Pushing back Against China’s Fishing Practices | Is India an Autocracy? | The Strategic Unseriousness of Olaf Scholz

Is India an Autocracy?  (Ashoka Mody, The Atlantic)
The assault on expression, and on virtually every other mainstay of democracy, has become commonplace under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, and it is the backdrop against which Indians have begun voting to elect their next Parliament and prime minister. Of the nearly 1 billion eligible voters, perhaps more than 600 million will cast their votes over a six-week-long process. Modi, who heads the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is widely expected to win a third term as prime minister in his bitter contest against a motley alliance of opposition parties, the Indian National Development Inclusive Alliance (INDIA).
The spectacle of hundreds of millions of Indians—many suffering severe material deprivation—performing their civic duty arouses both hope and wonder, often winning India the title of “world’s largest democracy.” But Indian democracy did not just begin to degrade under Modi: It has been eroding since the first years of independence. Modi has put that process on steroids and today presides over an autocracy in all but name.
For decades, the Indian state has used coercive legal powers to suppress dissent and constitutional mechanisms to delegitimize votes. The judiciary has largely acquiesced, money has gushed into Indian politics, and Hindu nationalism has cast a dark shadow of division. What are treated now as anomalies have been the trajectory all along.

Suddenly, Chinese Spies Seem to Be Popping Up All Over Europe  (Andrew Higgins and Christopher F. Schuetze, New York Times)
The espionage cases in Britain and Germany, the first of their kind in two countries that once cultivated warm relations with Beijing, served as eye-catching exclamation points in Europe’s long, often anguished breakup with China.
Shortly after British and German officials announced that six of their citizens had been charged with espionage, the Dutch and Polish authorities on Wednesday raided the offices of a Chinese security equipment supplier as part of a crackdown by the European Union on what it sees as unfair trading practices.
It was the first time that the bloc’s executive arm, the European Commission, had used a new anti-foreign subsidy law to order a raid on a Chinese company.
In early April, Sweden expelled a Chinese journalist who had been a resident of the country for two decades, saying the reporter posed a threat to national security.
After years of regular tiffs over trade followed by reconciliation, Europe “has lost patience with China,” said Ivana Karaskova, a Czech researcher at the Association for International Affairs, an independent research group in Prague, who until last month served as an adviser to the European Commission on China.
China still has steadfast friends in the European Union, notably Hungary, she added, in “the multidimensional chess game” between the world’s two largest economies after the United States. But Europe, Ms. Karaskova said, has moved from a position of “total denial” in some quarters over the danger posed by Chinese espionage and influence operations to “take a less naïve view, and wants to defend European interests vis-à-vis China.”

After 30 Years of ANC Rule, Zulu Heartlands Are Backing a Gay White Man  (Jane Flanagan, The Times)
Chris Pappas, young, white and gay, is the unlikely-looking challenger to the ANC’s leadership of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province at next month’s general election.
He  looks far from the region’s typical strongman politician. He is also the first candidate from the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) — regarded as the natural home of white voters and businesses — ever to have campaigned in this remote hamlet.
His pledge to solve big problems with many small solutions is backed by experience. At local elections three years ago Pappas led the DA’s first ever win of a local authority in KZN. As mayor of uMngeni, he has cut waste and streamlined systems to fund improved services and help the poorest residents.

The Strategic Unseriousness of Olaf Scholz  (James Crabtree, Foreign Policy)
The deep and enduring divisions between Europe and the United States over how best to handle China are on full display once again. U.S. Secretary State Antony Blinken is scheduled to land in China on April 24. Prior to touching down, he threatened tough measures unless Beijing stopped supporting Russia in its war against Ukraine through sending weapons-linked technologies to the Kremlin. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, by contrast, just wrapped up a China trip that was far more conciliatory in both tone and substance—an approach that leaves Germany, and by extension Europe, at risk of looking alarmingly naive in the face of the economic and security challenges posed by China.
Blinken’s visit follows a period of improving U.S.-China ties. Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping held a productive meeting in Woodside, California, in November 2023, with a follow-up phone call this month. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen visited Beijing earlier in April as well. New cabinet-level communication channels have stabilized a relationship that only last year seemed in danger of spinning out of control. Yellen now deals with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng on economic issues, while U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
The White House views the latter channel as notably successful, in part because Wang now combines the twin roles of foreign-policy chief for both the government and the Chinese Communist Party. This allows a more streamlined communication compared to the time when these roles were split in two.
Yet despite this, the U.S. approach remains basically competitive. Just like Blinken brandishing warnings about Ukraine as he arrives this week, so too did Yellen pepper her trip with tough comments about what she described as China’s unfair manufacturing practices.
Scholz’s approach was markedly different—and not in a good way. This was obvious from the moment that details of his delegation emerged. There are senior figures in Germany with a hard-headed, strategic view of China, not least Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock. But neither were in Beijing. Instead, Scholz took ministers in areas such as agriculture, who favor close cooperation with Beijing, along with a bevy of industrial CEOs promoting Sino-German trade and investment.
He also declined to make a big set-piece speech. Indeed, Scholz said remarkably little in public about issues that strike at critical European economic and security interests, from China’s support for Russia to the growing risks of industrial overcapacity. China’s media was understandably delighted. “I would describe the coverage as ebullient,” as Rhodium Group China advisor Noah Barkin wrote following the trip. “Clearly there is a sense that China dodged a bullet.”