Chinese Challenge: Time for India to Gear Up

Notwithstanding the economic convergences at display, strategic divergences including the seemingly ceaseless territorial and boundary dispute hold potential to be a prime source of conflict between India and China—often projected as Asia’s twin power centres.

China envisions closing the economic and military gap as an essential tenet of its ‘grand strategy’ and thereby consolidating its ‘comprehensive national power.’ China’s military strategy for the foreseeable future focuses on fighting limited, short-duration conflicts along its periphery. While formulating its military strategy of ‘active defence’ for the 21st century, China is focussing on four crucial components: emphasising the prevention and deterrence of crises and wars; building hi-tech military capabilities to win local wars in conditions of ‘informationisation’; enhancing the ability to counter various security threats; and, improving its military mobilisation and logistics mechanism.

A crucial spoke in China’s grand strategy is its policy to thwart or interrupt, India’s rise as a challenging regional power in Asia. By means of strategic and tactical linkages within South Asia and the Central Asian Republics, Beijing has dexterously crafted a ‘string of pearls’ strategy in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea—in what could well be interpreted as China’s objective to confine India to the backwaters of the Indian Ocean as a subaltern state.

The territorial and boundary dispute has emerged as a major sticking point in Sino-Indian relations with the Line of Actual Control (LAC) not yet been physically demarcated/delineated on ground as well as in military maps. China is concerned that a border settlement, without major Indian territorial concessions, could potentially augment India’s power position and thus impact detrimentally upon China’s rise within Asia and beyond.

The violations of Indian airspace coupled with incursions in the high altitude terrain in northeast Leh in mid-2009 wherein the Chinese border guards violated the International Border demonstrate China’s aggressive military posture. These transgressions are in addition to the incursions across the boundary on the northern tip of Sikkim in June 2008 despite the fact that the boundary in this area was settled between Sikkim and Tibet.

Therefore, in terms of military action, India in the short term would need to ensure that there are no violations of the LAC through effective border control and management while maintaining a vigorously strong conventional posture. Added emphasis should be paid towards improving the logistics infrastructure in the border areas coupled with pro-active patrolling policy. As the gap in overall military potential, most crucially vis-à-vis strategic weapons increasingly favours China, it is about time that India spruced up its act.

While highlighting altercation on fronts including Taiwan, East Turkistan and Tibet, China’s national defence policy reiterates that its concepts of warfare and capability upgradation go well beyond meeting challenges in the above-mentioned spheres. India needs to take caution while China declares that its national security strategy is set to look beyond Taiwan. Beijing has categorically mentioned that its military capabilities shall continue to grow even as the Taiwan issue thaws—an obvious reference to Tibet.

New Delhi ought to work swiftly towards focusing its diplomatic efforts to expedite the delineation of the LAC on the Indo-Tibetan border. So far, lack of transportation abilities had greatly restricted China’s military maneuverability in this region, however with the completion of the Qinghai-Tibet railway line, China has overcome that key impediment in so far as increasing its military deployment near the Indo-Tibetan border is concerned. Given China’s rapid infrastructure build-up in Tibet, it is apparent that the Chinese logistics system is being overhauled to enhance its ability to support a more mobile and better-equipped fighting force.

In what presumably could be inferred as efforts to beef up its offensive operations capability against China, the Indian Army reportedly has begun the process of raising two new division sized army formations to strengthen its mountain warfare machinery. These divisions shall include air-based assets, vital towards providing logistics and fire support, are an addition to the existing 10 divisions of the Indian Army along with an infantry division earmarked for high altitude operations, thereby enhancing the tactical strength of the Indian Army as it prepares to counter China. Indications are galore that the boundary dispute involving the 4,056 kms long border will eventually assume shape of being a key impediment in future Sino-Indian relations with the probability of a border conflict not ruled out.

Until it achieves its diabolical ambitions, China is likely to continue following a twin-track policy in its dealings with India while maintaining strategic stability and at the same time emitting aggressive engagement tactically. Indisputably, China’s growing power and influence in Asia is a strategic challenge for India and sooner or later, New Delhi and Beijing’s political and economic interests and aspirations are bound to clash owing primarily to the complexities of Sino-Indian geopolitics at play.

Courtsey: The Indian Express, 15 January 2010

(Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the views either of the Editorial Committee or the Centre for Land Warfare Studies).