Pakistan, China’s “iron brother,” has recently been plunged into politicalturmoil. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan on Sunday managed to block avote of no-confidence tabled by the opposition. After the motion wasrejected, Khan addressed a meeting and named a senior US diplomat as theperson allegedly involved in the “foreign conspiracy” to overthrow hisgovernment through the no-confidence vote.
Experts cited several reasons that have led to the current politicalsituation in Pakistan, including serious political infighting and pooreconomic development in Pakistan under the COVID-19 epidemic, to name justa few. And of course, as Khan mentioned, some external forces, especiallythose from the US, are interfering in the domestic affairs of the SouthAsian nation.
Zhao Gancheng, a research fellow at the Shanghai Institute forInternational Studies (SIIS), told the Global Times that Washington hasfailed in its attempts to rope in Khan, so it is possible it now hasmeddled in Pakistan’s politics to topple the current government.
Liu Zongyi, secretary-general of the Research Center for China-South AsiaCooperation at the SIIS, also believes the West, and particularly the US,doesn’t want to see Khan remain in power since he has gotten tougher onthem.
The politics of Sri Lanka, another country close to China, is also seeingbig troubles. All cabinet ministers of the country’s current administrationresigned on Sunday, except for President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and hisbrother, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. Besides, the president’s rulingcoalition lost its majority in parliament on Tuesday.
Even though the political upheaval in Sri Lanka is mainly because of theeconomic crisis it is being confronted – one of the country’s worst ever,there is still the possibility that Washington will take advantage of thesituation to stir up troubles and undermine the bilateral relations betweenBeijing and Colombo. That is what we should be wary of.
In recent years, the US has started to feel a sense of crisis due toChina’s rise and its close cooperation with other countries. Thus, the USis making all efforts to hinder the engagement between China and itsneighbors in every possible way. For example, it smears the China-proposedBelt and Road Initiative as setting “debt traps” in neighboring countries.It also keeps playing up the “China threat” in the hope that some regionalcountries tilt away from China and toward itself.
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The US is infamous for staging or inciting “color revolutions” in or near acountry that has a government it dislikes. It is behind the OrangeRevolution and the “Euromaidan” in Ukraine, one of Russia’s neighbors.Given such a bad reputation the US enjoys, some suggest the US is doingsimilar things in regions around China.
In Zhao’s opinion, there is no doubt that the US wants to contain China,but the former cannot afford to stage “color revolutions” in each and everyone of China’s neighboring countries, as the cost is way too high. Liu alsobelieves that the possibility of the US engaging in “color revolutions” incountries like Pakistan and Sri Lanka is quite low.
However, this does not mean that the US will stop meddling in the politicsof some of China’s neighbors to undermine China’s development andneighborhood diplomacy. It will also disrupt the peace and stability ofboth the region and regional countries, something that countries such asPakistan and Sri Lanka desperately need at the moment.
It will not be easy for these countries to deal with the attempts ofinterference and infiltration from the external forces. Liu sees theongoing turmoil in the two South Asian countries as inevitable consequencesof intense domestic political struggles, leaving a seam for other forces totake advantage of the situation to creep in.
“Only by resolving internal conflicts and stabilizing their societies firstwill these nations be able to protect themselves from external forces,”said Liu.Source:link