Communist China has bought support for itself among the academia, think-tanks, media, trade bodies, tech companies, filmdom, and political parties in India to influence public opinion and destabilise the nation from within, strategic affairs experts have said.
They were speaking at an online discussion following the release of a study report brought out by national capital-based think-tank ‘Law and Society Alliance’ titled “Mapping Chinese Footprints and Influence Operations in India” on Sep. 3 evening.
The 76-page study report enumerates the covert and overt influence operations carried out the Communist Party of China (CCP), led by Xi Jinping, in cultivating, funding, and sponsoring institutions including the media and individual opinion-makers.
In the event, exiled World Uyghur Congress director for Chinese Affairs Department Ilshal Kokbore, who joined from New York, said the contents of the study report shocked him, as he learnt the deep penetration Communist China had done inside a democratic India.
He said the CCP, that rules from Beijing, was really adept at twisting reality and spreading propaganda in its favour, not just in India but globally. He said while CCP-controlled media was hostile towards India, Communist China treated Indians with contempt and views the South Asian giant as a third world nation.
Yet, Communist China has invested billions of American Dollars in India, in several sectors, including cinema, technology sector, Apps makers, fintech firms, edutech companies, and academia.
“China continues to take bolder steps to erode India’s democracy and is also subtly influencing Afghan policies through its support of Pakistani and Afghan extremists,” he said.
The report reminded Kokbore of Uyghur history when CCP militarily occupied East Turkestan, pretended to offer help, but now is throwing Uyghurs in concentration camps.” A similar history has played out in Tibet and is now playing out in Hong Kong with the CCP government forcibly curbing democracy.”
Canadian Coalition Against Communism co-founder and vice president Sheng Xue, who joined from Toronto, said the study report of Law and Society Alliance showed that some vigilant Indians were standing up against the CCP’s silent effort to undermine India and its interests through its fifth column operations.
The study report, Sheng said, was a wake-up call for democracies around the world against the CCP’s devious designs. “The report by Law and Society Alliance is convincing evidence as to how invasive China’s influence is and also enables scholars to draw a footprint of Beijing’s propaganda strategy,” she said.
“The democratic world must group together to protect itself and fight back against the overt and covert influence operations of CCP.”
New Delhi-based strategic affairs analyst and The New Indian founder-editor Aarti Tikoo said the study report exhaustively mapped CCP’s influence in India, which is much more than what the British had among Indians when they ruled the country.
Tikoo said today, Indian film and entertainment industry will bend over backwards to please CCP, to the extent of declaring Tibet to be a part of Communist China.
“No one in the mainstream media talks about the ongoing genocide in East Turkestan, called as Xinjiang by CCP, or the plight of the Uyghurs. The insidious way in which the CCP has infiltrated into almost all critical sectors of Indian society is something we as Indians should be wary of,” she said.
In the last 30 years, almost every major Indian company has received investments from CCP and thus, are in some shape or form subservient to Beijing’s whims, Tikoo said.
Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center diretor Enghebatu Togochog, who joined from New York, said he was one of the unfortunate Mongolians, whose land, Southern Mongolia, is now under CCP’s occupation.
Enghebatu said he say a similarity in the CCP’s underhand ways currently in progress in India and what had happened in Southern Mongolia 70 years ago.
“China first entered Southern Mongolia proclaiming peace and prosperity, but over the years reduced my country to a mere colony. I want the people of the world democracies to see the example of Southern Mongolia to understand what happened to those who come under CCP’s ‘generosity’.”
Enghebatu said CCP colonized Southern Mongolia by four means: Economic Control, Population Transfers, Sinicisation and Resources Exploitation.
“Thanks to China’s ‘help’ the agrarian economy of Southern Mongolian has collapsed. Beijing has moved large population of Han Chinese to Southern Mongolia and reversed the population ratio to five Han Chineses to every Mongolian. CCP has attacked the Mongolian language and culture. And plundered the natural resources and destroyed the environmental balance and ecology in Southern Mongolia,” he said.
“This is an indicator of CCP’s hidden neo-imperialist agendas and that one must be vary of are CCP’s ‘gifts’.”
Geneva-based The Tibet Bureau’s United Nations advocacy officer Kalden Tsomo said the study report managed to powerfully capture how entrenched CCP is in India’s key sectors that impact the impressionable young minds.
“Beijing is currently attempting to use its current economic might to challenge the prevailing world order. China is attempting to re-write history in order to fit its own narrative. Because of this, the CCP’s point of view on Tibet, Hong Kong and COVID-19 is permeating throughout the world with pliable media platforms playing the amplifier role,” Kalden said.
Democratic nations for too long have stayed quiet to China’s aggressive actions and world leaders of the past falsely assumed that China would become more liberal after opening it economy, she said.
