Do we need a fire line against China?

Is it time to have a fire line against China? Before we try and find an answer to this lets first understand what is a fire line, then it will be easier to decide that we really need it or not?

FireLine is a strip of open land in forest or prairie, to arrest the advance of fire another name for a firebreak.

When there is a wildfire and all the other measures of arresting the fire are exhausted or not delivering desired results fire line or firebreak comes into play. In this technique a gap is created between the areas under fire and area free form fire. In this effort the Firefighters do allow some part of wildfire forest to burn down to ashes. Though in this technique we lose some part of the forest but at the same point in time save a larger part.

Now if we look at the current world scenario China instigated a wildfire, with a hope to create a market for its products, assuming that the world will buy what it produces.

But fortunately or unfortunately the plan never worked out the way, how it was expected to unfurl.

As it happens in any of the military campaigns, this bio-economic warfare also had some glitches and failed to yield desired results. Some of the assumptions, which as per my view never worked out in favor of this Chines bio-economic warfare are as follows:  

a)    World’s largest market outside China never opened up well for China i.e. India.

b)    World leaders not giving up on the terms of China.

c)    Most of the countries (both big and small) suffered and bleed but never gave up.

Considering the population and density of the population of India and how Covid-19 impacted other countries, India is for sure in a much better position. If the Indian population would have impacted at the same rate how some of the other countries like Italy, UK or the US were impacted, just imagine the plight and a huge market opening up for Chines products like masks, sensitizes, swaps, testing kits, PPE Kits, ventilators etc. But I can very proudly say that the combined efforts of the Indian population and its government never allowed that to happen and the market that China was eyeing, never opened for it.

US & European markets also never gave the expected demand for Chines products, failing in quality test by some of the initial consignments was another blow to the aspirations of China to boost its exports. they were expecting no quality checks for the supplies when the world is under life threat.

Some of the world leaders who were not very helpful for China were (rather I should say are) also on target, as a sub-objective of this bio-economic warfare China was aiming to destroy their political carrier and have favorable/supportive people in power, who will help China in attaining its socio-economic goals round the globe.

Last but not least some of the small nations like Taiwan, also stood firm on its stand, and big boys like the US and India never allowed China to have a free run.

Now that China is almost sure of not being able to attain its objective of this bio-economic warfare, as expected, is trying to infuse some new elements to it. Recent being:

a)    Frequent standoffs with Indian troops at various spots all along the Indo-China border.

b)    Roping in Nepal to increase unrest in South East Asia.

Now coming back to the question that I asked in the beginning of this blog, do we need a fire line against China?

Yes, we definitely need one. If we look at history we can find n number of examples, when world came together to fight against a nation together which were assumed to be a threat to world peace.  Even if we let the military measures let go – economic sanctions can be very effective.

In the past and even today when we can have sanctions on various countries to ensure world peace, why can’t we have sanctions against China, who has endangered the world as a whole?

I termed the implementation of economic sanctions against China as FireLine because at this juncture, we together may suffer some losses due to the non-availability of aid received from China, but that will be a small price to pay rather than going into economic slavery of China.

If the world leaders fail to do so, under the pretext of WTO, GATT, or something else, then we can safely assume that this is all a well-planned game of leaders and common people across the globe paying the price.