Is India Copying Xi Jin Ping's Wolf Warrior Tactics?

Aakash Joshi in The Indian Express

For those familiar with American action films, there was nothing that remarkable — artistically and even as a propaganda device — about Wolf Warrior (2015) and its sequel, Wolf Warrior 2 (2017). But the impact of the films on foreign policy — or at least how it is discussed — has moved from China to the West and now, in a somewhat disturbing reflection of the former, to India.

In the Chinese blockbusters, Wu Jing, a sniper — kicked out of the PLA for being a moral renegade, a sort of John McClane and John Rambo combination — takes on smugglers, kidnappers and mercenaries with a Chinese special forces unit.

The films are not seminal for their slick action or predictable and plodding plot. In the contemporary foreign policy lexicon, “Wolf Warrior diplomacy” is the belligerent language used by Chinese diplomats since Xi Jinping’s authoritarian consolidation and centralisation of power. Any attack or criticism of China is met with strong words, often pointing out the history of western hypocrisy and imperialism. While extolling China’s foreign policy and political economy, the howl of the wolf warrior also tries to paint any questioning of China as interference in its internal affairs, an attack on its civilisational history and a plot by foreign powers unable to stomach the rise of a rival in Asia. Most often (and easily accessible to a lay reader), this insecurity is on display in the editorials and articles in state and party-controlled media such as Global Times and China Daily, which target not only foreign governments but also media houses and individuals for adverse comments and coverage.

Sample the following headlines from Global Times: “Facing Omicron, CNN shows sour grapes mentality as China’s Covid-19 control measures justified” (November 30, 2021); “BBC should show evidence [on Xinjiang human rights abuses] or admit to being a rumourmonger”; “’Defeating China’ is wishful thinking from Soros” (October 6, 2019).

Change the dates and a few words in the headlines for context, and they could be mistaken for recent statements by some of the most prominent members of the Indian government and spokespersons of the ruling party.

Take, for example, the Income Tax department’s “survey” of the BBC offices in Delhi and Mumbai. There are likely people who believe that the searches of journalists’ computers and phones were about irregularities in taxes and not a recent documentary. Even though India: The Modi Question wasn’t released in India, takedown orders were issued to social media companies.

As the offices were searched, the BBC was accused – with the BJP’s symbol proudly displayed in the back – by a party spokesperson of being “corrupt” and supporting “anti-national” forces. It is rare, even in an age of ED summons, IT surveys and NIA investigations, for the ruling party or government to comment on an ongoing investigation beyond the usual “let the law take its course” or “no one is above the Constitution and penal code” sort of statements. The BBC, remember, is the British state broadcaster, funded directly by the people and not the government per se. It is certainly not above bias. Equally, though, it is not a threat to the world’s largest and arguably most diverse democracy. The last time it was seen as such was during the Emergency: Ironically, the fact that Indira Gandhi’s government banned the BBC was used as a justification by the ruling party this time.

On the heels of the BBC controversy came the comments by George Soros, the hedge-fund billionaire-turned-liberal philanthropist. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference last week, the 92-year-old Soros brought up the Adani-Hindenburg controversy and stated that the report and its aftermath would “significantly weaken Modi’s stranglehold on India’s federal government and open the door to push for much-needed institutional reforms. I may be naïve, but I expect a democratic revival in India.”

The reaction from the government was swift and strong. Union Minister of Women and Child Development, Smriti Irani, said, “A foreign power at the centre of which is a man named George Soros has announced that he will hurt India’s democratic structure. He has announced that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be his main target.”

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar stated, “I could take the view that the individual in question, Mr Soros, is an old, rich, opinionated person, sitting in New York, who still thinks that his views should determine how the entire world works. Now if I could stop at old, rich and opinionated, I would put it away. But he is old, rich, opinionated and dangerous.”

Soros and his Open Society Foundations, across countries, do arguably engage in political work. Yet, the public and personal attack — from some of the most prominent and articulate faces of the government — against the perceived “foreign hand” indicates a prickliness about criticism that is reminiscent of Wolf Warriors rather than the secure, understated confidence of seasoned diplomats and leaders. It was seen earlier when Jaishankar refused to meet with a US Congressional Committee in 2019 because Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal had introduced a resolution about Kashmir in the US legislature.

Unfortunately, this mode of engagement with foreign actors — or journalists and media houses — is of a piece with the image of New India, just as it is a hallmark of Xi’s China. The latter, under its current leader, has abandoned Deng Xiaoping’s dictum of “hide your strength, bide your time”. Xi’s China is confident about its military prowess and economic might and believes that it is now its turn to lead the world. The insecurity about criticism and the strident diplomatic language is about saying to the international community that China now sits at the head of the table and that a “rules-based order” that doesn’t account for Beijing’s exceptionalism — as it does for the US — will not stand.

India is far behind China in economic terms. Yet, the size of its market and a growing economy does give it bargaining power: There was little to no official criticism of the actions of the BJP from Western capitals. Strategically, the West and Japan see India as an important bulwark against an aggressive and expansionist China. All of this, perhaps, makes it easy to deploy our very own Wolf Warriors without consequences.

Just two factors to consider: First, at least part of the reason the West and others are enamoured with India is its democratic credentials and openness. The Chinese model of engaging in a constant battle of narratives about every little documentary or stray comment may do more harm than good in this regard.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, the decency and openness to criticism of a confident society and polity should not be a matter of weakness or compulsion. That a ruling party acts as though criticism is an attack on the country is disturbing. After all, the difference between authoritarianism and democracy is about more than just GDP numbers and what each can get away with as a result. Or at least it should be.

Why the draconian sedition law must go

Faizan Mustafa in The Indian Express

Whether people in a free country committed to the liberty of thought and freedom of expression can be criminally punished for expressing their opinion about the government is the moot question. Does the government have the right to affection? What is the origin of the law of sedition in India? How did the framers of the Constitution deal with it? How have our courts interpreted this sedition provision?

In the last seven years, an extreme nationalist ideology actively supported by pliant journalists repeatedly used aggressive nationalism to suppress dissent, mock liberals and civil libertarians and several governments routinely invoked Section 124-A that penalises sedition. An 84-year-old Jesuit priest, Stan Swamy, and 21-year-old Disha Ravi were not spared. A number of CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) protesters are facing sedition charges. NCRB data shows that between 2016 to 2019, there has been a whopping 160 per cent increase in the filing of sedition charges with a conviction rate of just 3.3 per cent. Of the 96 people charged in 2019, only two could be convicted.

On Thursday, a two-judge bench of Justices U U Lalit and Vineet Saran observed that “every journalist is entitled to the protection under the Kedar Nath judgment (1962)” on the petition filed by journalist Vinod Dua. Dua had sought the quashing of an FIR against him filed by a BJP leader of Himachal Pradesh. The bench took eight months to pronounce its order as arguments had concluded on October 6, 2020.

Justice Lalit in his 117-page historic judgment demolished all the arguments against the wider application of the sedition provision. The court entertained Dua’s writ petition under Article 32 as the Himachal Pradesh police failed to complete the investigation and submit its report under Section 173 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The Court found that statements attributed to Dua that the Prime Minister had used deaths and terror threats to garner votes were indeed not made in the talk show on March 30, 2020.

The Court relied on the Kedar Nath judgement in which the apex court had held that a citizen has the right to say or write whatever he likes about the government or its measures by way of criticism so long as he does not incite people to violence against the government or with the intention of creating public disorder. Section 124A read along with explanations is not attracted without such an allusion to violence. The Court concluded that statements made by Dua about masks, ventilators, migrant workers, etc. were not seditious and were mere disapprobation so that Covid management improves. The same were certainly not made to incite people to indulge in violence or create any disorder. The Court in Para 44 concluded that Dua’s prosecution would be unjust and would be violative of the freedom of speech.

Governments of opposition parties, including the Congress, have also indiscriminately invoked sedition charges against intellectuals, writers, dissenters and protesters. In fact, it was a Congress government that had made sedition a cognisable offence in 1974. Arundhati Roy, Aseem Trivedi, Binayak Sen and even those who opposed the nuclear plant in Kudankulam, Tamil Nadu and the expansion of the Sterlite plant in Thoothukudi were booked under Sec 124-A.

Section 124-A was not a part of the original Indian Penal Code drafted by Lord Macaulay and treason was confined just to levying war. It was Sir James Fitzjames Stephen who subsequently got it inserted in 1870 in response to the Wahabi movement that had asked Muslims to initiate jihad against the colonial regime. While introducing the Bill, he argued that Wahabis are going from village to village and preaching that it was the sacred religious duty of Muslims to wage a war against British rule. Stephen himself was interested in having provisions similar to the UK Treason Felony Act 1848 because of his strong agreement with the Lockean contractual notion of allegiance to the king and deference to the state.

Mahatma Gandhi, during his trial in 1922, termed Section 124-A as the “prince among the political sections of IPC designed to suppress liberty of the citizen”. He went on to tell the judge that “affection cannot be manufactured or regulated by law. If one has no affection for a person or system, one should be free to give fullest expression to his disaffection so long as it does not contemplate, promote or incite to violence”. Though Justice Maurice Gwyer in Niharendu Dutt Majumdar (1942) had narrowed the provision and held that public disorder was the essence of the offence, the Privy Council in Sadashiv Narayan Bhalerao (1947) relying on Explanation 1 observed public disorder was not necessary to complete the offence.

Strangely, the Fundamental Rights Sub-Committee (April 29, 1947) headed by Sardar Patel included sedition as a legitimate ground to restrict free speech. When Patel was criticised by other members of the Constituent Assembly, he dropped it. Constitutionally, Section 124A being a pre-Constitution law that is inconsistent with Article 19(1)(a), on the commencement of the Constitution, had become void. In fact, it was struck down by the Punjab High Court in Tara Singh Gopi Chand (1951).

Justice Lalit ought to have clarified the distinction between “government established by law” and “persons for the time being engaged in carrying on the administration” as the visible symbol of the state made by the Court in Kedar Nath. The very existence of the state will be in jeopardy if the government established by law is subverted. This observation did require some clarification by the Court as the state and government are not the same. Governments come and go but the Indian state is a permanent entity. Criticism of ministers cannot be equated with the creation of disaffection against the State. No government, as Mahatma Gandhi told Judge R S Broomfield, has a right to love and affection. India of the 21st century should not think like Stephen who was too worried about Macaulay’s code not penalising criticism of the government, however severe, hostile, unfair or disingenuous. We must understand that no slogan by itself, howsoever provocative such as “Khalistan Zindabad” can be legitimately termed as seditious as per the Balwant Singh (1995) judgment of the Supreme Court.

The Congress’s loss in the 2019 general election is attributed to, among other reasons, its manifesto’s promise that it would remove the sedition provision if voted to office. In 2018, the Law Commission had recommended that the sedition law should not be used to curb free speech. Let the criminal law revision committee working under the Ministry of Home Affairs make the bold recommendation of dropping the draconian law. A political consensus needs to be forged on this issue.

Covid lies cost lives – we have a duty to clamp down on them

George Monbiot in The Guardian

Why do we value lies more than lives? We know that certain falsehoods kill people. Some of those who believe such claims as “coronavirus doesn’t exist”, “it’s not the virus that makes people ill but 5G”, or “vaccines are used to inject us with microchips” fail to take precautions or refuse to be vaccinated, then contract and spread the virus. Yet we allow these lies to proliferate.

We have a right to speak freely. We also have a right to life. When malicious disinformation – claims that are known to be both false and dangerous – can spread without restraint, these two values collide head-on. One of them must give way, and the one we have chosen to sacrifice is human life. We treat free speech as sacred, but life as negotiable. When governments fail to ban outright lies that endanger people’s lives, I believe they make the wrong choice.

Any control by governments of what we may say is dangerous, especially when the government, like ours, has authoritarian tendencies. But the absence of control is also dangerous. In theory, we recognise that there are necessary limits to free speech: almost everyone agrees that we should not be free to shout “fire!” in a crowded theatre, because people are likely to be trampled to death. Well, people are being trampled to death by these lies. Surely the line has been crossed?

Those who demand absolute freedom of speech often talk about “the marketplace of ideas”. But in a marketplace, you are forbidden to make false claims about your product. You cannot pass one thing off as another. You cannot sell shares on a false prospectus. You are legally prohibited from making money by lying to your customers. In other words, in the marketplace there are limits to free speech. So where, in the marketplace of ideas, are the trading standards? Who regulates the weights and measures? Who checks the prospectus? We protect money from lies more carefully than we protect human life.

I believe that spreading only the most dangerous falsehoods, like those mentioned in the first paragraph, should be prohibited. A possible template is the Cancer Act, which bans people from advertising cures or treatments for cancer. A ban on the worst Covid lies should be time-limited, running for perhaps six months. I would like to see an expert committee, similar to the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), identifying claims that present a genuine danger to life and proposing their temporary prohibition to parliament.

While this measure would apply only to the most extreme cases, we should be far more alert to the dangers of misinformation in general. Even though it states that the pundits it names are not deliberately spreading false information, the new Anti-Virus site www.covidfaq.co might help to tip the balance against people such as Allison Pearson, Peter Hitchens and Sunetra Gupta, who have made such public headway with their misleading claims about the pandemic.

But how did these claims become so prominent? They achieved traction only because they were given a massive platform in the media, particularly in the Telegraph, the Mail and – above all – the house journal of unscientific gibberish, the Spectator. Their most influential outlet is the BBC. The BBC has an unerring instinct for misjudging where debate about a matter of science lies. It thrills to the sound of noisy, ill-informed contrarians. As the conservationist Stephen Barlow argues, science denial is destroying our societies and the survival of life on Earth. Yet it is treated by the media as a form of entertainment. The bigger the idiot, the greater the airtime.

Interestingly, all but one of the journalists mentioned on the Anti-Virus site also have a long track record of downplaying and, in some cases, denying, climate breakdown. Peter Hitchens, for example, has dismissed not only human-made global heating, but the greenhouse effect itself. Today, climate denial has mostly dissipated in this country, perhaps because the BBC has at last stopped treating climate change as a matter of controversy, and Channel 4 no longer makes films claiming that climate science is a scam. The broadcasters kept this disinformation alive, just as the BBC, still providing a platform for misleading claims this month, sustains falsehoods about the pandemic.

Ironies abound, however. One of the founders of the admirable Anti-Virus site is Sam Bowman, a senior fellow at the Adam Smith Institute (ASI). This is an opaquely funded lobby group with a long history of misleading claims about science that often seem to align with its ideology or the interests of its funders. For example, it has downplayed the dangers of tobacco smoke, and argued against smoking bans in pubs and plain packaging for cigarettes. In 2013, the Observer revealed that it had been taking money from tobacco companies. Bowman himself, echoing arguments made by the tobacco industry, has called for the “lifting [of] all EU-wide regulations on cigarette packaging” on the grounds of “civil liberties”. He has also railed against government funding for public health messages about the dangers of smoking.

Some of the ASI’s past claims about climate science – such as statements that the planet is “failing to warm” and that climate science is becoming “completely and utterly discredited” – are as idiotic as the claims about the pandemic that Bowman rightly exposes. The ASI’s Neoliberal Manifesto, published in 2019, maintains, among other howlers, that “fewer people are malnourished than ever before”. In reality, malnutrition has been rising since 2014. If Bowman is serious about being a defender of science, perhaps he could call out some of the falsehoods spread by his own organisation.

Lobby groups funded by plutocrats and corporations are responsible for much of the misinformation that saturates public life. The launch of the Great Barrington Declaration, for example, that champions herd immunity through mass infection with the help of discredited claims, was hosted – physically and online – by the American Institute for Economic Research. This institute has received money from the Charles Koch Foundation, and takes a wide range of anti-environmental positions.

It’s not surprising that we have an inveterate liar as prime minister: this government has emerged from a culture of rightwing misinformation, weaponised by thinktanks and lobby groups. False claims are big business: rich people and organisations will pay handsomely for others to spread them. Some of those whom the BBC used to “balance” climate scientists in its debates were professional liars paid by fossil-fuel companies.

Over the past 30 years, I have watched this business model spread like a virus through public life. Perhaps it is futile to call for a government of liars to regulate lies. But while conspiracy theorists make a killing from their false claims, we should at least name the standards that a good society would set, even if we can’t trust the current government to uphold them.

The Accidental Prime Minister: Is it fair before the elections?

Main Bhi Kafir, Tu Bhi Kafir by abducted teacher, poet and activist Salman Haider

Salman Haider reciting Main bhi Kafir, Tu bhi Kafir

History of the muzzling of the freedom of expression in Pakistan - by Hamid Bhashani

Tarek Fatah​ reflects on Freedom of Expression

On The Future of Pakistan

Whither Pakistan?

Interview with Tarek Fateh

WikiLeaks publishes secret draft chapter of Trans-Pacific Partnership

Treaty negotiated in secret between 12 nations 'would trample over individual rights and free expression', says Julian Assange

• Alex Hern and Dominic Rushe
• theguardian.com, Wednesday 13 November 2013 18.12 GMT

Demonstrators protest against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) after the May Day rally in Tokyo, Japan. Photograph: EPA/Kimimasa Mayama

WikiLeaks has released the draft text of a chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, a multilateral free-trade treaty currently being negotiated in secret by 12 Pacific Rim nations.

The full agreement covers a number of areas, but the chapter published by WikiLeaks focuses on intellectual property rights, an area of law which has effects in areas as diverse as pharmaceuticals and civil liberties.

------

Also Read

Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership: Wake up people, we’re being shafted

-------

Negotiations for the TPP have included representatives from the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Mexico, Malaysia, Chile, Singapore, Peru, Vietnam, and Brunei, but have been conducted behind closed doors. Even members of the US Congress were only allowed to view selected portions of the documents under supervision.

"We're really worried about a process which is so difficult for those who take an interest in these agreements to deal with. We rely on leaks like these to know what people are talking about," says Peter Bradwell, policy director of the London-based Open Rights Group.

"Lots of people in civil society have stressed that being more transparent, and talking about the text on the table, is crucial to give treaties like this any legitimacy. We shouldn't have to rely on leaks to start a debate about what's in then."

The 30,000 word intellectual property chapter contains proposals to increase the term of patents, including medical patents, beyond 20 years, and lower global standards for patentability. It also pushes for aggressive measures to prevent hackers breaking copyright protection, although that comes with some exceptions: protection can be broken in the course of "lawfully authorised activities carried out by government employees, agents, or contractors for the purpose of law enforcement, intelligence, essential security, or similar governmental purposes".

WikiLeaks claims that the text shows America attempting to enforce its highly restrictive vision of intellectual property on the world – and on itself. "The US administration is aggressively pushing the TPP through the US legislative process on the sly," says Julian Assange, the founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, who is living in the Ecuadorean embassy in London following an extradition dispute with Sweden, where he faces allegations of rape.

"If instituted," Assange continues, "the TPP’s intellectual property regime would trample over individual rights and free expression, as well as ride roughshod over the intellectual and creative commons. If you read, write, publish, think, listen, dance, sing or invent; if you farm or consume food; if you’re ill now or might one day be ill, the TPP has you in its crosshairs."

Just Foreign Policy, a group dedicated to reforming US foreign policy, managed to crowdfund a $70,000 (£43,700) bounty for Wikileaks if the organisation managed to leak the TPP text. "Our pledge, as individuals, is to donate this money to WikiLeaks should it leak the document we seek." The conditions the group set have not yet been met, however, because it required the full text, not individual chapters.

Related to the TPP is a second secret trade agreement, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which ties together regulatory practices in the US and EU. George Monbiot, writing in this paper, referred to the treaty as a "monstrous assault on democracy". Ken Clarke, the minister without portfolio, replied that it "would see our economy grow by an extra £10bn per annum".

Campaign group Fight for the Future has already collected over 100,000 signatures in an online petition against what it calls the “extreme Internet censorship plan: contained in the TPP.

Evan Greer, campaign manager for Fight for the Future, said: "The documents revealed by WikiLeaks make it clear why the US government has worked so hard to keep the TPP negotiatons secret. While claiming to champion an open Internet, the Obama administration is quietly pushing for extreme, SOPA-like copyright policies that benefit Hollywood and giant pharmaceutical companies at the expense of our most basic rights to freedom of expression online."

Google shows China the white flag of surrender

By Mic Wright Tech business Last updated: January 7th, 2013 

Google's message to Beijing

Six months ago, Google loudly trumpeted a brave stand against censorship in China. Now it's quietly committed an act of cowardice. In May 2012, it announced an anti-censorship feature – under the pretext of improving search quality – with a public blog post. In December, it got rid of the measure which notified Chinese users when keywords they were searching for would trigger the country's Great Firewall content blocking system – without telling its users. The switch-off only came to light thanks to the vigilance of Greatfire.org, a not-for-profit organisation that monitors censorship in China. The group called the move "self-censorship" but it's worse than that – it's a white flag of surrender.

From the moment Google introduced the feature, the Chinese internet censors fought back. But the ingenuity of Google's engineers got round each block until they finally embedded the entire function in HTML on Google's start page. That meant to block the notifications, China would have to block Google altogether. Inevitably, the search engine did end up blocked in its entirety more than once before the feature been activated. Gmail was also subject to blocks and a noticeable slowdown in performance. In the stand-off, Google blinked first. At a time when the Chinese government is strengthening its internet censorship measures, the firm has effectively admitted it just can't beat them and is no longer willing to try.

Though Google's share of search in China is under five per cent, that still amounts to more than 25 million users, and despite moving its services to Hong Kong in 2010, it won't abandon that market. Reports in recent weeks have suggested that it's on the cusp of a partnership with local search company, Qihoo 360, to take on the dominant player, Baidu. With that in mind, it seems like a remarkable coincidence that it has now decided to throw in the towel and drop the notifications. The company's unofficial mantra – "don't be evil" – becomes more threadbare with ever year.

While it's arguable that notifying users when they were about to be censored was a small thing, it put Google on the right side of the fight for free expression. By ceasing to indicate when its results are interfered with by the Great Firewall, Google has made itself complicit in the process. The company's desire to maintain a foothold in the Chinese market outweighs its highfalutin' rhetoric on the openness of the web and freedom of speech. China's censors must be delighted that Google has silenced itself.