In the past few days, two high-ranking individuals — Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga, spokesman for India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s New Delhi branch, and SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk — have expressed very different attitudes toward Taiwan and China, and the relationship between them.
Bagga hung a banner celebrating Taiwan’s Double Ten National Day outside the Chinese embassy in the Indian capital on Monday, while in an interview with the Financial Times on Friday, Musk said that cross-strait tensions could be resolved by making Taiwan a “special administrative zone” of China.
It is not the first time Bagga has shown support for Taiwan. In 2020, he placed 100 signs bearing its national flag and the words: “Taiwan Happy National Day October 10” around the Chinese embassy. His actions were no prank; there was a serious intent and message behind them. Nor was he alone among his fellow Indians in holding this sentiment. Indian Internet users posted messages saying: “Happy Taiwan National Day” and “India stands together with Taiwan.”
The Indian news media, too, is aware of the distinction between Taiwan and China. Media executives were enraged when the Chinese embassy in New Delhi in 2020 issued what was essentially a diktat telling the media to observe and respect India’s official “one China” principle. The embassy’s audacity and presumptuousness had the opposite of its intended effect, as India’s media are free and independent.
Nor does Bagga stand alone among his political peers in his wariness of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian prime minister from 1950 to 1964, wanted to show good faith to the CCP when he advocated for the People’s Republic of China to replace Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) regime as China’s sole representative at the UN, but his enthusiasm was not shared by Indian lawmakers, and his dictum that “India and China are brothers” was shown for what it was by the 1962 Sino-Indian war. More recent events, such as the 2017 Doklam crisis, tensions along the Line of Actual Control in India’s eastern Ladakh and the CCP’s attempts to conceal the beginnings of the COVID-19 pandemic, have only hardened Indian politicians’ negative attitudes toward the CCP.
Like his peers and compatriots, Bagga knows the CCP and is aware of the menace it represents.
Musk has his sights set elsewhere. He is smart, resourceful and capable, and yet what he said about Taiwan makes him come across as, if not unthinking, then remarkably callous.
It is arguable that his suggestion makes rational sense — in the coldest way conceivable — but at the same time it is out of touch with the boundaries in which it must be made — geopolitical, moral, legal, humane, realistic, compassionate — that one has to wonder where the idea originated, because it was not solely born of a reasonable attempt at finding a solution, and it is utterly devoid of regard for the future of the international world order.
It only makes sense if you believe that Musk is firmly in Beijing’s pocket. Musk’s Tesla operations produce high volumes of its electric vehicles in its Shanghai Gigafactory, and China represents a major market for the company. Meanwhile, the CCP’s modus operandi is luring in foreign investment and then turning the screws to extract favors.
Predictably well received by Chinese Ambassador to the US Qin Gang (秦剛) and roundly rejected by politicians in Taiwan, Musk’s suggestion certainly resonates with the CCP’s narrative. It remains to be seen which other ways the CCP might ask Musk to bend to keep his operations in China running smoothly. He might even find keeping Twitter, should he finally close the acquisition deal, a free and open platform for the exchange of ideas an impossible endeavor. The CCP has strong feelings against unfettered freedom of expression.
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