Editorial analysis: China cold to LAC talks; Loss of Shinzo Abe; India: The most populous

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In ‘Editorial analysis’, The Raisina Hills critically reviews comments of India’s top five English newspapers – The Indian Express (IE), The Hindu (TH), The Times of India (ToI), The Economic Times (ET) and Deccan Herald (DH).

There’s no progress on the line of actual control between India and China, while the military commanders of the two countries haven’t spoken since March 11. The two armies face each other in the cold mountains of the Himalayas, while the bilateral relations between New Delhi and Beijing remain largely frozen.

TH in its Edit ‘Far Apart’ takes a grim view of the situations on the LAC even while the Indian foreign minister S Jaishankar has met his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, twice in the last four months, and most recently in Bali on the sidelines of the G20 Ministerial Meeting.

The daily rightly argues that Beijing is showing no intentions to resolve the border issue, while reaching out to India to seek New Delhi’s participation in the multilateral summits, including the BRICS and SCO, which are being projected as blocks to counter the western world.

Patrolling Point 15 in Hot Springs, Depsang and Demchok remain unresolved between the two sides, reminds TH, while adding that in the next few months the Chinese President Xi Jinping will seek his third term, besides sweeping military changes thee being on the cards.

TH doesn’t mention that after scores of meetings between the Special Representatives of India and China over resolution of the border issue, which failed to move an inch forward, India is now pinned down to the Laddakh part of the unresolved line of actual control. This is indeed the slow and steady unravelling of the ‘Salami’ strategy of China to slice parts of the neighbouring countries, including India, Nepal, Bhutan and others.

China thus pushes its frontiers into the territories of others, while seeking normal ties with neighbours. TH doesn’t dig to examine India’s limitations to push China, with sporadic actions such as against Vivo phone coming at some stages, while the bilateral trade keeps going up in favour of Beijing, with ‘Make in India’ campaign not enough denting the Chinese manufacturers.

In this backdrop, participation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the upcoming SCO meeting will be most avoidable, while his virtual participation in the China hosted BRICS served no purpose.

Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was a visionary who thought ahead of his time and fostered the Quad partnership between the US, India, Japan and Australia after China for decades kept furthering its expansionist policy on land and waters.

Abe’s demise has been commented upon by DH in its Edit notes that acts of political violence is rare in Japan, with the last major such attack seen only in 1995. DH rightly noted that Abe brought the much needed political stability in Japan, which was marred by frequent changes of Prime Ministers. Indeed, Abe wanted to revise Japan’s pacifist post-war character, which is indeed needed due to the hostile and expansionist China and the rogue North Korean regime being Tokyo’s top concerns.

Indeed, Abe was India’s foremost friend, and many of big infrastructure projects, including Metro, Ahmedabad-Mumbai Bullet Train, Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor, Eastern and Western Dedicated Freight Corridors bear his signature.

IE has commented on a UN report that India’s population will go past China’s by 2023, while stating that alarmist view is now outdated. The daily quoted UN Population Division’s projection to note that the country’s fertility rate at 2.0 seen in the recent survey is a major achievement since 6.0 fertility rate when India began population control measures. The daily rightly reminds that India needs to focus on education, nutrition, healthcare, housing and employment. But such concerns are obvious and well commented upon, and the daily misses out on raising the challenge for the care for the elders, since India is on course for a rapid rise in the population of elders.

ToI and ET have commented on the political developments within the AIADMK and the Covid-19 concerns respectively.