Disorder For New Order

P Kharel

President of the United States, Joe Biden last week exhorted G7 summiteers at Carbis Bay in Britain’s Cornwall region to come up with the required finance to counter China’s growing global influence. This is an admission as to how fast and how far the communist country has fared in the new millennium, presaged as it was by seething frustrations echoed by the noises and notoriety the United States-led Europe-plus made with frequent intensity. The West’s negative propaganda blitz unleashed against Chinese President Xi Jinping’s signature project, Belt and Road Initiative, failed to make any significant dent.
Biden floated the idea of an infrastructure building scheme that would attract the prospective flock away from BRI. Unwittingly, BRI opened the eye of the G7. The Biden proposal is a product of not any deep sense of sympathy for nations in acute need of support for their infrastructure needs but, like the Chinese, strategic interests are the only factor. Investment of infrastructure might be entering a new era of boost. But over enthusiasm might be premature at this stage. Let us see how the grouping will talk the walk.

Desperate noises
American rants against biggest rivals Russia and China while its close allies meekly and loyally troop in to signal unquestioning approval. Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks less and acts more. So does Xi Jinping. Moscow operates with relative restraint, Beijing reacts quickly but with meaningful pauses; and Washington issues loud protests, accompanied by moves to disparage and isolate the two competitors in the exclusive club of three superpowers.
In an interview to the American broadcast channel NBC, a week before a Biden-Putin 4-hour meeting in Geneva on June 16, the Russian leader said: “We (Russia and the US) have a bilateral relationship that has deteriorated to its lowest point in recent years”. But the two sides agreed not to hold any joint press conference in what was clearly a compromise and tone down by Washington.
Yesterday’s extreme superiority complex of the West gets continuity today, too, and is set to continue in at least the foreseeable future until the falsely created edifice since ages comes crashing down like a house of cards. The India-born British national Rudyard Kipling spoke of “White man’s burden”, written on the eve of the 20th century.
Sino-Russian bonding is the defining feature of the emerging new order, the like of which was not seen in the outgoing order or at the heights of the “Cold War”. On the other hand, NATO bonding is no longer rock-like solid as it used to be in the past. Some of its member states are more receptive to Moscow under Putin than at any time since the end of World War I through the Cold War decades. China’s rise has stoked intense anxiety in the West, though it does not export ideology. The core capitalist countries put China under microscopic monitoring for criticisms whereas friendly and loyal autocrats are condoned.
China is in a tearing hurry to invest and lead. Speed seems to be the mantra, given the rush with which plans are drafted and projects undertaken. Staggering volume of investments in infrastructure building cannot go unnoticed, the like of which the world had never seen before. The dominant Western powers witness the development in bouts alternating between sullen silence and desperate propaganda.
Today, threats, boycotts and relentless tirade against Beijing and Moscow for the transparent reason of the two tangoing to bring a break in the global domination maintained by the West, led by the quartet of the US, the UK, Germany and France. The 26-member European Union is undergoing existential problems. Brexit riles French President Emmanuel Macron and piques German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Italy gives a second glance to Russia, though it is yet to make up a firm mind regarding the reality of the changing wheel of fortune and the traditional suspicion reserved against the communist regime.
Britain defied US call for not joining the ambitious infrastructure invest bank AIIB and registered itself as a founding member of the bank. China’s upswing in presence and quiet influence in West Asia both audible as well as visible.
Eastern Europe in general is quite at ease with the former Iron Curtain and the present day’s biggest and oldest existing communist country has not only taken the No. 2 spot as the largest economy but is well set to become the world’s largest within the next seven years. Once dubbed the Bamboo Curtain, China takes the lion’s share of presence in Africa, having outstripped the rest of the world in investments made in the continent.
The arsenal of technological advances and innovation along with military power and staggering amounts of money for investments all over the world gives a huge clout to the one-party regime, which otherwise would have been long ago severely maligned, mauled and politically manacled by the West in the name of democracy, human rights and “world values”.

Past and present
Inter-nation rivalry and clash of national interest rear its heads. In the UK, renewed efforts are being made to substitute “empire” with “excellence” in its honours system amid growing concerns that the existing system smacks of colonial times when exploitation and segregation were the order of the day. About 100 prominent figures, already honoured, have called for change whereas several others have refused the honours because of the common legacy of colonialism, instituted more than 100 years ago.
In 2004, three-time Prime Minister Tony Blair scuttled attempts at doing away with the Order of the British Empire and bringing in a new Order of British Excellence. For that matter, according to recent public opinion polls, 43 per cent of Britons still regard their colonial empire to be a source of pride. Street protests do not necessarily get a fair hearing even in the UK, hailed by many as the “mother” of parliaments.
Russian and Central Asian states account for vast untapped resources, something of China’s immense interest. Russia has regained a superpower status. So has China. The Cold War years did not witness a China as powerful a force as it is today. In fact, Mao was struggling hard to feed, clothe and house the teeming massive millions, even as the state launched strict family planning policies, so disparagingly commented upon by the capitalist captains in the West.
The birth pangs of the emerging new order are painful and pronged but the delivery is assured even as the poor losers find their grip loosening too relentlessly to prevent their own monopoly from declining.

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)