Hidden dragon
A former associate editor with the Times of India, Jug Suraiya writes two regular columns for the print edition, Jugular Vein, which appears every Friday, and Second Opinion, which appears on Wednesdays. His blog takes a contrarian view of topical and timeless issues, political, social, economic and speculative. LESS ... MORE
Could India and Pakistan be unwitting pieces in a devious game of Chinese chequers?
Two Chinese generals, Mi and Yu, congratulating themselves on the success of their Operation Springing Tiger.
Mi: Even if I do say it myself, our secret plan worked out very well. In fact, it worked out even better than I had hoped it would.
Yu: It certainly did, didn't it? All thanks to the predictable actions and reactions of the two players who played our game without even knowing it.
Mi: First, we encouraged one of them to launch a terrorist attack on the other, which didn't need much encouragement.
Yu: Then the player who was attacked inevitably struck back, which made the first player escalate hostilities.
Mi: Exactly as we planned. With both players engaged in a shooting match, our objective was achieved.
Which is to keep all of them on the boil, or in the wok, as it were. Fireworks are always good for business. That stands to reason, right. After all, it was we who invented gunpowder centuries ago.
Yu: So now, more will line up to buy our weaponry, some of it anyway, and apart from exporting cheap phones, and TVs, and laptops, and fireworks, and other gewgaws, we'll also become a big arms exporter.
Mi: And the best part is that share prices of our arms company went up briefly. And thanks to our insider trading, we made a killing.
Yu: And we can make more of a killing by prompting others to do the killing on our behalf by using our weapons to fight each other.
Mi: We've already got some ready-made customers. And we can always drum up more with what might literally be called aggressive marketing.
Yu: I like our plan more and more. Or should I say war and war…?
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