The Chinese are apparently in a state of silent shock. News emerging from the red nation is of yet another season of purge. Zhang Youxia, the second-in-command in China’s military structure, next only to President Xi Jinping in the Central Military Commission, is “missing” from public life since November last. The defence establishment says he’s under “investigation for serious violations of discipline and law.” He has been accused of leaking crucial defence secrets about China’s nuclear programme to the United States. In this backdrop, Xi’s present round of purge is targeting senior military personnel involved in corruption. Corrective steps are underway through removal of scores of top defence personnel from their positions. He’s also aggressively attempting to modernize the military to make it “world-class” by next year – when the People’s Liberation Army reaches its centenary year.
What happens in China bears crucial lessons for India. Xi’s hard-edged anti-corruption drive saw the ouster of several ministers and generals in the last two years. Cleaning the system has been a matter of first priority for Xi ever since he took charge of the nation in 2012. The recent years saw China scaling new heights in military prowess and economic power. Yet, the accusations now that his second-in-command “leaked” vital nuclear secrets to the US explains the extent to which the rot has set in there. What happens in India is not always known in the public sphere despite the media freedom here. Corrupt officials generally get away with their act. Those at the helm are not serious about curbing corruption. Central agencies like CBI and ED have majorly lost their reputation due to corruption and political interference in their functioning. Not even 10 per cent of the cases these agencies investigate reach a successful conclusion. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, despite his 2014 promise to check corruption, vacillated through his three terms. While Modi is not seen to be personally corrupt, he’s infamously presiding over a corrupt system. He obviously lacks the energy, skills and courage to clean up the Augean stables.
China’s party-led dictatorship has its good sides and bad patches. Xi claims he would make the Chinese society a strong, democratic, civilized and modern entity in another 20 years. Fact is that the fruits of China’s development have reached all, cutting across communities and regions. This is unlike India, where growth is region-specific, its benefits being reaped by select segments of the people, leaving the large army of the poor in a state of disadvantage and despair. The life of the tribals, for instance, has improved only marginally in a span of 80 years. Nepotism in governmental and bureaucratic functioning is at its height. The mass discontentment is increasingly pronounced even as a deceptive calm exists. Politicians are no longer a respectable lot. This is an invitation to trouble for the future. A JP-movement unseated the all-powerful Indira Gandhi’s government in the mid-1970s. Today, a spark can ignite a fire. Sri Lanka and Bangladesh proved how fragile the governments in Asian democracies are. Even China with all its controls can erupt. Global order itself can change.
