India Today draws a pipe dream for New Delhi

The Indian magazine India Today has gone viral in the past two days. Its latest cover story, headlined "China's New Chick," has an illustration of the map of China looking like a chicken, which excludes Tibet and Taiwan, and a map of Pakistan below, which looks like its chick. A subtitle to the headline declares: "How China is buying out Pakistan with massive new investments and why India needs to worry."



Such hysterical geopolitical imagination is nothing new. What is new, however, is the erroneous exclusion of Tibet and Taiwan from Chinese territory. India Today is believed to be one of the most serious media outlets in the country, but the magazine presents to the world an image of a loser.



A country's mainstream media usually reflects the level of its elite, but India Today puts the Indian elite in disgrace. It is said that there are two Indias. One is folk India, which has one of highest rates of illiteracy in the world. The other is elite India, a group of supposedly high standards.



But India Today makes us realize that the country's elite behave like clods. They are shallow and arrogant as they have always placed themselves above ordinary Indians.



China and India are currently locked in a border standoff. Some Indian elites understandably hate China and want to carve away Tibet and Taiwan. But they know this is an impossibility, so they are reduced to drawing an illustration. It is more ludicrous when the magazine proudly proclaimed that the cover was selected as the "The Cover of the Day" by the Society of Publication Designers, New York.



India is not able to compete with China. Indian officials have toned down the dispute recently, because they realize the People's Liberation Army is preparing for a military showdown which India will not be able to withstand. So Indian minister of state for external affairs general V.K. Singh stated that India and China are committed to a "fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution" to the boundary dispute through dialogue and peaceful negotiation.



But China's stance will not change. If India does not withdraw its troops according to international law, China will force it to. Before that, China will not sit down with India.



How possible is it for India to carve away Tibet and Taiwan from China? The one who can is perhaps an illustrator of a magazine. If China and India compete for who can divide the other, India will be roundly defeated.



India had better withdraw its troops to its own territory before China uses up its patience.



India Today makes us realize the petty nationalistic ideology of India's policymakers. India may continue to live in an illusion, but China is bound to resume the order of its border.





