FORCE Visits China

Seven Days in China

The Middle Kingdom is assertive, but remains polite
Pravin Sawhney
Beijing/Shanghai: it took me some time to figure out who had invited me on a week-long visit to Beijing and Shanghai. The call came from the first secretary, press section at the Chinese embassy in new Delhi. When told by my office that i was in munich, he called me there. extending the invitation on behalf of the all China journalists association (aCja), he asked me to join a group of senior indian journalists to visit China. The proposed dates did not suit me, so in less than 48 hours the Chinese graciously altered their dates by a week. two things struck me as unusual. Why did the aCja not invite me directly and why were the dates changed to accommodate me? When i asked the Chinese press officer about the programme, he spoke about the opportunity to meet with Chinese military officials and visit defence installations. The detailed itinerary, he said, was being worked out and would be provided on arrival in Beijing. i had never been to China and here i was being offered the opportunity to meet with Peoples Liberation army (PLa) officials. That i was excited is putting it mildly. i have been working on China for years and my first book: The Defence Makeover: 10 Myths that Shape Indias Image published in 2001, long before the indian government woke up to the military threat, listed China is not a military threat as the foremost myth successfully perpetrated by new Delhi. My maiden visit to China from June 17 to 22 was a success and here are my 11 takeaway observations: 4 months before the visit of Prime minister Wen jiabao to india in December 2010, China decided to unilaterally announce its perception of the border, making any further negotiations on border resolution impossible. For this reason, at the 15th round of Special Representatives (SR) talks held in Delhi on 17 january 2012, both sides signed the Border mechanism Framework for stability on the Line of actual Control. The two foreign offices had established formal means to keep the border peaceful. against this backdrop, Colonel guo hongtao, staff officer of the asian affairs bureau, foreign affairs office, ministry of national Defence (mnD), who had participated in the Special Representatives (SR) talks on border resolution, told me with an air of finality: Chinas border with india is 2,000km long. 4 China has indicated that its claims on the disputed border are more complex than are understood in india. indian security forces have made more intrusions in 2011 into Chinese territo-

16

FORCE | August 2012

THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA

FORCE | August 2012

17

FORCE Visits China

global radar, it needs to open up and be transparent. This has been accentuated by an inter-dependent world shrunk further by the information revolution. The worlds focus on China is clearly in two areas: defence and diplomacy. China opened its State Council (council of ministers) information office in 1990, established the foreign ministrys Press information office in 2001 and set-up the ministry of national Defence (mnD) spokesperson system in 2008. Both the state council and foreign ministry information offices that we visited are grand buildings with posh facilities and extremely competent staff. i was told that there are nearly 700 foreign journalists living in Beijing alone. The daily regular press briefing (packed with foreign journalists) that i attended could well have been at the US state department, the only reminder that it was Beijing was the Chinese spokesperson speaking native language through a translation gadget provided on each desk.
MY HOST Senior Editor, Zhu Shouchen, executive secretary, member of the board of leadership, All China Journalist Association

ries (disputed border) than we Chinese have made into india, said major general Yao Yunzhu, director of the Centre of China-america Defence Relations, PLa academy of military Sciences. She was seated next to Colonel guo hongtao during the long interaction with us (visiting indian journalists) at the ministry of national Defence (mnD) in Beijing. in another interaction, the deputy director general, information department, ministry of foreign affairs, ma jisheng, went a step further and asserted that: all reports (in indian media) of Chinese ingressions are false. 4 China says that the complex border resolution should not come in the way of overall bilateral relations, especially trade. as both sides have agreed to have peaceful borders, the (indian media) focus should not be on the border issue, general Yao said. in another meeting, another day, ma jisheng cautioned, There are high difficulties in border resolution. i believe the issue will be resolved with time. 4 There is an extraordinary consistency in what the PLa (mnD) officials and diplomats (ministry of foreign affairs) say on the disputed border issue. Unlike in india, not only is the PLa authorised to speak on the politically sensitive border issue, it has an extremely important, if not the leading role in this policy-making.

4 There were repeated suggestions for the indian media to exercise overall restraint when talking about China so as not to impede improvements in bilateral relations. The lead in conveying this was taken by senior editor, Zhu Shouchen, executive secretary, member of the board of leadership, aCja. he spoke at length about the code of conduct followed by the aCja. most of the Chinese media are members of aCja organised in 494 media committees under six major regional centres, across China. each regional centre contributes a vicechairman to the Board of Leadership of aCja. The aCja has three tasks, namely to train journalists, teach them to abide by the code of conduct and facilitate foreign journalists in China. any lingering doubts on Chinese media and journalism were cleared by senior editor, Wang Lan of the multi-billion dollar Wen hui group in Shanghai. The code of conduct, she said, meant journalism with Chinese characteristics. my media group is open to healthy criticism of the government on health, education and science and technology matters, she said with a smile. earlier, a senior editor at the China Daily newspaper office in Beijing admitted that a government constituted board cleared every evening what news would go into the paper. 4 China is conscious that as a (the) risen power, constantly on the

There were repeated suggestions for the Indian media to exercise overall restraint when talking about China so as not to impede improvements in bilateral relations
The chief information officer at the State Council information office, Xi Yanchun was a bright and attractive lady in her thirties (she told us) who had worked in the US media for four years when she was offered the present position. She has been in this position since 2002 and was happy to talk about Chinas public relations system. Before 2002 there were no press conferences and the news releases, if any, were ad hoc. There was no mechanism, she recalled. now, this office does a variety of things, from press releases to organising press conferences and briefings, to interviews and replies to emails and of course publicity on the internet, she said. With a pause and smile she added that it was still difficult to get officials to understand the importance of media interaction. The staff under her has increased and many people have been sent to the US and the Uk for internet training. She admitted that after the foreign ministry and mnD opened their own information offices, few journalists

18

FORCE | August 2012

FORCE Visits China

dom of Sun Tzu and The Great Wall by the mnD information office in a small gift bag. Sun tzu is about Chinas distinctive military theory which is in harmony with Wei qi. The central message of Sun tzu, i remembered, is to develop strategic thought that placed a premium on victory through psychological advantage and preached avoidance of direct conflict. The great Wall of China suggests that China has no expansionist designs. This was mentioned to me by a PLa officer at another official dinner. he added that the Chinese fight in selfdefence only when their core interests are affected. 4 The Chinese view colonial rule, (which started in the mid-nineteenth century with the opium wars and ended with the arrival of maos communist China), when China was subjugated by Britain, France, Russia and later japan, as a period of deep humiliation. During the visit to the national museum in Shanghai, our guide dwelt on the humiliations depicted in a series of paintings. But this was not the real point they wanted to drive home. Speaking in english, the museum guide and our language interpreter compared China and india under colonial rules. Unlike all Chinese, many indians believe that the colonial period had many positives about it, they averred. China, we were told, sees itself as the middle kingdom, conveying the notion of Chinas centrality in global affairs and the importance of both national unity and the need to recover territories, purportedly lost during the subjugation period, now called core interest areas. Probably, this is a reason, why all Chinese officials we met during the visit spoke only through the language interpreter, a pleasant freelancer called Liu non, when making official points even when they understood and spoke good english. an added benefit of speaking through an interpreter is that the person gets more response time to a query; this may help in thinking up a credible rather than the real reply. 4 all PLa officials i met were reluctant to talk about Pakistan, which was indicated as Chinas bilateral relationship. The need, they said, was for india and China to have more bilateral cooperation and openness. however, without asking, PLa officials in command positions spoke about the West and the US in particular as their enemy. For instance, during the visit to 1 armoured regiment (brigade) outside Beijing, the commanding officer, senior

THE NEW SHANGHAI All about sky-scrapers

come to the state council information office. Those two offices are considered important, she added rather ruefully. 4 all the Chinese officials i spoke with agreed that Wei qi (pronounced way chee) is the most popular intellectual game in China as opposed to Chess in the rest of the world. more as an afterthought, one PLa officer said that many Chinese now play both games with equal interest and ease. at one of the official dinner banquets i attended, another PLa official told me that in todays world, it is difficult to hide capabilities. What Wei qi teaches is the art of hiding intentions, which should never be disclosed. explained by henry kissinger in his book, On China Wei qi is about strategic encirclement as opposed to Chess which seeks a checkmate with head-on collision. Later, spending some time by myself in a Shanghai popular market, i discovered that no shops kept chess-

boards, but Wei qi was readily available. kissinger provides a keen insight into the two games in his book. if Chess is about decisive battle, Wei qi is about the protracted campaign. The Chess player aims for total victory. The Wei qi player seeks relative advantage. Chess teaches the Clausewitzian concepts of centreof-gravity and the decisive-points, the game usually beginning as a struggle for the centre of the board. Wei qi teaches the art of strategic encirclement. Where the skilful chess player aims to eliminate his opponents pieces in a series of head-on clashes, a talented Wei qi player moves into empty spaces on the board, gradually mitigating the strategic potential of his opponents pieces. Chess produces single-mindedness; Wei qi generates strategic flexibility. once we finished discussing Wei qi, i found that all of us had been presented with two slim booklets titled The Wis-

20

FORCE | August 2012

FORCE Visits China

OLD AND NEW TOGETHER Shanghai has a mix of old houses and modern architecture

colonel (brigadier) Su Rong said that during simulation training, the home forces are depicted in red colour, while the enemy is shown in blue. With a grin, he pointed to a soldier practicing simulation shooting and said the tank he was seeking to destroy was the US abram. he did not stop at this and decided to drill his point further. The PLa soldier, he boasted, can fight better with a fourth of the food eaten by a US soldier. and unlike the US which dropped nuclear bombs, Chinese soldiers will fight only in self-defence. interestingly, the three military installations we visited the PLaa (PLa army) 1 armoured regiment headquarters, the PLaaF (PLa air Force) 24 air division outside Beijing and the PLan (PLa navy) Shanghai naval garrison were new and grand constructions. if indeed the PLa has such good defence works for its middle-level command headquarters, it conveyed an eloquent sense of generous finances being spent on acquisitions and capabilities. 4 an interesting bilateral issue that the PLa is keen to pursue is military to military relations. Colonel guo hongtao, PLa staff officer who has participated in the bilateral border talks spent substantive time explaining this. according to him, a breakthrough has been achieved in military relations between india and China. Both navies have done rescue operations together, the armies have done joint anti-terrorism training, and defence institutes have invited experts to talk with one another. This is leading towards friendly coexistence.

The future, he said, is bright. We need to consolidate what has been achieved in last 10 years, we should maintain and broaden visits, we should continue with security and defence mechanism talks, and we should find ways to expand mutual cooperation, he said. The colonel disclosed that both sides are working on doing the third army to army exercise hand-in-hand which started in 2008. it does not need a genius to figure out that the PLa, through greater military transparency is keen to understand what the indian armed forces are doing with their US counterparts. 4 all presentations emphasised on the PLa making progress towards information-isation, which it hopes to complete by 2020. explained, this means total networking of all sensors, communication & reconnaissance systems and platforms, with computers at each level. to test the waters, i casually mentioned that indian senior military officers (especially army officers) arent comfortable using computers. Colonel Yang Yujun, the Deputy Director general of the information office, mnD was quick to tell me that senior PLa officers do not suffer from this handicap. all officers are comfortable with computers, he asserted. however, in private, a senior PLa officer in a lighter mood conceded that many PLa generals were also uncomfortable with computers, in which junior and middle rank officers are adept. if this is indeed true, will the new generation of PLa officers, which understands equipment and informationised opera-

tions better, have a larger say in defence policy making as well? and will they be more assertive? i wonder. The answer to who had actually invited us was provided by the itinerary. The invitation was from Chinas ministry of national defence (mnD) and the all China journalists association (aCja) was merely the front. This was probably the first time that the mnD has invited indian journalists for a peek into the enigma that is the PLa. after the visit, the first secretary, press section of the Chinese embassy sent me a message expressing hope that the indian military would consider a reciprocal interaction. The visit was Chinas attempt at transparency in defence matters. The last thing i wondered was why had the mnD invited four indian journalists with such dissimilar understanding of the subject? Surely, they would have done homework on the invitees backgrounds. instead of focussing on PLas perspective on various issues, a lot of time was spent by my colleagues asking questions which could make pageone stories for newspapers back home. For example, what do you say when an indian journalist whos been covering defence for a hindi newspaper for over three decades, asked the Shanghai naval garrison commander what he thought of the inS Shivaliks combat capabilities (it had recently come port calling there). all the poor fellow could say was The ship was clean and tidy and i understand it has stealth capability. talking through the interpreter, this ate unnecessarily into the allocated time.;

22

FORCE | August 2012

FORCE Visits China

China Has Shrunk the Border

While for us the border is 4,056km, Beijing insists it is 2,000km only
Pravin Sawhney | BEIJING

the oPPoRtUnitY to aSk haRD questions on the bilateral border dispute came on the afternoon of june 18 at the Chinese ministry of national Defence (mnD) information office. There were eight Peoples Liberation army (PLa) officers from the information office, PLa academy of military Sciences

and the PLa national Defence University poised to take questions. my three questions for them were: What is the length of Chinas border with india? What about indian allegations of PLa transgressions into indian territories? (Defence minister a.k. antony recently informed the Parliament in writing that there were 228 cases of Chinese intrusions into india in 2010, 213 cases in 2011, and 64 cases until april 2012). and, what is the way forward on the border issue? after a brief consultation amongst themselves the first question was taken by Colonel guo hongtao, staff officer

of the asian affairs Bureau, Foreign affairs office, mnD. he said, The border question is about four lines. The first is Chinas traditional claim line, which is 2,000km long. The second is the line claimed by india, the so-called mcmahon Line, which is longer. The third line is the line presently held by both sides (Line of actual Control). Because of these three different lines, we can say that india has done more transgressions than the Chinese side. The fourth line is about Sikkim. China in 2004 has replaced the China-Sikkim border with the india-Sikkim border. my other questions were clubbed to-

24

FORCE | August 2012

LEFT TO RIGHT Major General Yao Yunzhu, Senior Colonel Geng Yansheng, Colonel Yang Yujun, Senior Colonel Ouyang Wei and Senior Colonel Xu Weidi holding the FORCE 100th issue; (bottom right) Ma Jisheng

gether and replied by major general Yao Yunzhu, director of the Centre on China-american defence relations, PLa academy of military Sciences. according to her, india has done more ingressions into China than China has done into india. But, ingressions are not important. These are because both sides have different perceptions of the border. Both sides have agreed to have a peaceful border. as border is one of the issues between us, the focus should not be on it. The indian media and elite do not have a positive idea (attitude) of the relations. This should change. Both sides should exercise strategic patience for the way forward. two days later, on the afternoon of june 20, when visiting the information office of the ministry of foreign affairs, i once again brought up the border issue
FORCE | August 2012

25

FORCE Visits China

THE WESTERN SECTOR: LADAKH

C H I N A Xinjiang Haji Langar Daulat Beg Oldi Chip Chap R. Area Trig Heights Qizil Jilga Aksai Chin Road

Karakoram Pass

Siachen

Gal

wa

nR

LAC Kongka Pass Lanak La

Shyok R. Chang Chenmo R. Leh Phobrang Karu

Dambu Guru Area PangongTso T I B E T

Pangong Lake Chusul Spanggur

In du

Spanggur Lake Rezang La

Chang La

Indian Claimed Border Line of Actual Control Disputed Area

Demchok

4 The original LAC after the 1962 India-China war was 320 km stretch from Daulat Beg Oldi to Demchok in Ladakh and had a 20 km demilitarised zone on either side. 4 After the 1993 Border Peace and Tranquility Agreement, the entire 4056 km border has been renamed as the LAC. Earlier, India had only the traditional border in the eastern sector called McMahon line.

with a dual purpose. it was to elicit response of Chinas foreign affairs ministry and to compare any variations with mnD. What came my way was a long speech by ma jisheng, the deputy director general, information department, ministry of foreign affairs, a veteran who joined service in early eighties and has been witness to the rise of China and the concomitant need for political and diplomatic transparency. he told me that, all reports (in the indian media) on Chinese transgressions are false. The border issue is difficult and is not likely to be resolved soon. it is wise for both sides to spend more time on the political and diplomatic issues between us. once we have more cooperation and mutual understanding, we will have the magic to solve the border issue. For people who have misgivings, it is difficult to solve their problems. But for people who like one another, it is easy to solve problems. Therefore, we should keep the border issue on one track. on another track, we should keep working in other areas, trade for example. We should seek happiness, which will help us solve difficult problems. i believe the trade issue will help us solve the border issue through time. on the border issue, we have made some progress in the last 10 years. But difficulties remain high. We need patience. a watermelon when it is ripe falls automatically. maybe, the time is not ripe for the border issue. The future generation will have more wisdom to solve the border problem. China has so far solved its border problem with 10 countries including Russia. This was done by a two-track approach. While keeping the negotiations going on the border issue, we sought cooperation in other areas. We should do the same and continue with mutual cooperation. The Chinese cannot be more unambiguous. They have said that their disputed border with india is 2,000km long. The total of the middle sector (554km), Sikkim (198km) and the eastern sector (arunachal Pradesh 1,226km) comes to 1,978km or 2,000km when rounded off. india, on the other hand, has never said but maintains that its border with China is 4,056km long. (The 2001 Border Management report under former Union home secretary Madhav Godbole constituted by the government of India in Cabinet Secretariat order number C182/1/2000-NSCS (CS) dated 16 May 2000 refers to the India-China border as 4,056km long). We have a 2,000km border with China along the tri-junction of afghanistan-

sR .

26

FORCE | August 2012

FORCE Visits China

THE EASTERN SECTOR: ARUNACHAL PRADESH
C H I N A Line of Actual Control Chinese claim line

T
Nala Dzola Pangla

g san

po

R.
LAC Zikyen La Kepanla Guyor La East Dibang
n Sia

Disputed Area China claims 90,000 sq km of Indian territory, which is the entire state of Arunachal Pradesh Kayala

Gelling Nayula Lo La

Longju Lung

Maja

Namka Chu B H U T A N

Ka

me

ng

R.

Bra

pu ma

tra

R.

Loh

Khinzemane

Chanize Bumla Tawang Sumdrong Chu

it R

Tulung La

Asaphila Chimpung La Lutin La Bum La

Su

Siy ba nsi ri R .

om

Along Kibithod Diphu Walong

. gR

R.

Pasi Ghat

Pakistan-Pakistan occupied kashmir (Pok), afghanistan-Xinjiang-Pok, the Shaksgam valley, the Western sector with China, ending at Demchok in Ladakh. With their current politely worded line, the Chinese are obliquely suggesting that india no longer has a border with China in Pok and Ladakh which have now been designated as disputed areas between india and Pakistan by Beijing. india has been told to not only forgo its claims on aksai Chin (occupied in September 1957 by China) and the Shaksgam valley (ceded by Pakistan to China in 1963); it has also been informed that Pok and by extension kashmir held by india are disputed territories. For this reason, Beijing had refused a visa in 2010 to the then northern army commander, Lt. general B.S. jaswal who was heading a military delegation to China. When i asked during the july 18 interaction at mnD information office, why was this done, Colonel guo hongtao said, The general was posted in kashmir (a disputed area) and we had to keep Pakistans sensitivity in mind. We offered a compromise to india that jaswal should be made a member instead of the head of delegation but the indian side refused. Similarly, China insisted that group Captain m. Pang-

ing, who belongs to arunachal Pradesh and was a member of a 30-member indian military delegation visiting China in january 2012, did not require a visa to travel. india however decided to exclude the officer from the delegation rather than allow him to travel without a visa to China. The two instances are proof, if indeed one was needed, that China claims the entire 90,000sqkm arunachal Pradesh as its territory (it is called Zang Nan meaning south tibet). in any case, the Chinese ambassador in india had in 2006 publicly laid claims over arunachal Pradesh. and the Pok and the entire western sector are disputed borders with Pakistan. hence, india does not have a border with China in this sector. This probably also explains the Chinese position that india has intruded more into their territories than the other way around; after all, a large number of indian security forces are in arunachal Pradesh. Beijing announced its present stance of the border being a mere 2,000km long in 2010, months before Prime minister Wen jiabaos visit to india in December same year. it is, however, no surprise that india has maintained a stoic silence on the new Chinese claims which have grave national security implications. indias stance is consistent with its ap-

peasement policy towards China since 1988 when Prime minister Rajiv gandhi became the first head of government to visit China after the 1962 war. The last time China had offered to resolve the border was on 21 june 1980. in an interview to krishan kumar, chief editor of Defence News, Deng Xiaoping spoke of a settlement: according to the Line of Control, for instance, in the eastern sector, we can recognise the existing status quo, i mean the so-called mcmahon line. But in the Western sector, the indian government should also recognise the existing status quo. i think you can pass this message to mrs (indira) gandhi. The timing from Chinas standpoint was propitious. Deng had finally returned to power in 1978 after a long exile and the passing away of mao Zedong and Zhou enlai. at the December 1978 plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, Deng managed to bid goodbye to the mao era and gave the call for reforms and opening up under the four modernisation programmes. China, with 12 disputed borders (many more territorial claims), needed peace for its market reforms. Deng, meanwhile, was impressed by mrs indira gandhi. her firm handling of the 1971 war with Pakistan and the

28

FORCE | August 2012

FORCE Visits China

passage of the 38th amendment bill in the indian Parliament on 23 april 1975 which merged Sikkim as the 22nd state of the Union of india, despite Chinese protests, did not go unnoticed by Deng. mrs gandhi has probably been the only Prime minister since independence who understood that talks with Pakistan and China, without a credible military muscle, remain meaningless. and the Chinese understand power too well. While talks on the border issue between india and China began in December 1981, given her domestic compulsion, mrs gandhi could not visit China. her successor, Rajiv gandhi visited China in December 1988, but things had altered by then. The 1986 Sumdorong Chu crisis between india and China had hardened Beijings position. This small incident will be recorded in history as the turning point in relations between india and China, and a roadblock to indias rise in this century. The Sumdorong Chu crisis was part of indias military activism in the eighties under Rajiv gandhi-general k. Sundarji team, which witnessed operation Brass-tacks (against Pakistan), exercise Chequerboard and operation trident (against China), and operation Pawan (against Sri Lanka). one day, in june 1986, a small indian intelligence Bureau detachment at Sumdorong Chu (close to nymjang Chu in north kameng) left its post, to collect salaries and rations. on return, they found that the Chinese had occupied it and refused to vacate it. This place had witnessed the rout of indias 7th brigade in the 1962 war and to be sure, the PLa had warned india not to occupy this area. instead of diffusing the situation, the army chief general Sundarji escalated matters. at the peak of the crisis in 1987, india moved three divisions forward to the mcmahon line and China amassed its 63rd field army from the Chengdu military region. While the crisis was diffused with sense prevailing in Delhi and Beijing, the yearlong movement of forces, equipment and ammunition by both sides convinced China that it needed to develop military capabilities in the region. a territorial swap for border resolution was not possible any longer. incidentally, the disputed post which had little tactical value for india but had an observation value for China, remained with the PLa till 1995, when in a show of generosity PLa gave the post back to india which Delhi hailed as a major victory. Chinas intentions, of course, were not understood in india. k. natwar Singh, the minister of state for foreign affairs, who took credit for the successful visit of Prime minister gandhi to China in December 1988 in his book, My China Diary 1956-88 should have known better. especially when the chief minister of Bengal jyoti Basu, who had visited China in june 1988 told him that, China is in no hurry to solve the border problem but is keen to improve relations in other fields. it should have occurred to Delhi why Deng refused to talk border resolution with a Prime minister having 413 Congress members of Parliament in the Lok Sabha? What had happened between 1980 and 1988 to make China change its mind? This is not all. The peculiarity of the disputed border between india and China is that it is neither delimited (agreed) on maps, nor demarcated (accepted) on the ground. Thus, when the PLa started building infrastructure in the tibet autonomous Region (taR) beginning 1989, alarm bells should have rung in Delhi. after all, the side with better border management could alter the Line of actual Control, which by definition is a military-held line, for tactical advantage and generate psychological pressure on the other side. Unfortunately, a myth was created about Prime minister gandhis successful China visit. Thereafter, all indian Prime ministers who visited China have endeavoured to do one better, even if it meant appeasement by unilateral concessions. a retired foreign secretary told FoRCe a few years ago that the ministry of external affairs is always under pressure to show sizeable gains during a Prime ministerial visit to China. The visits of Prime ministers P.V. narasimha Rao, a.B. Vajpayee and manmohan Singh to China vindicate his astute observation. The reluctant foreign minister of the 1988 Rajiv gandhi visit to China, Prime minister narasimha Rao signed the Border Peace and tranquillity agreement (BPta) during his September 1993 China visit. The entire disputed border was renamed the Line of actual Control (LaC). hitherto, the LaC was a 320km stretch from Daulat Beg oldie to Demchok in Ladakh. The remaining border was referred to as the traditional one by india. This move was interpreted by Delhi as its victory: instead of the entire border, both sides could now solve the border progressively in three parts (western, middle and eastern sectors) and make it peaceful. in reality, this worked to Chinas advantage with two major negatives for india. one, with the entire border made into LaC, PLa intrusions increased manifold. Between 1962 and 1993, there have been two border skirmishes/ show of strength incidents: the 1967 series of firings at nathu La and Cho La in Sikkim and the 1986 Sumdorong Chu crisis. after 1993 and especially after the 1998 nuclear tests by india when relations between the two countries dipped, Chinese intrusions and claims of disputed areas have grown with each passing year. This was because China focussed on its border management while india remained comatose. and two, the creation of the LaC and the need to make it peaceful pushed the border resolution further away. it no longer appeared a priority. Similarly, Prime minister Vajpayees visit to China in july 2003 did not help indias case. in return for the formal acknowledgement that tibet is a part of China, all it got were Chinese maps showing Sikkim as part of india. During my recent visit to Beijing, PLa officer Colonel hongtao did say that SikkimChina has been replaced by Sikkimindia. But all that China has really done is to show Sikkim and india in the same colour coding on its maps. The other major step was the agreement, at indias request, to discuss border resolution at the political level (special representatives). This was in addition to the bureaucratic level continuing with peace on the LaC under the 1993 agreement. This did not help. on the one hand, with two parallel tracks, the lesser bureaucratic track lost its importance. on the other hand, Chinas spectacular rise, fast-changing geopolitics and importantly, the manmohan Singh governments willingness to focus on bilateral trade, pushed border resolution to a low priority. The border resolution no longer appeared indias core interest area. Finally at the 15th round of Special Representatives (SR) talks in january 2012, it became evident that solving the border was not the urgency. The SRs signed the diplomatic framework to maintain stability on LaC, raising the level of the task earlier being done by bureaucrats. By focussing on bilateral trade (expected to reach USD 100 billion before 2015) and saddling the SRs with a new job, Prime minister manmohan Singh has given China an unambiguous signal, that border resolution could wait for another time. This policy will have severe negative national security implications for india, now and into the future.;

30

FORCE | August 2012

FORCE Visits China

THE TOWERING FIGURE President Hu Jintao is Chairman, Central Military Commission

The Iron Structure

Chinas Higher Defence Management
Pravin Sawhney | BEIJING

it iS CUStomaRY FoR a miLitaRY presentation to be sequential: give out the countrys stated defence policy, mention roles and missions of the armed forces, and towards the end talk about the higher Defence management (hDm). of the three issues, the first two are generic and inane subjects; plenty can be said without giving out much. The hDm is country-specific and its nuances determine how envisaged wars would be fought and won. This is because hDm impacts at the strategic and operational level of war. most nations would hesitate to dwell too much

on their hDm, especially when making a presentation to a potential rival audience. Surprisingly, this was not the case with PLa officials, whose three hour interactive session with visiting indian journalists at the ministry of national defence (mnD) information office on june 18 commenced with Chinas higher Defence management (hDm). if the message was to convey comparative superiority of the Chinese hDm, it was done well. The presentation was made by Colonel Yang Yujun, deputy director general of the information office, mnD. i have flagged eight highlights of the Chinese armed forces below, mostly related to their hDm, whose significance i shall discuss in the next article: Unrestricted War. 4 The Central military Commis-

sion (CmC) is Chinas highest military command and control organisation, standing at the apex of the military (nuclear and conventional) chain of command and military-industrial complex. it commands a 2.3 million strong regular force, the Peoples Liberation army (PLa); the 6,60,000 Peoples armed Police Force (PaPF); and eight million militia. it has 12 members, of which eight are necessarily from the PLa. These eight are Chief of general Staff headquarters (gShQ), chief of PLa air Force (PLaaF), chief of PLa navy (PLan), chief of PLa Second artillery (PLaSa), head of general Political Department (gPD), head of general Logistics Department (gLD), head of general armament Department (gaD) and the minister of national defence, presently general Liang guanglie. There are

34

FORCE | August 2012

FORCE Visits China

Central Military Commission (CMC)

General Staff Headquarters (GSHQ)

Note: Chairman Vice-Chairman PLA Members Defence Minsiter

General Political Department (GPD)

1 3 7 1

General Logistics Department (GLD)

General Armament Department (GAD)

Chief of GSHQ Chief of PLAAF Chief of PLAN Chief of PLASA Political Department Head Logistics Department Head Armament Department Head

three vice-chairmen namely, Xi jinping, general guo Boxiong and general Xu Caihou. The Chairman of the Central military Commission (CmC) is hu jintao, who is also the President of China and Chairman of the Communist Party Politburo, the highest policy-making forum. Three observations are noteworthy. First, being a triple hatter, the Chairman CmC interacts directly with the PLa and the Politburo at the same time. Thus views of the military are known to the Politburo and the latters policies are acceptable to the military. Second, as the man expected to succeed President hu jintao, Xi jinping, already a vice-chairman of the CmC, is well versed with the PLas thinking, implying defence policy continuity. and third, given the predominance of PLa officials in the CmC, the military view is the most important, if not the predominant element of Chinas national security policy-making. 4 The general Political Department (gPD), is unique to the PLa; no other military in the world has a similar representation. The gPD is a clear indication that the PLa is not apolitical. Considering that the political officers are PLa officers doing party work and not party functionaries in army uniform inside the PLa, it suggests that PLa has more weightage in civil-military relations, which has been the traditional stance of communist China. Probingly, i asked Senior Colonel (brigadier) Su Rong, commander i armoured regiment (brigade), which we visited, if having political officers in the PLaa (PLa army) an organization that aims to become a professional, high-tech force was an aberration. his reply was forceful, Political officers are needed for unity (between PLa and civilians). it is important

to be professional and have an ideology too. We believe that human beings are as important as equipment. it is because of this unity that PLa soldiers deliver more with less food. a PLa soldier needs just one fourth the food a US soldier needs, to do his task well. it was explained to me that this arrangement helps enhance PLa interest in local affairs, and civilians in turn, learn about military affairs which would help them in mobilisation and understanding use of civilian infrastructure for war. as the PLa political wing wields clout outside the military, it also helps Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members understand the PLa better. Senior Colonel Su Rong told me that there are six political commissars in each division (8,000 soldiers), one each in a regiment (brigade, 1,800 soldiers). at the battalion level, the political officers are called director and each PLaa company has a political instructor.

The chain of command for nuclear-armed missiles runs from the CMC, through the GSHQ, to commander PLASA. For conventional ballistic missiles, the commander MAC is the sole authority for its employment
4 The PLaa and PLaaF are organised into seven aero-Commands, which is an interesting joint operations concept for synergy and works differently during peace and war time. The PLaa comprising 18 combined corps (group armies) is distributed into seven

military area Commands (maCs). The maCs, as per Colonel Yujun, are established according to Chinas administrative jurisdiction, geographical location, strategic and operational direction and operational tasks. The PLaas seven maCs are in Shenyang, Beijing, Lanzhou, jinan, nanjing, guangzhou and Chengdu. Commanders of the maCs are appointed by the Central military Commission (CmC) and report to the CmC both during peace and war-time through the chief of general Staff headquarters (gShQ). each combined corps has mobile operational units consisting of divisions and regiments (brigades); the PLaa units have arms and services including infantry, artillery, armour, air defence, engineering, signals, army aviation and Special Forces. The PLaaF, on the other hand, has under it seven air commands located in each of the seven maCs. Under each air command at maC level are aviation divisions, which are sub-divided into air regiments and air stations. During peace-time, the PLaaF does both single and combined arms training. During the visit to PLaaF 24th air Division, the chief of staff, Senior Colonel Xu Longcum told me that, during peace, the effort is on both single service training and combined exercises with the PLaa. This is in consonance with PLaaF thinking which has graduated from being a support force to a main-battle assault force; by building capabilities for air strike, force projection and support. During war, i was told, the PLaaF air command comes under command of the co-located commander maC, and transforms into aero-command. i had two inter-related questions on this joint operations arrangement: is there the option for PLaaF commander to take

36

FORCE | August 2012

CHAIn OF MILITARy COMMAnD Central Military Commission (CMC)

Peoples Armed Police Force (PAPF) (6,60,000)

General Staff Headquarters (GSHQ)

PeOPLeS LIBeRATIOn ARMy (PLA) (2.3 MILLIOn)

General Political Department (GPD) General Logistics Department (GLD)

Militia (8 million)

General Armament Department (GAD)

nuclear Command Chain

PLAAF

7 Air Commands North Sea Fleet

PLAN

East Sea Fleet South Sea Fleet Nuclear Missiles Conventional Missiles

MILITARy AReA COMMAnDS (MACs)

(Theatre Commands)
Shenyang Beijing Lanzhou Jinan Nanjing Guangzhou Chengdu (Chengdu MAC is responsible
for the entire LAC against India)

PLASA

Total 7 MACs

over the joint operations command (aero-Command)? how are joint operations planned during peace-time? Colonel Yujun clarified that command during war will remain with commander maC, who is always from the PLaa. We have no military area Command (maC) with an overall PLaaF commander, he said. This implies that the PLaaF can do its independent roles like strike and force projection (which it practises during peace-time) only within the ambit of the overall plan conceived by the PLaa commander of the concerned maC. The planning for joint operations is done by the commander maC in consultation with his commander air Command. The joint plans are sent to gShQ, which is a tri-service headquarters, where final approval is given. The PLaa commander, maC, however, retains flexibility in war as he remains in regular contact with the CmC through the gShQ. 4 The PLa Second artillery (PLaSa) is an independent force of the PLa and includes all land-based nucle-

ar missile force, conventional missile force, and combat support units. The chief of PLaSa, who is always from the PLaa, is a member of the CmC and reports to the gShQ. Until early nineties, the PLaSa had confined its training to itself. once PLaSa acquired better missile accuracies and converted a large number of medium and short range ballistic missiles in its inventory into dual-capable missiles, things changed dramatically with wider options available for use. Colonel Yujun confirmed that, medium and short range strategic missiles are under the second artillery but tactical missiles are now under the local commander. This is an important development with far reaching operational implications. it means that all strategic or nuclear missiles are with commander PLaSa; while all ballistic missiles with conventional warheads are under command and control of the concerned maC commander. The chain of command for nuclear-armed missiles runs from the CmC, through the gShQ,

to commander PLaSa. For conventional ballistic missiles, the commander maC is the sole authority for its employment. in its 1996 military demonstration against taiwan and all subsequent training exercises, the PLa has left little doubt about how it intends to use conventional ballistic missiles. The latter will be used in conjunction with the PLaaF to allow the air force to retain sorties for strike and air superiority missions. The conventional missiles targets would be heavily protected communication centres, weapons delivery sites, and aircraft carrier battle groups. it is axiomatic that conventional ballistic missiles would be employed in the initial stages of a conflict from widely dispersed sites. 4 The presentation mentioned PLaaF having an airborne corps in passing. i, however, asked two questions on PLaaFs 15th airborne corps; one was answered, while the other was not. Like the PLaa and PLan, why does
FORCE | August 2012

37

FORCE Visits China

PLaaF not have special-purpose (Special Forces) units? Colonel Yujun reply was, PLaaF does not need special-purpose units as they are inbuilt into its organisation. Based in henan province in central China, the 15th airborne corps is meant for independent strategic missions: limited power projection and deep strike manoeuvrability. The 15th corps missions would include occupying strategic points in the enemys rear, destroying enemys key communication hubs and preventing his supporting forces from reaching the front. The 15th corps troops would be supplemented by PLaa and PLan special-purpose (Special Forces) units, which are under the control of maCs and are trained to fight behind enemy lines, engaging in sabotage, reconnaissance and other unconventional operations. They receive extensive parachute training. in addition to the special-purpose (Special Forces) clandestine missions, the maCs have integral army aviation units to supplement 15th corps strategic effort; demonstrating a major shift from horizontal combination to vertical combination. my question that went unanswered was: how many combat troops can 15th airborne corps lift? During a formal dinner, i pressed this issue and said that indications were that 15th airborne corps could lift a division plus worth of fully combatant troops (13,000 soldiers). The response was a big smile. 4 The briefing to us mentioned that the PLa is building capability to win local wars in conditions of information-ization by strengthening composite development of mechanisation and information-ization with the latter as the leading factor. This explains the two-step approach of the PLa: mechanisation which has been achieved and information-ization that it hopes to complete by 2020. The spine to mechanisation is provided by the general Logistics Department (gLD), an important organisational concept at the operational level of war. Considering that all PLa forces are meant for mobile operations, the need is to have lean and mean combat forces the teeth component. The operational logistics or the tail factor is an entity by itself and is geared to fully support combat at various levels. to address logistics, which are critical to an intense battle, the PLa through the gLD has taken two steps: creation of a single supply system for a maC and incorporation of nearby civilian supply depots to assist logistics in times of emergency. The single supply system has two peculiarities. all PLaaF, PLan and PLaa forces in a maC area can draw rations and fuel supplies from a single point. moreover, massive storage sites have been created for holding ammunition reserves in the various operational theatres where maC forces would fight their wars. 4 While Chinas defence minister (always a retired PLaa officer) is a member of the CmC, the ministry of national Defence (mnD) has nothing to do with hard-core military work. in Colonel Yujuns words, The mnD, under the state council (council of ministers or government) is the leading administrative organ of national defence undertakings. it is responsible for public relations; military co-operation with friendly foreign militaries; and in consultation with the CmC, it is authorised to mobilise PLa reserve force (militia) which is the backbone of the regular army. he further elaborated that, the militia is an organic part of the armed forces and performs combat readiness support and defensive operations and assist in social order. in indias context, the PLa border guards (paramilitary forces) which face the itBP and regular indian army on the LaC are militia forces. power. This has increased threats from outstanding land and maritime border disputes. (i will dwell on this vital aspect in my subsequent article: The way forward). The second threat to China is from within: its social transformation. We have to guard against the triple threat of terrorism, extremism and secessionism, he emphasised. The third threat relates to Chinas interests and facilities outside the borders. he explained that China has built facilities in friendly countries, which could be targeted by armed hostile groups. This cannot be good for Chinas image and the armed forces have to be prepared to safeguard the nations interests, when required. The last threat identified by the colonel was to Chinas investments abroad. he, however, did not elaborate on what exactly these meant. given these threats and challenges, Chinas armed forces are focussed on five areas: safeguard sovereignty and the rise of China; contain taiwan and three evil forces (terrorism, extremism, and secessionism); information-ization, which is the backbone of the PLas modernization; outer space, electronic and cyber security; capability for operations other than war, including counter-terrorism, search and rescue, anti-piracy, and peacekeeping; and military co-operation with other countries. The colonel concluded his brief defence policy presentation by saying that Chinas strategy is to attack only after being attacked. at the end of the presentation at the mnD information office, i felt that there was a need to elaborate on the general armament Department (gaD) as well. Created in april 1998, the gaD headed by a PLaa officer, is meant to improve defence management, oversee development of mechanised, information and high-technology warfare systems, and streamline weapons procurement and maintenance apparatus. Previously, the responsibility for arms purchases, research & development and equipment maintenance was scattered among numerous military and defence industrial organizations with little coordination. The creation of the gaD is proof that China is determined to avail opportunities to strengthen its defence industrial base. The vindication comes from recent reports that China is no longer the biggest importer of equipment in the world; it is now the third largest exporter of arms and equipment.;

The PLAAF can do its independent roles like strike and force projection (which it practises during peacetime) only within the ambit of the overall plan conceived by the PLAA commander of the concerned MAC
4 after Colonel Yujun had dwelled on PLas higher Defence management (hDm), he turned his attention to the overarching question: what is Chinas defence policy? This was covered under three headings: the security environment, threats and the PLas responsibilities. according to Colonel Yujun, Chinas security environment has been shaped by three factors: the dissolution of the bipolar system after the Cold War; economic globalization; and information or network globalization. given the altered security environment, China has identified four threats to its national security. The first relates to the imbalance in strategic military

38

FORCE | August 2012

FORCE Visits China

Unrestricted War
India is far more vulnerable than is generally accepted
Pravin Sawhney | NEW DELHI / BEIJING

in DeCemBeR 2009, the then chief of army staff (CoaS), general Deepak kapoor informed the nation that China too, is a military threat. in response to a question by the media, he reportedly said that the army was preparing for a two-front war. While this created a furore both inside and outside the country, his statement had been mis-interpreted; he spoke about building capabilities, which was his re-

sponsibility. he did not say that india intended to fight a two-front war, which is the political leaderships prerogative. to repeat a clich: intentions can change any moment, but it takes long to build capabilities. to be fair to general kapoor, his were no idle words. he was the first Chief of the army Staff (CoaS) in 25 years, who gave a plan for force accretion to cater to the Chinese threat, to the government. more importantly, he got immediate sanction to raise two divisions (the last raising of 29 infantry division was in 1983). These mountain divisions were raised and placed in the order of Battle (oRBat) of the eastern army Command by march 2010, the month general kapoor retired. he put up a

requirement for ultra-light howitzers for these divisions, which are expected to be procured soon, under the Foreign military Sales (FmS) route from the United States. he travelled more times to the eastern theatre, reviewing operational plans and defence preparedness, than any CoaS in recent times. general kapoor was building threat-based capabilities; something that defence minister, a.k. antony concurred with in his 2009 classified directive to the Chiefs of Staff Committee: prepare for a twofront war. general kapoor understood the realities of indias higher Defence management (hDm). Considering that the defence ministry has no services representation for decision making (the

40

FORCE | August 2012

STUDY IN CONTRAST (Left) Indias main feeder road from the Assam plains into Arunachal Pradeshs Kameng district. This is the only road available for troops movement towards the LAC. (Above) Chinas well gravelled track upto the LAC at Bum La. China has such proper tracks all along the LAC

integrated Defence headquarters does mere staff work for the ministry), the service chiefs must necessarily have cordial relations with defence ministry civilian bureaucracy to expedite services procurements. Both the air and naval headquarters excel in this. (his successor, general V.k. Singh sought to dilute the threat-based acquisitions plan by his call for transformation or capability-based acquisitions. This resulted in the Cabinet Committee on Defence headed by the Prime minister returning the army plan for a mountain corps plus capabilities to the Chiefs of Staff Committee, (CoSC) for the other two defence services to add their needs as well. hopefully, the present CoaS, general Bikram Singh by his remarks to the media that modernization will be more

focussed has reverted to the sensible threat-based acquisitions plan). a year into his retirement, i had a long interaction with general kapoor. Since he did not give out any classified information, i will take the liberty here to disclose a bit of what he told me. (i have two purposes. one, is to see that he gets due acknowledgement for being the first CoaS after years of nationwide slumber, to wake up to the China threat. and two, to buttress my arguments on hDm). his assessment was: india has a nonconfrontational attitude towards China. China is more powerful. his war appreciation: The boundary dispute could result in a crisis or war with China. The Dalai Lama and the tibet issue will not lead to conflict as india will not up the

ante on these matters. his thinking on CoSC (he was Chairman, CoSC for six months from 31 august 2009 to 31 march 2010): There is no combined services thinking on the China threat. no paper has been prepared. The threat matters more to the army because of the Line of actual Control (LaC) and the lack of infrastructure. after all, the gains and losses show most on the ground. Like the army, the other two services have their own concerns. The navy is concerned about the Peoples Liberation army navys (PLan or PLa navy) growing capabilities. The air force is focussed on strategic reach. on preparedness: We are about 10 years behind China in preparedness on the disputed border. We have started work in a focussed way but the gap is not likely to be
FORCE | August 2012

41

FORCE Visits China

The 1962 memory should be forgotten. While i agree with her completely, my reasons are different. The need is not to forget the 1962 war completely, like the PLa officer suggested, but to ensure that we are not preparing for the last war. to my mind, the starting point for the indian armed forces should not be modernization for a likely border war with China, but to appreciate the nature of war itself. Will the next war be a repeat of the 1962 war, or the 1986 Sumdorong Chu crisis, or will it be something entirely different? This question, which is at the heart of the india-China conflict, can only be answered by the political and military leadership putting their heads together. The political leaders task unlike what defence minister antony repeatedly says is not to help the defence services with modernization plans alone. But to work with them to figure out what kind of confrontation is most likely, with China. The higher Defence management (hDm) is all about this. Before we get on with this subject, a review of the 1986 Sumdorong Chu crisis would be in order. The indian armys present operational stance and nature of war with China is based upon this little understood event. after the 1962 rout of indias 7th brigade, the 1986 Sumdorong Chu crisis was an extraordinary muscle-flexing by india. an indian intelligence Bureau post, close to the Thag La ridge on the Line of actual Control (LaC), the scene of the massacre of the 7th brigade, was occupied by PLa soldiers, when they found it temporarily vacated. once the PLa refused to vacate the post, india under the team of Prime minister Rajiv gandhi and general k. Sundarji, decided to build up troops (operation trident), with China following likewise. in one year, by the spring of 1987, PLas 63rd army from Chengdu was facing indias two mountain divisions in tawang. general Sundarji ordered airlifting of artillery ammunition worth crores to be stocked in the forward areas. Reserves from 3 and 4 corps were moved forward, with tawang being designated as the corps vital area, to be defended at all costs. Unknown to the PLa, the indian armys nightmare had begun. First, general Sundarji asked the nearby indian 77th brigade to forcibly evict the Chinese from the supposed iB post. But eastern army Commander Lt. general V.n. Sharma (later CoaS), asked how he was to respond to the PLas tactical nuclear weapons (known to be in

MAN RESPONSIBLE FOR BUILD UP Former Chief of Army Staff, General Deepak Kapoor has been an operationally under-rated commander

overcome. on acquisitions: We have to have good personal rapport with the defence ministry for timely acquisitions. a confrontationist attitude does not help the service. Unfortunately, the need is for better politico-military synergy. in 2010, as the army was busy building and restoring its defences on the LaC and seeking acquisitions, the air force was doing much the same. a FoRCe team travelled to the eastern air Command in Shillong (and its air station in tezpur) and met with senior officials at the air headquarters to get their assessment on China. Though both headquarters agreed on the need for capability and infrastructure development, they differed on the nature and immediacy of the threat. Probably being close to the seat of central government, the air headquarters views were more tempered. The man in-charge at the air headquarters told me that, There is no Chinese threat in the near future. nearfuture was explained as 10 years. moreover, China will hesitate to get into a war with us as global sympathy will be with the underdog (india) and that will not help them, i was told. The eastern air Command was more concerned about two operational issues: how to face the Chinese ballistic missiles challenge and their demonstrated capability (in exercise Stride-2009) to capture en-

emy airfields. in any case, given the flexibility of air power, the indian air Force (iaF) will be able to hold the Chinese air force (PLaaF) in a limited war, was the concluding thought. While the iaF harps on a limited war, the army has assessed four levels of military threat from China: non-contact war (coercion and intimidation), low, medium and high level threats. in the low-level threat, the PLa has been assessed to field five to six divisions on the LaC against india. The medium level threat envisages eight to 12 divisions facing us. The high level threat could be 18 to 20 divisions staring us in the face. army headquarters acknowledges that the PLa is capable of mobilising up to 32 divisions on the LaC against us in one season; the saving grace is that given the terrain limitations, it will be difficult for the PLa to bring more than 20 divisions on us together. Probably, the only issue on which the army and the air force agree completely is that the next war, should it happen, will not be a repeat of the 1962 rout. The humiliation of the 1962 war is so much ingrained in our services psyche that even the Chinese are aware of this. During my interaction at the Chinese ministry of national Defence, i was surprised to hear major general Yao Yunzhu of the Peoples Liberation army (PLa) say:

42

FORCE | August 2012

FORCE Visits China

Trijunction India-Tibet-Bhutan
Namk

Lhasa Le

To Tsona Dzong

TIBET MILITARY DISTRICT

Thagla Ridge a Chu

Bum La Porter Track Wangdung

Hathung La

Sumdorong Chu Ziminthang NORTH Shakti KAMENG Towang Lum La Towang Chu
I N D I A

Tulung La

Lumpu New Road Nyamjang Chu

A R U N A C H A L P R A D E S H

Jhang

To Bhutan

Se La

SKETCH OF SuMDORONG CHu AND SuRROuNDING AREAS

tibet) if they were used. Second, the crisis was compounded by operational problems. The indian army was already committed heavily in operation Brasstacks against Pakistan, with all signs of further escalation. The two-front war scenario stared india in the face. it was a panic situation and india had placed itself in an unenviable position. Somehow, sense prevailed in Delhi, Beijing and islamabad and the twin crises were diffused. While China learnt the right lesson, india did the opposite. Beijing, under Deng Xiaoping decided to develop infrastructure and good border management along the disputed border with india. The latter, in a good-will gesture after the supposedly successful China visit by Prime minister Rajiv gandhi in 1988, abandoned the step-by-step infrastructure development plan it had adopted in 1980. The development till then had been a great help during the indian troop build-up in 1986. after diplomatic relations were restored between india and China in 1976, Prime minister indira gandhi had approved CoaS general k.V. krishna Raos plan presented to her in 1980. it aimed to overcome the deficiencies of the 1962 war, when forward posts were occupied without adequate logistics support. Called operation Falcon, the plan was to develop over a 15year period, infrastructure and viable lines of communication along the entire

border with China. general Sundarji was to make use of this planned infrastructural development, which was in its sixth year, for operation trident. he also made use of the operational stance general krishna Rao had first suggested. Since 1958, operational commanders had favoured holding the Se La or Bomdi La line in strength. This was also the stance during the 1962 war. But during operation trident, general Sundarji pushed the whole mass forward, with tawang as the centre for kameng district and Walong for Lohit district. This left Subansari and Siang with a minimalist posture. This, at present, continues to be our operational stance. But with a difference in tawang, troops now hold the line much ahead of where they were during operation trident. against this operational stance, let us compare the strategic and operational levels for the two sides. The PLa has three major advantages at the strategic level. The most important is excellent border management. They have good roads (and overall infrastructure) right up to the LaC. There is unity of command between the PLaa and the border guards (militia) the latter is commanded by regular PLaa officers. Unlike the indian army which is holding the LaC in strength, the PLaa is nowhere to be seen. The Chinese border guards hold positions sparingly in penny pockets.

PLa officer Colonel Yang Yujun whom i met in Beijing, told me that The militia performs combat readiness support and defensive operations. i knew how it does this, as the FoRCe team had travelled to tawang and beyond in august 2010. We met with senior officers of the 190 mountain brigade, responsible for the sensitive sector. Standing at Bum La, ahead of tawang, at a height of 15,000 ft one gets a good sense of road communications. one also gets an idea of the so-called defensive operations. Unlike indian troops, the Chinese militia seem to be under no pressure to maintain round the clock vigil; they instead rely on technology. The entire sector has been strewn with a plethora of tactically networked surveillance devices, which are monitored regularly. The Chinese militia brigade (2 border guard regiment) facing tawang, is 40km inside in depth at tsona Dzong. The regular forces, trained in mobile operations, are invisible. The road that leads to tsona Dzong is a well-tarred gravel road, which allows better water drainage during monsoons. The Chinese have deliberately avoided making black-top roads, as that puts pressure on the indian side not to made blacktop roads. in any case, the tracks on our sides, if they exist at all, are pathetic to say the least. tawang, the corps defended area, has over 200 posts. many of them do not have tracks. troops have to lug loads walking from five hours to two days from the last track-head. a second road axis leading to tawang (which is crucial for speedy troop buildup) was approved by the Vajpayee government in 2001. But work has not yet commenced it awaits clearance from the environment ministry. (north Sikkim is another area of great sensitivity. here also, work on roads sanctioned in 2001 is stuck for similar reasons). given the decrepit state of tawangs road and tracks, the state of overall infrastructure along the LaC needs no elaboration. The roads are extremely narrow and precarious. Plus they have what the army calls friction of terrain massive and regular landslides are a norm during the rains. With so many additional troops being pumped into arunachal Pradesh, it is not difficult to understand how the PLa will benefit from a monsoon campaign against india. During peacetime, PLas good border management helps them in incremental encroachments. Their physical absence also keeps the indian troops under enormous psychological pres-

44

FORCE | August 2012

ABOVE AND RIGHT Main building, headquarters 1 armour regiment (brigade), and its commander, senior colonel (brigadier) Su Rong. (The regiment has 1,800 combatants including 167 officers. One-third of the troops are on two years compulsory service. rong is 42 years old and has been in command since two years. The regiment has three tank battalions with 40 tanks in each battalion. 1 armour regiment is under 6 armour division, which has three armour regiments, one self-propelled gun regiment and an air defence regiment with a total of 8,000 combatants. all equipment is mechanised for mobile operations and simulation is important part of training)

sure. Chinas second strategic advantage lies in good and quick decision making, with enormous flexibility before and during a war. This is made possible by close politico-military interaction, excellent strategic sustenance (through the general Logistics Department (gLD) and the general armaments Department (gaD)), unity of command and joint operations concept. and the third strategic benefit is with regard to Chinese possession of tactical nuclear weapons (tnW) something india does not have nor is inclined to have.
FORCE | August 2012

45

FORCE Visits China

capture an indian advanced Landing ground (aLg) close to the LaC? What if the PLas Special Forces dropped directly in the Brahmaputra valley? to prevent such situation, the indian army and the iaF need to allot high priority to an integrated air defence, as has been the case in the west against Pakistan. This is the defensive part. Regarding offensive capability, the indian military is undecided. The iaF has procured american C-130j aircraft for special operations. But how skilled and trained the air force and armys Special Forces are, remains a question. it is a pity that the indian armys Special Forces are being regularly used as improved commandos for counter-terrorism tasks in jammu and kashmir. Yet another operational advantage with the PLa, is its operational logistics (discussed in the previous article). Reportedly, there are enough logistics, ammunition and missile storage arrangements in the tibet autonomous Region (taR), to support a fast battle fought by the PLas mobile forces. This is not all. The PLa has concentrated on acquiring force multipliers: electronic support measures, battlefield command and control systems, increased surveillance capabilities and precision-guided munitions. next on its priority have been innovative fire application means with electronic control and observation systems. india lags behind in all these aspects because equipment for the western sector against Pakistan, continues to have a much higher priority over mountain formations. in any case CoaS general V.k. Singhs inglorious tenure, when he shifted from threat-based to capability-based procurements, did not help the case for acquisitions against China. This is not all. even the terrain favours the PLa. The indian troops have to undergo an excruciatingly long threestage acclimatisation process over 14 days (six days for stage one at 10,000 feet, and four days each for the remaining two stages at 12,000 feet and 15,000 feet); the PLa, being already on the plateau, have no such requirement. Probably, the only advantage talked about for india has been the high-altitude of PLaaF airfields in taR. taking off from such heights, PLaaF aircraft will not be able carry full weapon loads. This is no longer true. a serving air marshal rank officer told the FoRCe team at eastern air headquarters that the Peoples Liberation armyair Force (PLaaF) has developed special aircraft tyre material,

Chief of staff, 24th air division, senior colonel (air commodore) Xu Longcum standing next to an upgraded third generation J-10 aircraft with dual air to air and air to ground roles. (The air division has two air regiments each with 40 aircraft. The division has 100 pilots with the pilot to aircraft ratio being 1.2:1. The average age of pilots is 30 years. The aircraft are fully networked with night fighting capabilities. The pilots do an average of 120 hours flying per year with emphasis on simulation. Training includes both tactical and combined arms.)

if the PLa does not get a quick breakthrough against a determined indian army deployed with defences in depth, what stops the PLa from threatening to use tnW in the high altitude terrain with little collateral damage? at the operational level, the PLas advantages mock the indian armys war preparedness. The biggest is the theatre itself. The tibetan autonomous Region (taR), a single PLa theatre with complete unity of command (aero-Command) faces four army commands and two air force commands from india on the disputed border. PLa officer Colonel Yujun confirmed to me that the Chengdu military area Command is responsible for taR. Pitted against this are the indian armys northern, Western, Central and eastern army Commands, plus the Western and eastern

air Commands. given the comparable command profiles, the PLa will elicit much better responses and flexibility; in short, Chinas overall forces commander will retain initiative throughout the conflict escalation ladder. no amount of operational coordination that the six senior indian commanders will do, can equal a single theatre commanders firm grip over war with direct access to the nations political-military leadership (Central military Commission). The PLas other twin operational advantages are its Special Forces (each service has its own units skilled to do what they should: operate behind enemy lines) and impressive air-lift capabilities. The PLas vertical envelopment prowess was demonstrated during exercise Stride-2009, which has the iaF brass worried. What if the PLa was to

46

FORCE | August 2012

using which the less load-carrying disadvantage has been eliminated. in summation, it can be said that the PLa has overwhelming advantages over the indian military for a border war in the himalayas. The needed military balance between the western sector against Pakistan and the eastern sector against China is not there. The indian armed forces will find it extremely difficult to take on the PLas offensive tactical concept of simultaneous engagement on several fronts and points. Consider the following four tactical concepts the PLa could employ. The first is the long-range raid. This is somewhat similar to the indian armys concept of reconnaissance in depth. it is a punitive theatre level action using Special Forces and heli-borne troops designed to mess up the enemys rear, rather than capture and hold ground. another tactical concept could be advance on several fronts. Yet another could be breakthrough by means of ballistic missiles or even a threat of tactical nuclear weapons. and last not least, forced local landings: amphibious operation landings using land forces and marine infantry component of PLan. While we have discussed various aspects of a conventional war (kinetic war) that india may be faced with against China, to my mind we have been very presumptuous in concluding that the PLa will play by the rules. just as we neglected the Chinese front from 1986 onwards till finally waking up in 2009, we seem to be at sea in understanding our adversary, his concept of war and battlefield and how he may fight it. if true, this would be a disaster of unimaginable proportions. The need is to dwell on PLas present thinking in two areas: Cyber and space. i recommend three extraordinary books written by eminent americans on what the PLa is up to. These are The Future of Power, by joseph S. nye; Cyber War by Richard a. Clarke; and america the Vulnerable, by joel Brenner. The subject is cyber-security: the biggest challenge in the information age this century. nye writes that: Chinese strategists, realising that a conventional confrontation with the United States would be a folly, developed a strategy of unrestricted warfare that combines electronic, diplomatic, cyber, terrorist proxy, economic and propaganda tools to deceive and exhaust the american system. The first rule of unrestricted warfare is that there are no rules.

Brenner informs us that the PLa pamphlet on unrestricted warfare was published in 1999 by two senior PLa colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui who had studied the american prowess displayed during the first gulf War (1991) closely. Their central thesis was that the american military could be stopped in its tracks because its command and control rode on porous networks that could be penetrated, corrupted, or brought down altogether. Colonels Qiao and Wang wrote: From now on, it would be difficult for the military sphere to serve as the automatic dominant sphere in every war. War will be conducted in non-war spheres. all the prevailing concepts about the breadth, depth and height of the operational space already appear to be old-fashioned and obsolete. Strategists everywhere have therefore stopped talking about battle-fields. They now talk about battle-space which has created confusion about whos in that space and where the space is. in our view, the battle-space is now everywhere. henceforth, there would be no decisive battles. interestingly, Brenner informs us that the Chinese see conflict on all fronts but they do not see conflict as inconsistent with co-operation where interests intersect. he further writes that, as for the US military, Command, Control, Communications and intelligence (C3i), might be its greatest strength. But the Chinese saw that C3i was fragile, so it was also the american militarys point of greatest vulnerability. just as control of information had been the key to the american victory, paralysing or corrupting information systems would be the key to preventing american victory. armed with a bit of understanding about cyber, i asked the PLa officers panel that i met on june 19 at the Chinese ministry of national defence, how important cyber security was to them. Senior Colonel Xu Weidi, from the strategic teaching and research department of the PLa University of national Defence, who was quiet till then, was asked to answer. no one will win the battle in the cyber-space and hence no one should engage in cyber-war. We should focus on security in cyber, was his response. Later at a formal dinner, the articulate senior colonel (he has done the Royal College of Defence Studies course in London with Lt. general ata hasnain, the present military Secretary), was luckily seated next to me. he dwelled at length on the subject. he told me that

he was part of the Chinese team which was in talks with the US. he was just back from Washington where the two sides had deliberated on cyber aspects. i must admit that his knowledge on cyber was exceptional and few officers in the indian military would match him. The advantage that the colonel and the PLa have, is that they have been mulling over cyber issues since 1988. according to Brenner, Shen Weiguang, now regarded as the founding sage of Chinese information warfare, told his perplexed PLa audience at the national Defence University, that, if we could destroy the enemys political, economic, and military infrastructure by putting virus-infected microchips into their systems, we could achieve the greatest of all strategic objectives. This could destroy the enemys will to launch a war or wage a war. This was in 1988. Since 2002, the PLa has been actively creating information Warfare militias, recruiting from universities, research institutes, and commercial it companies, especially telecom firms. We (the US) know that Chinas academy of military Science has endorsed the formation of cyber-militia and directed the PLa to make the creation of such units a priority. in some cases they undergo light military indoctrination, Brenner writes. against this backdrop, we need to cast our minds to around 2009 when reports of various indian government military and civilian website getting hacked started emerging. The needle of suspicion in all cases pointed to China. i remember learning from the times of india newspaper in Delhi sometime in march 2010, that FoRCe newsmagazines website was amongst important sites purportedly hacked by Chinese. a quick recall informed me that we did face trouble with the FoRCe online edition and our e-mails, all of which, ignorantly, we blamed on the server. alarmed by this development, FoRCe met with concerned government people to understand how well india was prepared against the new threat. FoRCe teams research showed that not only was there a need for much more to be done all affected parties comprising military and sensitive government ministries were not on the same page they were working in compartments. Considering that all three defence services, the navy, air force and the army (in the same order) are networking (the Chinese call this information-ization) themselves, they are proportionately making themselves vulnerable to the cyber-threat.
FORCE | August 2012

47

FORCE Visits China

is necessary to acquiring this capability. Satellite, as you know, has a predictable path, whether it is in the polar, low earth or any other orbit. to check my interception capability, i can always simulate the satellite path electronically. i will generate an electronic scenario at the launch pad as if i am getting data from another satellite or ground-based radar and take that as the input for my mission-control centre. Then, i can launch an interceptor. Since the path is known, i will know if i have accurately hit the target or not. Unlike in ballistic missiles, where the path can be unpredictable, thanks to aero-dynamic and other reasons. So technically, we have concluded that we do not need to check our building blocks to ascertain whether we have satellite interception capability. When i asked him, why the Chinese thought it necessary to demonstrate anti-satellite capability, he replied, i do not know. only they can answer this question. Probably the answer lies in cold statistics. Satellites in Low earth orbit (Leo) are at heights of 300 km above earth any lower and they will not be stable. The Polar orbit is at a height of 843 km. The demonstrated capability of DRDos exo-interceptor is only 80 km above earth. even if the DRDo were able to make an interceptor which could reach a height of 300 km satellites in Leo move at speeds up to 28,000 kilometres per hour. Thus, to demonstrate assurance, there is a need to do a successful aSat. india has enough commercial satellites in space. We also have plans to launch dedicated military (navy, air force and then army) satellites for communications and targeting needs. Shouldnt we be worried about Chinas demonstrated aSat capability? once we get a sense of Chinas unrestricted warfare doctrine and its cyber and space prowess, it becomes evident that the indian armed forces can do little to deter the new threat. There is a need for three-pronged action: at the national level, none less than the Prime ministers office (Pmo) should prepare a holistic plan, straddling different ministries. The higher Defence management (hDm) requires a complete shake-up and border management should get a boost the last issue is the most urgent. trying to modernize the armed forces, without action on the three above mentioned issues will be putting the horse before the cart. The armed forces cannot be allowed to prepare for the last war.;

Chief of staff, Shanghai naval garrison, captain Wei Xiaodong. (housed in a new magnificent building, the garrison, under command of the east Sea Fleet, came into being in March 2012. Under the PLan restructuring, the garrison has replaced the earlier Shanghai naval base, with three tasks at hand: operational, surveillance and countermine measures. The main difference between the garrison is its less focus on logistics than the earlier naval base; logistics is being handled separately by another unit)

The other issue is space. China demonstrated its anti-satellite (aSat) capability in 2007 by destroying its own legacy satellite, with a land-based interceptor. This set alarm bells in the US. grasping the import of Chinese space capability, the US directed its defence major, Raytheon to launch the SpaceFence programme. explaining the programme, Raytheons senior executive, tom kennedy told me recently at the Farnborough international air Show on july 8 that: The Space-Fence programme, at present, has the capability to track up to 20,000 pieces of debris in space; once the programme reaches initial operating capability in 2017, we will be able to track up to 200,000 pieces of debris in space. This increase is due to the advanced radar technology that will allow

the US air Force to detect much smaller objects at greater distances and with much more certainty than the existing system. Considering that the US has hundreds of military and commercial satellites in space, it desires good space situation awareness. Chinas aSat capability would smash legacy satellites into smithereens, leaving clouds of debris which would adversely affect much needed situational awareness. Such an act cannot be construed an act of war. But it would play havoc with space supported C3i systems. Surprisingly, indias reaction given by the director general, Defence Research and Development organisation (DRDo), Dr V.k. Saraswat was incredible. in an interview to FoRCe in February 2010, he said, Demonstrating satellite interception is not something that

48

FORCE | August 2012

The Way Forward

India needs a strategic defence review
Pravin Sawhney | NEW DELHI / BEIJING

FORCE Visits China

the CeLeBRateD aUthoR, inteRnational diplomat, indias former minister of state for external affairs and now an elected member of Parliament, Shashi Tharoor, in his latest book Pax indica has written about the need for india to do a strategic defence review (SDR). he writes that: as a democracy, india needs to undertake a strategic defence review that brings in all elements of the security services, the public at large and elected representatives in Parliament, to produce a national security strategy. But such an exercise has not even been attempted. i cannot agree with him more especially after reading in the same book that: nearly six and a half decades after independence and Partition, Pakistan remains indias biggest foreign policy challenge. This exactly is indias problem. as a nation which aspires for a strategic role beyond its geographical boundaries, india continues to keep its sights low. its political leadership, the armed forces, external affairs ministry, most strategic experts, and the media are all obsessed with Pakistan, leaving only a little time and energy to look east at the nation which the US is anxious about. only a SDR can set our national template, which is diametrically out, correct. at present, indias biggest national security and foreign policy challenge is China, and not Pakistan. Fearing that this would be highlighted in a SDR and may displease China, the government is hesitant to order a second SDR. (The first SDR written by the national Security advisory Board in 1999 was quietly buried by the then dispensation as China and Pakistan were mentioned as threats to national security. This was not unusual as China threat was the prime reason given by Prime minister Vajpayee to the US for indias 1998 nuclear tests.) What will a SDR do? it will help prioritise indias defence and security; inform Delhi that it is important to keep the home-base secure (called defence), before it aspires for a larger security role in the indian ocean Region (ioR). if india

UNEASY HANDSHAKE Premiers Manmohan Singh and Wen Jiabao

is undecided about its defence, it cannot be certain about its security. Delhi conveniently complains about Chinas support to Pakistan to keep india boxed in the sub-continent, or that the US by hyphenating india-Pakistan relations is insensitive to Delhi, or why did President Bill Clinton and recently President obama while commencing their terms in office tell China to play a stabilising role in South asia, indias supposed backyard. Remember Cassius in Shakespeares julius Caesar: The fault dear

Brutus is not in our stars but ourselves that we are underlings. Consider this: indias defence service chiefs dismiss Pakistan as a mere irritant while committing maximum energy and finances against it; and the Defence Research and Development organisation produced (actually still struggling) inS arihant (nuclear-powered and armed, SSBn) submarine after decades of effort with Pakistan in mind. it is useless against China. While China is working assiduously to build its hard
FORCE | August 2012

49

FORCE Visits China

that China continues with a low level support to insurgents in the northeast. This probably explains the recent setting up of the new assam Rifles (indias only paramilitary force headed by army officers but reporting to the ministry of home affairs) command headquarters in Silchar with jurisdiction over border states of mizoram, tripura and southern assam. The other issue is the galloping bilateral trade towards USD 100 billion, heavily tilted against india. it already stands at a whopping USD 73.9 billion; indias trade deficit with China at USD 27.1billion. When i raised this issue with ma jiasheng at the Chinese ministry of external affairs, he sounded optimist and said, You will soon see this matter resolved to mutual satisfaction. his premise was based on the fact that both sides have agreed that boosting mutual investment would be the answer to deepen trade ties. This has its own accompanying risks as evident from trends where Chinese companies are keen to enter indias national security sensitive telecom and power sectors. Probably the most sensitive bilateral issue for China is the question of the Dalai Lama and the future of tibetan government-in-exile in india. While the Dalai Lama has been completely defanged by india in its appeasement policy towards China, the charismatic spiritual leader still stands like a colossus. it is a catch-22 situation for Beijing: they can denounce him but cannot wish him away. The 44 tibetans self-immolation bids in a year in China are proof, if one was needed, that spirituality overrides materialism for tibetans living under Beijings rule. The Dalai Lama has stymied Chinas move by declaring that his re-incarnation will be born outside Chinese-controlled tibet. The million dollar question now is: will the Dalai Lama identify his successor during his lifetime? if he does it, the tibetan government-in-exile would get the breather. if he fails to do this, the Chinese may pressurise Delhi to banish the tibetan government-in-exile from india after the passing away of the Dalai Lama. From indias perspective this would be a serious matter. Delhi needs to remember that tibet is one of Chinas identified core area of interest, while the border dispute is not. notwithstanding indian armed forces assessment, China is unlikely to go to war with india over the border dispute; at worst, it will use its non-kinetic capabilities (space, cyber, terrorist proxy in northeast india, and both covert and overt support in

MUTUAL SUPPORT The Dalai Lama with J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah

power (economic and military power) to take on the US in the western Pacific and later the ioR, india is undecided on three critical counts: which is the bigger threat, China or Pakistan? Should india move vertically (afghanistan and Central asia Republics) and horizontally ( from the horn of africa to malacca Straits and eastwards) at the same time, or is there a need to prioritise? and, can india undertake the desired strategic reach all alone ( following strategic autonomy mantra), or its needs other friendly nations? it is universally acknowledged that the western Pacific and ioR will be the global pivots this century. given this, india cannot treat the two major powers, China and US, destined to play big roles here with the board brush it uses for other bilateral relationships. Both countries have two distinctive characteristics: the US is fond of chess game (checkmate), while China prefers Wei qi (strategic encirclement and strategic patience); and none has experience or stomach for equal partnerships. all this will find an echo in a grand strategy that india lacks and a SDR will help it formulate. Let us dwell on these relationships starting with China. india wants to resolve the border dispute which China has ruled out. For the first time in centuries, China, that build the great Wall, has its land borders completely secure. it has resolved its land border disputes

with 10 nations, notably Russia and Vietnam, and is expected to do so with Bhutan soon; india being the sole exception. not resolving the border dispute with india helps China in three ways. one, through good border management, it has put enormous psychological pressure on the indian armed forces, especially the army and air force. two, the disputed border is Chinas pressure point to keep indias strategic reach ambitions in check. and three, by keeping indias conventional capabilities distributed and thereby weak, it helps Pakistan to continue with its proxy war against india. While Delhi has accepted the Chinese formulation that it is enough to keep the disputed border peaceful, the worry is its independent media. For this reason, China regularly advises india to keep its media restrained. at the Chinese ministry of national defence, PLa maj. general Yao Yunzhu made this point to me. She said, Both sides have subtle agreements on the Line of actual Control. Patience is needed for stability in border areas, and i am sure the joint working groups can sort out these problems. a more direct message was given to me by ma jisheng of the Chinese ministry of external affairs. he said that, For better results, border peace talks should be conducted away from media attention. There are two more issues at the bilateral level. top indian army officers, who cannot be identified, have told me

50

FORCE | August 2012

operational logistics to Pakistan) to keep india in check. But, tibet issue is a different ballgame which requires to be handled deftly; Delhi should prepare to face this challenge in consultations with the Dalai Lama. at the regional level, two issues deserve attention. The first is Chinas allout support, bypassing global restrictive regimes to which it is committed, to Pakistan. Well documented, this matter requires no elaboration. The second issue is Chinese militarys string-of-pearl strategy (strategic encirclement) for the indian ocean which covers Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, myanmar, Coco islands and maybe Bhutan (once the bilateral dispute is resolved); all these nations (except Bhutan) freely use the China card in dealings with india. now it depends, how one assesses this matter. it could be argued that China has not sought military bases but only access at these countries ports, something it needs for its burgeoning sea-trade. PLans Senior Captain (Commodore) Zhang Wei, of Chinese naval military studies institute told me during an interaction in Beijing that: PLan does not have nor intends to have military bases outside China. So it is incorrect to say that PLan or China is expansionist. Yet it can be said that China is inching (wei qi) towards expansionism. two instances lend support to this argument. Since 2010, China has been making regular sea forays into the gulf of aden. to my question, PLa Colonel Yang Yujun said that: PLan has sent 11 flotillas until now to the gulf of aden. it should be noted that more than the Chinese vessels, these have been for the protection of other countries commercial vessels against piracy. What he did not say is that these opportunities would have given PLan sailors a hands-on experience of long voyages and would enlist Chinas future claim to the india ocean being its legitimate area of naval operations. isnt this what China is doing in the South China Sea, which to the surprise of the world it suddenly declared its core area of interest in 2010? This trigger created panic amongst the aSean nations, and prompted the US to announce this century as its Pacific century; the US will move 60 per cent of its naval assets in the western Pacific by 2020. When i brought up this subject with jia Xiudong, a senior fellow-in-residence at the state-run China institute of international Studies in Beijing, his reply was astounding. he said: Remember no Chinese official has said that South

China Sea is Chinas core area of interest. This has been suggested in Chinese newspapers only. Well, can Chinese prominent newspapers write such sensitive commentaries without clearance from the government? moreover, how does this square up with the recent Chinese announcements establishing a military garrison at Sansha in the Paracel islands (South China Sea), also claimed by Vietnam? on the face of it, China, lacking a military capability to take on the US, has welcomed (strategic patience) the US new grand strategy. ma jisheng told me that: We understand the US presence in asia-Pacific due to historic reasons. We hope the US presence would be for peace, stability and prosperity of the region. Yet, China has rebuffed US recent calls to quickly complete a code of conduct for the seas as the US secretary of state hillary Clinton warned clashes were likely without a region-wide deal.

Tibet is one of Chinas identified core area of interest, while the border dispute is not. notwithstanding Indian armed forces assessment, China is unlikely to go to war with India over the border dispute; at worst, it will use its non-kinetic capabilities (space, cyber, terrorist proxy in northeast India, and both covert and overt support in operational logistics to Pakistan) to keep India in check
What does all this mean for india? The answer probably is in the brilliant must-read book, monsoon: The india ocean and the Future of american Power by Robert D. kaplan (the book is recommended reading by US Chairman, joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, general martin Dempsey). he writes that: a one-ocean navy in the western Pacific makes China a regional power; a two-ocean navy in both the western Pacific and the indian ocean makes China a great power, able to project force around the whole navigable eurasia rim-land. Delhi may recall that Chinese officials have often been scornful

of calling the india ocean by this name as it suggests affinity towards india. no one is, however, saying that China plans to make claims over the indian ocean anytime soon; it is in the distant future (strategic patience). For the present, China will be locked with the US in the western Pacific, with enormous lessons and opportunities for india. The operational concept supporting the US pivot in asia-Pacific, called the air Sea Battle Concept (aSBC) is meant to allow freedom of access and manoeuvre by destroying the networks and weapon platforms that might deny that freedom at the start of any conflict. The Pentagon has said that the concept affects all five domains, namely, land, sea, air, space and cyberspace. Considering that the US administration has declared no budget cuts for development of the needed aSBC capabilities, US defence companies are already embarked on major projects; a shift from technologies used on land for conventional wars and counter-terrorism, to technologies for anti-access and denial asymmetric capabilities being developed by the PLa. isnt this a good enough reason for india to seek greater partnership with the US? Lets look at indias strategic relations with the US. The singular important thing that india has been seeking from the US since 1984 is dual-use and gradually high-end technologies. Bilateral talks commenced in march 2001 coinciding with the US Bush administration lifting of the sanctions imposed on india after the 1998 nuclear tests. The formal talks were held at two forums, the high technology Cooperation group (htCg) and the next Steps in Strategic Partnership (nSSP). The htCg established in november 2002 had two tasks: to encourage free talks between the US and indian private sector industries, and to devise a road map for strategic talks by the two governments. The nSSP came into being in February 2003, building on the success of the htCg, to expand bilateral cooperation in three areas: civilian space programmes, civilian nuclear activities, and high technology trade. in addition, as part of the nSSP, the two countries agreed to dialogue on ballistic missile defence (BmD). nine years later, the results accrued can best be termed as modest with enormous unlocked potential. The civil nuclear deal which has not taken off, the geo-political and geo-strategic differences, US arrogance about its technology, indian DRDos penchant to bluff its own people on indigenous strategic capabilities espeFORCE | August 2012

51

FORCE Visits China

amongst such geo-political realities, india, with some clear and bold thinking, must seize opportunities knocking at its doors. Regarding the border dispute, india, like China, should make its perception of the Line of actual Control public; this is after all subject to mutually acceptable border resolution. Such transparency could include identification of areas of disputes as well. This will ensure that while india strengths its border management, both sides, under the new Special Representatives talks, maintain stability amidst transparency. on bilateral trade, india needs to be vigilant on two counts: Chinese investments steer clear of sensitive sectors, and ways are found to keep trade deficit minimal. While Delhi appears to have exhausted the Dalai Lama card, it could still gain by advising the spiritual leader to identify his successor in his lifetime. The other issue that needs immediate attention is indias relations with the US. The truth is that india and the US could and should do more. india has had the largest number of bilateral military exercises with the US than any other friendly country. The US purpose in doing this was to familiarise the indian armed forces to its equipment to eventually develop commonality of equipment for inter-operability. The US is also keen to enter the indian defence industry in a big way, going beyond a sellers relationship, and so it has repeatedly sought reforms in indian defence procurement policy in two areas of Foreign Direct investment and offsets for meaningful mutual gains. india is hesitant to do this as it does not want to hand over its strategic sector to private ownership; unfortunately, it continues to treat the defence sector as strategic rather than a national industry. given this deadlock, there is and will be little progress on US giving its dual-use and maybe high-end technology to india. two recent examples will make this point. The indian army is keen to purchase large numbers of US javelin missiles, but the US has drastically slashed down the sought numbers saying this would destabilise the region. The US, on the other hand, it keen for a deeper relationship on BmD including sales of Patriot missile, but the DRDo has stymied talks by offering indigenous platforms of doubtful integrity. Both sides must find ways to break the deadlock on deeper defence industrial partnership. This probably holds the key to a mutually beneficial relationship; from partnership to maybe a strategic one.;

GREAT POSSIBILITIES Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with President Barack Obama

cially BmD programme, and indias reluctance to compromise on its strategic autonomy have all been responsible for the tardy bilateral cooperation. The historical political distrust of one another has been and still remains the biggest road-block to unleashing the potential of this relationship. The good news is that both sides have not given up, which is why both never tire to describe the relationship as a strategic partnership. and this is what worries China. Beijing, which is poised to challenge the US with three advantages (its geography, economic might

and growing asymmetrical military capabilities) in asia Pacific, is anxious about the india-US relationship. if anything, this could restrict Chinas free naval operations in the indian ocean region. The US has already strengthened relationships with its allies and partners in east asia and western Pacific region, and has provided a boost to them with its new Pacific pivot. For the indian ocean Region, india is the US natural partnership choice for stability and free navigation of the seas; india straddles the ioR, has a growing navy, is democratic and abides by international rules.

52

FORCE | August 2012