China Is Starting to See India as a Major Threat

More and more, Chinese see India replacing Japan as the second biggest threat to Beijing, following the U.S.
By Hemant Adlakha

As the new year gets underway, and Chinese foreign policy analysts join their counterparts around the world in assessing the events of 2017, the emerging international relations (IR) discourse in Beijing is quite a revelation — at least to the Japanese and Indian strategic affairs community.
While most Chinese believe Japan to be the second biggest threat to China’s “peaceful rise,” according to a few Chinese experts, the rising global profile of India, especially under the “right-wing” nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has gone unacknowledged.
In February 2015, The Diplomat carried an article by a Chinese scholar titled “Why China Doesn’t See India as a Threat.” 

In April 2017, Sanjeev Nayyar, an independent columnist, wrote: “One thing China must understand is that the Indian government is not obsessed with being a threat to China but only wants a rightful place for India in the world.” 

And in the fall of 2017, China’s semi-official, hyper-nationalist Global Times dismissed with disdain any talk of India worrying China in an article titled “India-Japan intimacy poses no real threat to China.” 

The article was written in response to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s India visit in September.

The Global Times also – it now seems ignorantly – wrote off India’s successful test of its long-range ballistic missile Agni-IV a year ago, commenting: “China should realize that Beijing wouldn’t hold back India’s development of Agni-IV. However, Chinese people don’t think India’s development has posed any big threat to it.”
As the year 2017 was drawing to a close, however, Yin Guoming, a Chinese foreign affairs analyst, argued that India, and not Japan, is now the second biggest threat to China after the United States. Here’s an excerpt:
"China-India standoff has compelled us to regard India as a serious rival. 

"During the Doklam confrontation, it became very clear to everyone – from ordinary "Chinese to foreign policy experts – China must reckon India to be its second biggest rival. 

"And that China needs to re-assess, re-examine, and reformulate its India strategy."
However, more significantly, the article pointed out that most people in China were not yet ready to recognize the Indian threat.
China’s strategic affairs community has been arguing for some time now that, viewed geopolitically, Sino-Indian relations are the second most important bilateral ties for Beijing following the Sino-U.S. relationship. 

Most Chinese came in for a rude shock in the summer of 2017, when the Indian army openly crossed into Doklam border region and for weeks refused to withdraw. 

Writing in an influential, widely read online patriotic portal based in China’s Hainan province and popular among rich, educated urban Chinese, Li Yang, a current affairs commentator wrote in July – midway through the Doklam confrontation – “The biggest mistake we have made in the past two decades has been to underestimate India and ignore India. During these years of India’s rapid progress, we did not trouble India, did not make India stumble or make India shed tears.”
Earlier, in May 2017, India announced – just a day in advance – that it would not be present at the inauguration of China’s first mega-diplomatic event of the year, the Belt and Road Forum, citing sovereignty concerns. 

The Chinese, though angered by India’s last minute boycott, chose to officially remain silent. 

A section of China’s foreign affairs commentators did indeed hint it was a mild setback to their diplomacy.
By comparison, the Doklam faceoff, which cropped up within a few weeks of Belt and Road Forum, was a “game changer.” 

It went well beyond the Chinese imagination. 

Interestingly, as the days passed, India’s refusal to withdraw its troops as well as its dismissive attitude toward engaging with the Chinese on the issue, simply left the Chinese puzzled and clueless as to the Indian game plan. 

Not surprisingly, Shen Dingli, a Chinese international relations scholar at Fudan University, counted the Doklam crisis as among China’s top five diplomatic failures under the so-called “Xi-style Diplomacy.”
Current trends in Chinese discourse on the potential India threat, if acknowledged and accepted at the official level by the central authorities in Beijing, would mean further intensification of China and India viewing each other as a hostile “enemy” in the future. 

The following arguments have been offered by some Chinese scholars as to why India, and not Japan, will pose a bigger threat and challenge for China in the coming years.
In the context of geopolitics, China believes it enjoys a greater advantage over Japan. 

Japan is a maritime nation and maritime trade and transportation forms Japan’s economic as well as survival lifeline. 

Geographically too, Japan’s location makes its energy supply route from the Middle East longer than China’s. 

Both logistically and economically, the South China Sea route is the shortest path. 

Once China establishes its full hegemony in the South China Sea (and also regains control over Taiwan, which has long been Beijing’s dream), China would naturally be able to easily place a stranglehold on Japan by dominating maritime trade routes – crucial for Japan’s existence.
In contrast, China’s own crucial maritime energy supply route passes through the Indian Ocean, which falls within the Indian military threat zone. 

During the Doklam confrontation, the Chinese took due notice of Indian analysts making statements that in the event of a India-China military clash, India would cut off China’s maritime access to the Indian Ocean.
Of course, it is true many Chinese dismiss the Indian threat as nothing but a joke. 

But that is more because India has not yet fully realized its potential, not because India is not capable of becoming a future threat to China.
Some analysts in China have also expressed their frustration over India’s “unchecked” rapid economic progress during the past two decades. 

These experts and scholars are rather candid in admitting China had failed to anticipate the “revolutionary” transformation Narendra Modi has brought about in the Indian national psyche. 

True, it is not a revelation to the Chinese that India has always viewed China is its “imaginary enemy.” 

Moreover, it is not hidden from the Chinese either that the Indian defeat during the 1962 boundary war has since remained the single most crucial factor in determining India’s national defense strategy. Yet, it is only now and under Modi, as India’s stature in global politics has risen, that China has suddenly realized that — unlike Japan — India is a nuclear weapon state. 

Finally, thanks to the Modi government’s uncharitable stance, it has dawned upon China’s strategic affairs community that Beijing’s Belt and Road strategy is bound to produce more and more structural contradictions between the two neighbors, already rapidly becoming hostile.
No wonder, if the media reports from Beijing are true, that the People's Republic of China for the first time keenly awaited the outcome of this year’s assembly elections in India. 

Following the Gujarat elections, the mandarins watching India in the Chinese foreign affairs ministry, it is believed, have predicted in their dossier that Modi will enjoy a second term as the prime minister in 2019.
Going by the current Chinese discourse, Beijing is certainly not going to just sit and watch and let India become a threat. 

The question that looms large, then, is what China is going to do about it.

Doklam standoff: Indian Army prepares to beat back more Chinese incursions

With China getting more aggressive with its salami slicing policy in the Himalayas, the Indian Army must prepare for what General Bipin Rawat described as more Doklam-like incidents.

• Indian and Chinese troops are in standoff at Doklam for over two months.
• China keeps transgressing into Indian territories in three pockets of borders.
• Bipin Rawat warned of more Doklam-like incidents in future.

By Prabhash K Dutta

Delivering the General BC Joshi Memorial Lecture in Pune yesterday, Indian Army chief General Bipin Rawat warned that standoffs with China like that at Doklam are likely to "increase in future".
"The recent stand-off in the Doklam plateau by the Chinese side attempting to change the status quo are issues which we need to be wary about, and I think such kind of incidents are likely to increase in the future," General Bipin Rawat said.
Indian and Chinese troops are in eyeball encounter at Doklam plateau of Bhutan for over two months. Standoff began when Indian troops, after formal request by the Royal Army of Bhutan, stopped the People's Liberation Army of China from constructing a highway through Doklam area.
Doklam plateau is governed by Bhutan and has long been inhabited by the Bhutanese shepherds. China has been eyeing this piece of hilly terrain because of strategic significance.
Doklam lies very close to the Silliguri Corridor that connects the northeastern states of India with rest of the country.
It is the sole passage for supply of materials and transport to and from the northeastern states.

CHINA'S SALAMI SLICING IN HIMALAYAS
General Bipin Rawat has underlined what many geostrategic experts have been saying for long. China is the only country post-World War II that has been engaged in territorial expansion by poaching lands and maritime areas of its neighbours.
This Chinese policy is widely known as Salami Slicing through which it cuts into the territories of its neighbours and then stakes claim over the same.
Furthering the Salami Slicing policy China has captured the entire Tibetan kingdom in 1949 forcing the Buddhist government of the plateau state flee to India and seek asylum.
The Dalai Lama has headed the Tibetan government in-exile since 1950s with its headquarters at Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh.
Later, India recognised Tibet as part of China.
China captured Aksai Chin area in Ladakh of the state of Jammu and Kashmir in 1962 war with India and has illegally governed it since then.
Aksai Chin is roughly of the size of Switzerland in area.
China also forced Pakistan to cede almost 6,000 sq km area north of Karakoram mountain ranges in Pakistan-occupied parts of Jammu and Kashmir state.

CHINESE BORDER POLICY WITH INDIA
Apart from Aksai Chin and the area in northern Kashmir, China stakes claim on Indian territories in two more pockets.
It claims Arunachal Pradesh to be its own territory calling it South Tibet and several patches along international borders falling in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.
The borders between India and China are not properly demarcated and the demarcation done during the British colonial regime is contested by Beijing as per its suitability.
During his lecture on India's Challenges in the Current Geo-Strategic Construct at the Department of Defence and Strategic Studies of Savitribai Phule Pune University in Pune, General Bipin Rawat said, "Pockets of dispute and contested claims to the territory continue to exist. These are due to differing perceptions on the alignments of the Line of Actual Control (LAC)."
"Transgressions across Line of Actual Control do happen and sometimes they do lead to some kind of misunderstanding between the forward troops," General Rawat said, adding, "However, we do have joint mechanisms in place to address such situations."
But, Chinese Salami Slicing policy stands in the way of resolving issues.
Even in the case of Doklam standoff, it has been reported that during all flag meetings with Chinese counterparts, the Indian Army has insisted on restoring pre-June 16 positions of the troops.
But, no resolution has been found yet.

DOKLAM AS SALAMI SLICE
The Doklam standoff is a classical example of Chinese border policy with India.
Chinese policy towards Indian borders has three well defined contours.
China invests heavily to strengthen its infrastructure in the regions where it is in stronger position.
It pursues Salami Slicing policy more aggressively where both troops are on equal footing strategically while China needles India where Indian Army is in stronger position to test water.
At Doklam plateau, Indian Army has been patrolling for decades while Chinese troops used to visit there occasionally and never stayed for long.
As it is a disputed area between China and Bhutan, and is very close to the Indian borders, PLA attempted to alter status quo.

WHY THERE MAY BE MORE DOKLAMS
China has invested in its defence forces and infrastructure more than any other Asian country over past several decades.
Even General Bipin Rawat underlined that the PLA has made significant progress in enhancing its "capabilities for mobilisation, application and sustenance of operations" particularly in the Tibet.
Xi Jinping has overhauled the entire military structure and divided the PLA commands in more reasonable units.
Their force reorganisation along with developing capabilities in space and network-centric warfare is likely to provide them greater synergy in force application," General Rawat noted in his speech.
China is also working on other aspects of geostrategy vis-a-vis India.
China is increasing its military and economic partnership with Pakistan and has also been trying to win over Maldives, Sri Lanka and even Bangladesh in India's neighbourhood.
On the other hand, while Doklam standoff continues, China has not yet confirmed about the annual joint military exercises with India.
India and China conduct joint exercise every year on reciprocal basis.
Named "Hand-in-Hand", Indian team goes to China one year followed a visit by Chinese troops next year.
Responding to a question whether Doklam standoff is affecting India-China annual military exercise, General Bipin Rawat said, "It could be, but we are not sure."
The ground realities leave no doubt that China's approach towards India is adversarial than friendly and General Bipin Rawat seems to have delivered the right message by saying, "It is always better to be prepared and alert than think that this will not happen again. So my message to troops is that do not let your guard down."

Chinese Aggressions

Japan backs India on Doka La standoff, flays China's efforts to change status quo by force

Firstpost

With both India and China showing no signs of backing down or coming to a solution, the Doka La standoff in Sikkim has turned into a global talking point. 

While China is targetting Bhutan because it is the last man standing in India's immediate neighbourhood, the attempt to place its soldiers in the tri-junction is increasingly being seen by experts as a mistake that would push New Delhi closer to Washington and Tokyo.
After the United States urged India and China to work together to come up with some sort of arrangement for peace, Japan on Friday blatantly came out in support of New Delhi.
Japanese Ambassador Kenji Hiramatsu's statement, that there should be no "unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force", comes just a month ahead of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's visit to India.
"We understand that the area is disputed between China and Bhutan and that both countries recognise the existence of a dispute," NDTV quoted him as saying.
While urging all involved parties to resolve the dispute in a peaceful manner, the ambassador said that Japan has been watching the situation very closely because it has the ability to affect the stability of the entire region.
On India's position, he said, "We also understand that India has a treaty understanding with Bhutan, that's why Indian troops got involved in the area." 

According to an India Today report, Hiramatsu said that India's involvement is understandable based on its bilateral agreements with Bhutan.
"External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj has made it clear that India would continue to engage with dialogue through diplomatic channels to find a mutually acceptable solution. We consider this attitude towards peaceful resolution important," he added.
Japan's stand and unequivocal support to India is important because China has been trying to redraw the boundaries and position itself as a regional hegemony in Asia by potentially stalling all balancing efforts by countries like India and Japan, as this Firstpost article points out. 

The Indian Express quoted some sources as saying that Japan itself has been at the receiving end of Chinese expansionism and it understands New Delhi's position better than many. 

Government sources pointed out Japan's difficulties between 2012 and 2014, when ties between China and Japan were frayed by a territorial row over Japan's Senkaku islands.
Japan was also the only country who had indicated certain unwillingness to cooperate with China on its ambition One Belt One Road project. 

US and Japan also conducted the Malabar Naval Exercise with India amid the standoff, possibly indicating their continued support to New Delhi.
After a barrage of neutral arguments from countries like Nepal and the United Kingdom, government sources quoted by The Indian Express feel that Japan's support has reinforced New Delhi's arguments.

Time to teach India 'bitter lesson greater than 1962', says Chinese media

• A military conflict with China would inflict "greater losses than in 1962", it said.
• The editorial echoed the view in China that India was "instigating" Bhutan.

By Ananth Krishnan

A Wednesday editorial in a hardline Communist Party-run newspaper called for teaching India "a bitter lesson" and warned Delhi that a military conflict with China would inflict "greater losses than in 1962".
With the State media keeping up its harsh rhetoric over the Doklam stand-off, the Global Times said in an editorial, referring to comments made by Defence Minister Arun Jaitley that India in 2017 was different from 1962 and Army Chief General Bipin Rawat saying India was ready for a two-and-a-half front war, 

"If New Delhi believes that its military might can be used as leverage in the Doklam area, and it's ready for a two-and-a-half front war, we have to tell India that the Chinese look down on their military power. Jaitley is right that the India of 2017 is different from that of 1962 -- India will suffer greater losses than in 1962 if it incites military conflicts."
The paper, which is published by the official People's Daily but known to reflect hardline views, added, "We firmly believe that the face-off in the Donglang area will end up with the Indian troops in retreat. The Indian military can choose to return to its territory with dignity, or be kicked out of the area by Chinese soldiers."
The editorial was the harshest since the June 16 stand-off, which has seen almost daily statements from China's government and media blaming India for the "trespass". 

China has accused India of triggering the stand-off, which, however, began when the PLA constructed a road into Doklam, which is claimed by Bhutan.

INDIA INSTIGATING BHUTAN?
The editorial echoed the view in China that India was "instigating" Bhutan to protest China's project. "India is acting shamelessly before the international community," the editorial said. 

"New Delhi's real purpose is to turn the Doklam area into a disputed region and block China's road construction there."
"India should look in the mirror," it added. 

"It was not able to refute the evidence of illegal border trespassing and coerced its small neighbour Bhutan to shoulder the blame. India has long treated Bhutan as a vassal state, a rare scene under modern international relations. India's illegal border intrusion is not allowed by international law; besides its suppression of Bhutan must be condemned by the international community. The Indian media claimed in recent days that New Delhi 'shouldn't abandon Bhutan.' India is humiliating the civilization of the 21st Century." 

The paper said "the Chinese public is infuriated by India's provocation" and added it "believes the Chinese People's Liberation Army is powerful enough to expel Indian troops out of Chinese territory."

INDIA'S UNRULY ACTIONS?
Echoing what the Chinese envoy in Delhi said on Tuesday on China not making concessions, it said, "New Delhi would be too naive to think that Beijing would make concessions to its unruly demands."
"We hope India can face up to the hazards of its unruly actions to the country's fundamental interests and withdraw its troops without delay," it said. 

"We need to give diplomatic and military authorities full power to handle the issue. We call on Chinese society to maintain high-level unity on the issue. The more unified the Chinese people are, the more sufficient conditions the professionals will have to fight against India and safeguard our interests. This time, we must teach New Delhi a bitter lesson."
Another commentary in the newspaper authored by Yang Siling, vice director of the Institute for South Asian Studies at the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, said "India instigated Bhutan to lodge a protest with China."
"Displaying toughness against China can help the ruling party score political points," wrote Yang. "India dragging Bhutan into the latest border row was also meant to demonstrate that South Asia is India's strategic backyard and warn other South Asian countries not to side with China."
"Any wise politician could realise that China and India both gain from peaceful coexistence and lose from conflict. Unfortunately, Modi seemingly is more prone to seeking India's interests at the expense of China's," Yang added, saying "the latest provocation will not be the last from India over the border issue".