Today, Šumit Ganguly pushes back against claims of an increasing India-China diplomatic alignment; Peter Berkowitz shares insights from his recent seminars on the Western political tradition in Indonesia; and research from Erin Carter and Brett Carter sheds light on the varied impact of Chinese communications technology exports to democratic versus autocratic states.
International Affairs
Writing at Foreign Policy, Senior Fellow Šumit Ganguly analyzes Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s recent visit to New Delhi, arguing it reflects India’s frustration with deteriorating US-India relations rather than genuine rapprochement with China. Ganguly contends that India invited Wang primarily due to Trump administration decisions that have damaged bilateral ties, including hosting Pakistan’s army chief after the India-Pakistan ceasefire, imposing 25 percent tariffs on India, and threatening additional levies unless India stops purchasing Russian oil. “Unfortunately, India is making a bad bet on China, and it will not end well,” says Ganguly. He warns that India’s attempt to balance US pressure by engaging China is misguided because of fundamental obstacles to India-China rapprochement: unresolved border disputes, differing visions for Asian political order, and growing capability asymmetries. Ganguly concludes that while India’s frustration with Washington is understandable, courting China as a counterweight represents a poor strategic choice unlikely to yield lasting benefits. Read more here.
Political Philosophy
In an essay for RealClearPolitics, Senior Fellow Peter Berkowitz recounts his recent experience teaching Western political philosophy in Indonesia to members of “Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), which is headquartered in Jakarta and, with around 150 million followers, is the world’s largest independent Muslim organization.” Berkowitz writes that NU, founded in 1926, “combines religious devotion with political engagement” and “fosters within Islam, across Indonesia, and among other peoples and nations respect for the equal rights and dignity of all human beings.” Berkowitz’s seminars have focused on “a few of the [Western] tradition’s great books, core ideas, and abiding tensions,” as well as the development of the American political tradition. The former State Department official concludes that the experience has been “inspiring” and demonstrates the potential of “shared study of the Western tradition” to “improve mutual understanding” across cultures and philosophical traditions. Read more here.
Confronting and Competing with China
A new “Research-in-Brief” post from Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law highlights recent scholarship by Hoover Fellows Erin Baggott Carter and Brett Carter on the effects of technology transfers from Chinese technology firm Huawei on recipient nations. “Using data on all Huawei contracts across the world over a nearly twenty-year period, they find that Huawei transfers do, in fact, facilitate digital repression in the autocracies—but not the democracies—that receive them.” The Carters’ research suggests that in democracies, independent political institutions, civil society organizations, and popular mobilization can all serve as buffers against attempted digital political repression, while the absence of these checks in autocratic states facilitates such repression. This work suggests that “the impact of Huawei transfers varies depending on regime type.” Read more here.
Visiting Fellow Matthew Turpin leads his weekly China Articles newsletter with another story out of China concerning “Xi’s crackdown on his own diplomatic corps,” which Turpin says “continues unabated.” According to a Reuters story cited by Turpin, “Sun Haiyan, a senior diplomat and former ambassador to Singapore, was detained in early August around the time Liu Jianchao, widely seen as a potential foreign minister candidate, was taken in for questioning.” In Turpin’s view, now is “not a good time to be a Chinese diplomat . . . or a senior military officer.” The former West Point history professor also features a story concerning China’s importation of Russian oil via Iran, in direct contravention of international sanctions—which he says represents “proof that the rules-based, liberal international order no longer functions.” Read more here.
Politics, Institutions, and Public Opinion
Internal Politics and Citizen-Government Relations in East Germany and Closed Regimes
Two recent publications by Hoover Fellow Hans Lueders examine internal politics and citizen-government interactions in socialist East Germany (the former German Democratic Republic, or GDR). The first, a coauthored article in Comparative Political Studies, investigates citizen grievance petition systems in the former GDR and evaluates their impact on resources allocated to a major housing construction program. Lueders and coauthors show that places with more popular demand for housing, as expressed in petitions, saw greater housing construction—suggesting that, even in repressive autocracies, governments appear to take their citizens demands and preferences into account. The second article, published in Perspectives on Politics, asks about the consequences of emigration from an otherwise closed regime—that is, from a dictatorship where people do not have the right to leave. Lueders challenges the conventional view that regimes employ emigration strategically to get rid of regime critics and other opponents, arguing that such a strategy can backfire and create more demand for emigration among left-behind citizens, which can ultimately contribute to regime destabilization. Read the article at Comparative Political Studies here. Read the article at Perspectives on Politics here.
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