Passage Based Questions: Logical Reasoning - 5 | Passage Based Questions for CLAT Preparation PDF Download

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the questions. 
Global markets can only function with a modicum of transparency, and free markets require limited government. Communist China has none of those attributes. Yet it was admitted into the global trading system on the mistaken premise that it would gradually acquire them. With China’s subsequent- and – stunning – rise to become the world’s second biggest economy, the postwar liberal order has been imploded from within and lies in ruins, contributing to the great world disorder we see today. Egregious Chinese behaviour on Ladakh’s icy heights is just one of the symptoms of that disorder.
There’s no doubt that Chinese firms are ferociously competitive, and their government has done an excellent job of developing infrastructure and tech prowess. But alongside Beijing has developed an extensive panoply of mercantilist, beggar-thy-neighbour policies that go against the spirit, if not the letter, of the principles of free trade and pursuit of competitive advantage that WTO is supposed to underpin.
These include currency manipulation, standards manipulation, a comprehensive system of state subsidies for national firms, repressing returns on household savings through an underdeveloped financial sector, forced technology transfers, forced joint ventures, technology theft including through cyber espionage, limiting exports of critical materials to deny key inputs to foreign firms, the weaponisation of trade for political ends.
India has been a particular victim of Chinese mercantilism. Opaque Chinese authorities permit imports of few Indian goods and services that have otherwise been globally competitive, thus perpetuating an exploitative, colonial style trade relationship with India. And now, of course, Indian soldiers have been brutally killed.
Supporting China’s mercantilist methods is a political system of all-encompassing surveillance and suppression of dissent using state of the art digital technology, a system that has been described as ‘digital Leninism’ and reaches Orwellian proportions. Political liberalism supports economic liberalism- following a rule-based global order has something to do with being able to implement the rule of law and separation of powers at home. But the Chinese system is the very antithesis of political liberalism.