Abanti Bhattacharya

Prachanda & China: Nepal’s small country syndrome

January 6, 2023

Tellingly, the return of Prachanda as Prime Minister of Nepal for the third time after his defection from the Nepali Congressled alliance to the K.P. Oli led Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist) suggests the return of Chinese interference in Nepalese politics to the detriment of regional security of...

Explaining China’s Siege Mentality

October 15, 2022

Every Chinese leadership since the time of Mao Zedong has come up with its own foreign policy conceptualization after conducting a thorough stock-taking of the existing international security situation. This year, in April 22, in the backdrop of escalating Russia-Ukraine conflict and continuing menace of Covid-19 pandemic, Xi Jinping put...

Resurrection of ideology under Xi Jinping

October 14, 2022

When Xi Jinping assumed leadership of China in 2012, one of the first steps he undertook to firmly get the party in control was to launch an anti-corruption campaign which indicted more than 1.5 million party cadres, a humongous figure not seen before in Chinese party history. There was certainly...

Rationale behind Xi’s power consolidation

October 13, 2022

Breaking the norm of a two-term limit, Chinese President Xi Jinping is all set to extend his presidency for a third term at the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) which is beginning from 16 October. When the 19th Party Congress in 2017 had ended without naming...

China’s big SCO game: Pit Eurasia against Indo-Pacific

September 22, 2022

The 16 September speech delivered by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Heads of State meeting in Samarkand made a significant mention of the Eurasian continent as a “home to us all”. By pitching Eurasia as a region for upholding “peace and development” as well as...

Explaining India’s neutrality in the Russia-Ukraine war

May 21, 2022

The Russo-Ukraine conflict not only tells us about the grave challenges to the liberal international order, but tellingly indicates the weaknesses inherent in the nation-state system that has become the standard model of state formation since the post-War era. Born out of the Westphalian treaty of 1648 signed at the...