India’s Minister for Law and Justice, Electronics and Information Technology and Communications – Ravi Shankar Prasad announced recently on a triumphant note: “For security and sovereignty of India, for countrymen’s digital security and privacy we have banned 59 apps, including TikTok. India knows how to look in the eyes of those eyeing our borders and to protect countrymen, India can even do a digital strike.” The border skirmish between India and China, now in its 9th week, on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) near the Galwan valley, Ladakh is one of our biggest foreign and defence policy challenges in decades and it will require exceptional political and diplomatic skills to come out unscathed from this daunting situation.
There are always multiple fronts to any war or conflict between nation-states. One is the actual battle that is fought on ground zero between armed battalions with cruise missiles and howitzers while the other front is that of perception-management to keep domestic public opinion in favour of war and neutralise any voices preaching pacifism and peace. Media channels and platforms are the foot soldiers of the government’s perception-battle and play an active role in running the engines of state-sponsored propaganda.
There is another front that is very effective in hitting your enemy – the economic front. The typical mechanism utilised is the imposition of economic sanctions and boycott of goods and services from the enemy country. The Indian boycott of 59 Chinese apps helps us grab media eyeballs as well as convey a political message that we are hurt and will retaliate.
CHINESE APPS BAN
The global mobile app revenues in 2019 amounted to 461 billion US dollars and expected to close at 582 billion US dollars in 2020. App revenue in India is predicted to reach 261 million US dollars. One of the most popular Chinese apps in India today is TikTok, which has given American Google owned YouTube a serious run for its money. India accounts for almost 40% of TikTok’s global active user-base of 500 million. Analysts say that China is losing Rs 2.5 crores every day because of the ban on TikTok.
Chinese e-commerce giant – Alibaba owns UC Browser, a very commonly used mobile web browser. They have 430 million active users of which 130 million are from India. Document scanning app CamScanner is also very popular in India with more than 100 million users but now banned by the government. ShareIt, an extremely widely used file-sharing tool has more than 400 million active users in India of the 1.8 billion users worldwide.
Speaking to timesnownews.com, Blaise Fernandes, Director, Gateway House said: “The App ban should not be looked in isolation. The 59 apps from China was a part of its Digital Silk route. The government has banned the vanity Apps; life will move on without Tiktok. UC browser is a front for Chinese propaganda. Banning such apps will have an economic impact on Chinese Companies. We have to act in a way that they face financial implications. The US will not allow China to invest in 5G, if we follow the same footsteps, a huge untapped market like India will give a significant blow to the Chinese economy. India will get enough investments from other sources; we don’t need to be dependent on China for investments into the Digital Economy.”
HOW MUCH CAN WE AFFORD TO CONFRONT?
Undoubtedly, the ban on Chinese mobile apps will hurt China economically but one has to realise that India also loses investment and income to its citizens. It was reported that TikTok planned to invest 1 billion US dollars in India and hire around a thousand people. So if India treads on the path of boycott, it must also be prepared to face a loss in Chinese investment. However, there are more sombre facts that we must contemplate.
The balance of trade between India and China is heavily loaded in favour of China. We import $ 70.3 billion from China but export $ 16.7 billion to it. Our Chinese imports constitute a mere 2% of Chinese exports and so our boycott of Chinese goods and services may not have much of an economic impact on China. However, the range of products that we import from China includes consumer durables, electronics, smartphones, industrial goods, vehicles, photovoltaic cells and pharmaceuticals.
China’s share of India’s electrical and electronics was almost 60% a few years back. Chinese mobile phone brands – Xiaomi, Vivo, Realme and Oppo take up about 60% of the smartphone market. The share of China in India’s automobile components, toys and bicycles is 30%, 90% and 50% respectively. Chinese Alibaba Group has investments worth millions of dollars in firms such as Big Basket, Paytm, Paytm Mall, Zomato and Snapdeal. Another Chinese group, Tencent Holdings has substantial stakes in household names like Byju’s, Dream11, Flipkart, Hike Messenger, Ola and Swiggy.
Can we afford a trade war with China as retaliation for its aggression on the LAC? If we block Chinese imports, will it not make our exports uncompetitive as Chinese components make up a big part of our manufacturing goods? Indian pharma sector is heavily dependent on Chinese raw material for manufacturing generic drugs. The much-hyped hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) that is critical for COVID19 patients depends on Chinese Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs). These humbling data should make us realise that we can ill-afford an all-out confrontation with China in terms of trade and commerce as part of our reprisal for the attack on our territorial integrity. So, what are our options?
PEACE FOR WELFARE
We must always remember and learn to discern between national interests and the interests of a regime or a government. There is always a surreptitious effort to blend the two and make it appear as if the government is fighting a war for its people. Wars cause a severe drain on the economy and ultimately hurt the common man when welfare schemes are suspended to boost the economy and support the war-efforts. There is a rise in national debt, which affects future taxes. Inflation and a decline in healthcare affect the public. Civil liberties are curbed and transparency in governance is skipped in the name of security interests. This phenomenon is not something new but has been played out hundreds of times.
According to a CNBC report – “The U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Pakistan have cost American taxpayers $6.4 trillion since they began in 2001. That total is $2 trillion more than all federal government spending during the recently completed fiscal year. The report, from Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University, also finds that more than 801,000 people have died as a direct result of fighting.”
Imagine the colossal benefits if this money would have been invested in the real economy to create jobs and business opportunities. Hence, the pursuit of peace and reconciliation shall forever remain the prudent thing to do. Falling prey to jingoism and the rhetoric of demagogues will only exacerbate the situation and increase turmoil and misery. Thomas Mann correctly pointed out – “War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.” Let us unite to advocate “peace of the brave”.