,” said Dahiya who earlier also served as the Deputy Director-General of The Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, a government-funded think tank.
Unnerved by Chinese companies shopping in Indian stock markets, including China’s central bank, as the CCP virus started surging, the Indian government dropped FDI from its neighbors from its automatic approval list in April. Dahiya said neighbors “simply means China.”
A day after the Galwan incident—a border clash between Chinese and Indian military forces—India’s telecom ministry asked its state-run telecom company, BSNL, to rework its 4G network upgrading tender to exclude Chinese telecom companies. It advised private telecom companies to not procure equipment from Chinese firms.
Dahiya said India mostly imports tires from Thailand and China and these are licensed but things will now change. “Thai tires will be permitted but no license will be given to China,” he said explaining the immediate repercussions.
Boycott Chinese Products
There are many calls to boycott Chinese products in India but a popular one started during the standoff between India and China in the Ladakh region while the CCP virus was surging and it intensified after the death of the 20 soldiers.
It started when a well-known Indian education reformer, Sonam Wangchuk gave a call for a boycott with slogans like “Boycott China,” “Boycott Made in China,” and “Anywhere but China.”
Inspired by Wangchuk, who was the subject of the extremely popular Bollywood film Three Idiots, 16-year-old Chirag Bhansali started an online platform to provide Indians, particularly his school mates native alternatives to various Chinese apps and products.
Bhansali, a student who’s also a programmer took ten days to launch his platform on June 12, days before Gilwan happened.
“I wanted to support the nationalist sentiment,” he told The Epoch Times over the phone from Noida adding that Chinese apps have security issues and he wanted to support Wangchuk’s call.
Among many things, his platform called “Swadeshi Tech” lists Indian apps and Indian alternatives to Chinese laptops, televisions, mobile phones, audio devices, cameras, and air conditioners—it earned over 55,000 visitors in over 10 days and a salutation by Wangchuk.
Prasanth A.K., a 56-year-old architect from the south Indian city of Calicut told The Epoch Times over the phone that there’s an intense anti-China sentiment in the business community across India but he is trying to find ways to promote local production as that’s the only way to sustain a boycott.
He believes a complete boycott of Chinese products can only happen if India achieves a “quality economy” across all sectors.
He said in India people have a change in their “value perception” and are slowly coming out of the lure of “cheap Chinese” products.
“How to be on our own foot is the main emotion pan India. The world was [earlier] reluctant to go against China. Now many nations are trying to be self-reliant,” said Prasanth who has been to China multiple times.
India vs China’s Communist Regime
Dahiya said the Indian government is aware that what happened in the heights of Galwan can’t happen without the consent of its communist regime and the incident further exposes China’s communist regime to the Indian public.
“We also know that there’s a parallel command structure at each level. Professional guy and a party guy at all command levels” said Dahiya.
“CMC [Central Military Commission of the CCP] exercises great power. It’s the CMC that controls the army,” he explained.
Dahiya said the Indian administration knows “that party is dangerous … even in the 50s, 60s, and 70s we knew that the Chinese system was different, that the Chinese system wasn’t good.”
He said that concept of aligning with China was a “liberal imagination” but now it’ll be different.
“We [now] know that it is different from us and that it hardly is ever bothered about people. We also know each economic activity that takes place has a stake of these senior party leaders,” he said.
From The Epoch Times
