Abhijit Bhattacharyya | Stop Dragon’s free ride, don’t let it exploit our democracy

It has been long-term Chinese policy, almost since the inception of the People’s Republic, to try and mock India’s democracy as the Dragon, deep down, is convinced it is democracy which makes this country weak, and its leaders ineffective and inefficient. Thus, when Beijing’s man in Delhi, ambassador Sun Weidong, parrots the one-liner “the common interests of the two countries far outweigh the frictions and differences”, he’s either hallucinating or trying hard to convince his bosses that he’s working hard in Delhi to mislead gullible Indians, and take them for a ride! Does it imply that India, for the sake of the so-called “common interests”, be silent and succumb to the CPC’s blandishments despite all the unilateral violence, killings, invasions, forced occupation of Indian territory since the 1950s, setting the tribal areas of Northeast India on fire, destroying West Bengal through the treacherous anti-national Naxalites and other marauding Communists, the unprovoked killing of Indian border personnel at Longju, Hot Springs, the 32-day invasion of India, Nathu La, Cho La, Pangong Tso Lake, the China-Pakistan CPEC through India’s J&K, and now the Galwan Valley massacre? Should India forget and forgive President Xi, who has made himself China’s lifetime dictator, and his cohorts for the sake of what Beijing hypocritically calls “common interests”? Does the recurring murder of Indian soldiers by the CPC-controlled private militia called the People’s Liberation Army constitute the “common interests” of Beijing and New Delhi?