The world’s not enough

Unlike us, the Chinese are a fiercely competitive race. They will go to any length to show the world that they have arrived, they are best and they own almost half of the world.

Unlike us, the Chinese are a fiercely competitive race. They will go to any length to show the world that they have arrived, they are best and they own almost half of the world. To appreciate such a worldview, either you need to be a Chinese or have a very strong sense of humour. We think we are second in ample amount, thank god! In the latest of Beijing’s Big Brother transgressions, the country’s government-run online mapping service, Map World, showed Arunachal Pradesh, as a part of their territory. However, there’s nothing to new to this claim. On the just released map, the Sino-Indian border is now south of northern Assam and Arunachal Pradesh is part of China’s southern Tibet region. In Kashmir, Aksai Chin is shown as a part of northwest China. The Map World is said to compete with the market biggie Google Earth for a lion’s share of over 400 million Internet users.

HT Image

So what’s next? The route they have taken, it seems the next claim will be Communist-ruled Bengal. Well, we would suggest keeping that festering state aside since there’s a serious chance of being confronted by not a bhadralok chief minister but a rather militant Trinamool Congress’ Mamata Banerjee. She will not take such claims kindly because she sees the state as her own, and just her own. The Chinese party system of putting everything order will just fall apart once the chief minister-in-waiting shows her true colours. Ask our very own peaceful sardar Manmohan Singh. Even if they manage Bengal (though we seriously doubt it), they have a real hurdle in Bihar and that would surely be their Waterloo. Has Beijing ever thought about how it will handle a torpedo called Lalu Prasad?