China has been bungling its post-coronavirus foreign policy

As the United States has faltered in its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, many experts have warned that China is using the situation to enhance its influence across the world. This is part of a familiar pattern in which the United States has worried that its competitors or adversaries were 10 feet tall and growing. But in fact, a striking feature of the recent international landscape has been China’s strategic blunders.

The most significant example is China’s recent incursion into India, in the Galwan Valley, long under dispute by the two countries. For reasons that are not entirely clear, Chinese forces have reportedly taken about 23 square miles of arid land, sparking a deadly skirmish. This has triggered a powerful backlash in India. New Delhi has tried for years to maintain good relations with both the United States and China. India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has met with President Xi Jinping 18 times and often rejected talk of aligning with the United States, pursuing a foreign policy characterized as “multi-aligned.”

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