China’s charm diplomatic offensive rolls on against US stranglehold
Ohoto credit Twitter Radio Taiwan
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, April 3: While the US stays in gridlock over the Ukraine War, China’s diplomatic offensive has spread tentacles all across the world, surprising the observers with agility in diplomacy. Over a period of a few months when China set out to abandon its ‘Zero Covid Policy’, Beijing’s top diplomats went globetrotting to make up for the losses when the country was shut down.
Within a span of a few months, China has established its ties with the western European nations and rekindled ties with the Latin American countries. China also worked swiftly to get the smaller nations cut their ties with Taiwan to further isolate Taipei in the diplomatic world. This weekend, China gleefully welcomed Japanese foreign minister Yoshimasa Hayashi.
After staging a diplomatic coup by bringing Saudi Arabia and Iran together, China asserted its heft in brokering peace in the global strife zones. Syria is finally looking at the possibility of peace following the realignment of relations in the Arabian world at a time when Xi Jinping vowed to shape the destiny of the world for the next 100 years during his parting handshake with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Moscow last month.
Sari Arho-Havren, a China analyst told DW, “One important element of the realignment of its foreign policy is Beijing’s increasingly assertive push to control the international narrative, … presenting China as the peaceful global security provider and balancing actor, while portraying the US as the aggressor that fuels and provokes conflicts rather than trying to prevent them.”
This found resonance when Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang, a former ambassador in the US, shook hands with the visiting Hayashi, as he called for not helping a “villain do evil”. Qin played on the history for the Japanese minister, reminding how the US had crushed the semi-conductor industry of Japan. The two met within days of China and Japan establishing hotline to avert mishap in the international waters.
Japan is currently the head of G7, the grouping of the most industrialised nations. Japan is also the principal mover of Quad, which also consists of the US, India and Australia. China has accused Quad of being a grouping against Beijing.
The strategic affairs commentators note that while the US continues to step up efforts to raise the firepower against any possible Chinese military offensive against Taiwan by readying an Australian Launchpad with the nuclear-powered submarines, a project that will take several years to fructify, China has shown agility to adjust to the changing geo-strategic play to protect its core interests.
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