In China’s own domestic political-metric, this all could easily be viewed as losses set-off against gains purported elsewhere. A political calculus, premised heavily upon: manufacturing-exports-incomes-overseas forays, may now feel the constraints in upholding the political bargain and social compact with its citizenry

NEW DELHI: In times marked by COVID upheavals and GDP plunges, China under Xi’s helmsman ship, has demonstratively been exhibiting an increasingly frayed and brittle performance at the frontiers and along its neighbourhoods, across South China Sea, Taiwan, Eastern seas, Hong Kong, Uyghur populated Xinjiang and now in the Himalayan heights of Ladakh.

Having lost Taiwan’s electoral-plot, Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s decades-long gains vis-à-vis KMT have easily been evaporated, setting clock back by decades. The close-knit Hong Kong narrative, placed firmly within the bounds of nationalist-discourse, appears slipping too, with vocal Hong Kong natives conversing increasingly with the world. Burgeoning bonhomie among Hong Kong and Taiwan residents may yet prove a thorn in CCP’s soft underbelly.

Uyghur re-education camps in North West Xinjiang province appear too a throwback, in a 21st-century modern polity having to rely on instruments of an era gone by, casting doubts as to poverty-of-solutions intelligible today’s generation.

Xi’s maritime ambitions are hemmed-in too by the Pacific and Indian Ocean tides, after initial forays in the South China Sea. Needless to mention surging ebbs in the country’s economic performance. Country’s BRI bandwagon, with fortunes tied firmly with the GDP and SoEs deliveries, will likely find winds missing from the sails too.

In China’s own domestic political-metric, this all could easily be viewed as losses set-off against gains purported elsewhere. A political calculus, premised heavily upon: manufacturing-exports-incomes-overseas forays, may now feel the constraints in upholding the political bargain and social compact with its citizenry.

Digressions from breaking news mitigate inconvenient truths in today’s age of viral news. Appalling though is PRC having to throw open all its frontiers to keep the domestic audience glued. Not to mention surging costs in managing “it” each time, be it central bank intervention to save RMB last year depleting forex reserves by 700-800 bn USD and efforts, thereabouts, to salvage plunging stock markets leading to abrupt trading stoppages.

Question a begging is whether CCP’s formula of “economic dividends-social costs” has outlasted its course. Whether a weakened economy, dented by 2008 crisis, tariff wars, and export-shrinkages, will be able to withstand COVID onslaughts, to deliver on promises CCP expects of it?

Relevant too is, as to how much of it is “assertiveness” and how much of a “panic act”. Would an economy basking in comforts of exports, forex, containers on high-seas, and crude and gas buzzing its factories, would activate barren-heights and testy fault-lines at this juncture?

In terms of Party’s own evolving narrative, from Jiang Zemin’s stabilisation to Hu Jintao’s “Peaceful Rise”, whether Party scribes will accord approbations to Xi Jinping’s performance along key Party priorities. Party traditionally has extracted huge prices for social and political debacles in the past. Should there now be one for economic debacle and melting of social-concord, the price this time may be of epic proportions, even by CCP’s own proportions.