Our Larger China Picture

Context: Give the recent border skirmishes between China and India in Eastern Ladakh, India needs to understand the various intentions behind the Chinese action and develop a comprehensive strategy to counter the same.

Analysis of the recent Chinese Aggression:

• Not just an issue of territorial claim: due to the following reasons:

• Chinese “delaying” tactics: 

• 4 National Security Advisers have spent 20 years to settle the border issues with no real outcomes.
• China is cautious over handing over any map showing the Chinese version of the LAC in the West.

• Little strategic sense: In recent skirmishes, Chinese gained some 800m at western LAC despite amassing huge troops which they could have anyway gained in some NSA-level settlement negotiations.

• The Real Chinese aim:

• Laying down the rules of global governance: As China grows into perhaps the most powerful nation on earth, overtaking the actual US GDP by 2030.

• China wants Indian acceptance of its benign superiority, which is a purely Chinese trait, not to be confused with the known rules of international diplomacy.

Threats due to rise of China:

• Threat to democratic Culture: 

• Chinese political thought has not matured in the crucible of the Enlightenment. 

• They don’t read Voltaire, Rousseau, Adam Smith, Descartes, Diderot, Locke, Kant and Spinoza, leading to the concept of establishing a democratic secular republic.

• Threat to established institutions: China will overturn every international, financial, trade, diplomatic, arms control and nuclear agreement that the world has put together in seven decades.

• Encouraging Hand-off Policy: As long as a nation pays “symbolic” tribute to Beijing, China will follow a hands-off policy — as they do with North Korea.

Indian Challenge to Chinese Ambitions:

• India contesting China’s southern border
• India’s refusal to join the Belt and Road Initiative
• Creating an anti-China maritime coalition
• Competing with China for influence in South East Asia and Africa
• Unsupportive of China’s crackdown on Taiwan, Hong Kong and Xinjiang and move ever closer to the United States.

Way Forward:

• Countering territorial aggression: through military means and developing a new national strategy combining diplomacy and military means.

• Developing Economic Capability: the creation of wealth and growing the GDP which will require limiting defence budget to 2% of GDP

• Tackling Tactical Inferiority: through the development of punitive capabilities especially in the Indian Ocean

• International rules of diplomacy: keep shaping against Chinese ill-ambitions

• Stir a national debate: to develop a new strategy, combining diplomatic and military means.