The coming war between Delhi & Beijing. Things seem to be getting serious. There is unrest in Tibet and Kashgar is aflame. Kashmir is openly in a rebellion and the seven states of Assam are not in the Central control of Delhi. Rupee News has written several articles about the coming war between Beijing and Delhi. Now Bharat Verma has openly discussed the fears in an article appearing the Indian Defence Weekly. The Peoples Daily has not remained unaffected by the the rising tensions.

Some are afraid that a fresh border dispute between China and India would become the spark plunging the two neighbors again into a ‘partial military action.’ And India seems to have been conspiring to create the picture of an imminent war by deploying 60,000-strong additional troops and four SU-30 fighters along the 650-mile unfenced border with China. By Li Hongmei People’s Daily Online. Veiled threat or good neighbor?

The following  nine data points which cause alarm among Beijing and Delhi watchers.

1) The Bharati Army has conducted an exercise called Devine Matrix fighting a war with China.

2) The US reports increased Chinese activity in developing weapons that target Bharat.

3) Recently Delhi moved its latest aircraft to forward Air bases in Tezpur and in Ladakh.

4) The number of intrusions into South Tibet (Bharat calls it Arunchal Pradesh) has quadrupled in the past year.

5) The Chinese are very suspicious of the rioting in Tibet in 2008 and the riots in Zinjiang this year and suspect that the CIA and the RAW had a handin both events.

6) Mr. Bharat Verma, who has tangled with the former DG of the ISI, Retired General Hamid Gul on many occasions has now written an inflammatory article in the Indian Defense Weekly clearly portraying Bharati fears of a Chinese attack on Delhi.

7) “China’s stated objectives, in their White Paper, of developing strategic missile and space-based assets and of rapidly enhancing its blue-water navy to conduct operations in distant waters, as well as the systematic upgrading of infrastructure, reconnaissance and surveillance, quick response and operational capabilities in the border areas, will have an effect on the overall military environment in the neighbourhood of India.” (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS-India-India-wary-of-Sino-Pak-link-up-in-occupied-Kashmir/articleshow/4768468.cms)

8) China has stationed 30 military divisions in the Arunachal Pradesh area, of which it claims about 90,000 sq. Km of South Tibet.

9) The Bharati Defence ministry’s annual report for 2008-09 tabled in Rajya Sabha recently has indicated that there is increased link up between Pakistan and China via Kashmir – the territory that was won by China in 1962 and given by Pakistan to China as part of the Trans-Karakoram treaty.

Many analysts are trying to understand the Bharti mentality. Li Hongmei People’s Daily sheds some light on the reasons for the rising tensions between the giant neighbors.

As an Indian military official put it, ‘Indians maintain the same national sentiments towards China as the way the Chinese do at the mention of Japan and Japanese,’ many Indians actually have very subtle impression upon China, which has been translated into a very complicated mindset—awe, vexation, envy and jealousy—in the face of its giant neighbor.

The reason for this mentality is multi-faceted, and brought about by both historical factors and reality. In 1947, when India freed itself from the British colonization and won independence, it was one of the global industrial powers, ranking Top 10 in the world and far ahead of the then backward China. But today, China’s GDP has tripled that of India and per capita income doubled, which turns out to be a totally unacceptable fact to many Indians. And with China’s galloping economic growth since its adoption of the reform and opening up policy in late 1970s, the wealth gap between China and India has increasingly widened.

On top of that, some Western powers have been inciting India to challenge China, and even insidiously convince India that China would be the ‘greatest obstacle’ threatening India’s rise. To feed its ambitions, the West has gone so far as to devise ways to extol India as a potentially No.1 democracy in Asia, but meanwhile intentionally play down China’s social and economic progress. By Li Hongmei People’s Daily Online. Veiled threat or good neighbor?

One of the questions being asked in military circles is the reason why all this is being claimed at this crucial juncture. Mumbai hurt Bharti business. This will place Delhi in the same column as Beirut, Baghdad and Kabul. Buinsess and insurance will go up. The short term gains by trying to get a sympathy vote from the US may or may not work.

A leading defence expert has projected that China will attack India by 2012 to divert the attention of its own people from “unprecedented” internal dissent, growing unemployment and financial problems that are threatening the hold of Communists in that country. “China will launch an attack on India before 2012. There are multiple reasons for a desperate Beijing [ Images ] to teach India the final lesson, thereby ensuring Chinese supremacy in Asia in this century,” Bharat Verma, Editor of the Indian Defence Review, has said.

Vermasaid the recession has “shut the Chinese exports shop”, creating an “unprecedented internal social unrest” which in turn, was severely threatening the grip of the Communists over the society. Among other reasons for this assessment were rising unemployment, flight of capital worth billions of dollars, depletion of its foreign exchange reserves and growing internal dissent, Verma said in an editorial in the forthcoming issue of the premier defence journal. In addition to this, “The growing irrelevance of Pakistan, their right hand that operates against India on their behest, is increasing the Chinese nervousness,” he said, adding that US President Barak Obama’s [ Images ] Af-Pak policy was primarily Pak-Af policy that has “intelligently set the thief to catch the thief”. Rediff News

In the past century the Chinese have walked softly and hidden the Big stick. It has whispered where others have shouted. The leadership in Beiing has bitten its lip on Taiwan and Arunchal Pradesh. It has kept quiet on the boundary line South of Tibet and kept quiet on international issues that it felt strongly about. Now the results are evident for all to see. The pace of Chinese development in the past 60 years is one of the wonders of the world.

Delhi claims that there has been a four-fold increase in Chinese intrusions into Southern Tibet which Beijing considers China. Mr. Verma has published this map about the problems faced by Bharat.

A more accurate depiction of the insurgencies faced by Bharat are as follows:

India map: Naxalite Maoist insurgency map of India map : More than 89 insurgencies rage in India

 

 

Vermasaid Beijing was “already rattled, withits proxy Pakistan now literally embroiled in a civil war, losing its sheen against India.” “Above all, it is worried over the growing alliance of India with the US and the West, because the alliance has the potential to create a technologically superior counterpoise. “All these three concerns of Chinese Communists are best addressed by waging a war against pacifist India to achieve multiple strategic objectives,” he said.

While China “covertly allowed” NorthKorea to test underground nuclear explosion and carry out missile trials, it was also “increasing its naval presence in South China Sea to coerce into submission those opposing its claim on the Sprately Islands,” the defence expert said. He said it would be “unwise” at this point of time for a recession-hit China to move against the Western interests, including Japan [ Images ]. “Therefore, the most attractive option is to attack a soft target like India and forcibly occupy its territory in the Northeast,” Vermasaid. But India is “least prepared” on ground to face the Chinese threat, he says andasks a series of questions on how will India respond to repulse the Chinese game plan or whether Indian leadership would be able to “take the heat of war”.

“Is Indian military equipped to face the two-front wars by Beijing and Islamabad [ Images ]? Is the Indian civil administration geared to meet the internal security challenges that the external actors will sponsor simultaneously through their doctrine of unrestricted warfare? “The answers are an unequivocal ‘no’. Pacifist India is not ready by a long shot either on the internal or the external front,” the defence journal editor says. In view of the “imminent threat” posed by China, “the quickest way to swing out of pacifism to a state of assertion is by injecting military thinking in the civil administration to build the sinews. That will enormously increase the deliverables on ground — from Lalgarh to Tawang,” he says.Rediff News

There are other issues that have cropped up as well. They indicate a heightening of the tensions and the possibility of war. 

The Indian army has predicted a war with its nuclear-armed neighbor China by 2017 as Beijing continues to strengthen its military muscle.

A secret military exercise, called ‘Divine Matrix’, by the Indian troops visualized a war scenario with China, the Hindustan Times reported Saturday. “A misadventure by China is very much within the realm of possibility with Beijing trying to position itself as the only power in the region,” a senior army officer told the daily following the maneuver.

An Indian military’s assessment has outlined that Beijing would rely on information warfare (IW) to bring New Delhi down on its knees. Earlier on Wednesday, the Pentagon released a report warning that China was busily trying to arm its forces with weapons that can be used to nullify the superiority of any naval and air power that could disrupt the balance of region.

China is concerned about growing ties between Washington and New Delhi. A controversial deal allowing India access to civilian nuclear technology has not been well-received among Chinese officials.

New Delhi, meanwhile, is suspicious of Chinese relations with India’s long-time rival Pakistan. India and China fought a brief but bloody war over border dispute in 1962 with a decisive victory for the Chinese. Pak Alert

It is no secret that Asia faces a trilateral fight which has global dimensions and regional implications. Should the world look toward the coming war between India and China or should it prepare for a multipolar planet? A set of Subsuperpowers makes the triangle very complex. In three dimensions this becomes a complicated pyramid.During the Bush era the United States decided it could no longer rely on a regional triangle with one ally, one competitor and one neutral third party.

The Bush Administration therefore tried to become allies with two countries to keep the third one neutral. The Obama policiy run by Hillary Clinton has turned the Bush policy on its head. Instead of building a nexus with Bharat against China, Hillary Clinton has chosen to build a relationship with China. Delhi is the odd man out. The Times of India in a recent article commented on the growing feeling in Delhi that the Bush days are over. No amount of rhetoric from the likes of Bruce Reidel can change the new realities in Asia.

The rise of China threatens Japan, and makes the Bharatis nervous. There are many possible scenarios on the global scene. Indiaus, Chindia, or Chinapak or Uspak? Are the zero-sum games of the Cold War over? India vs. China: who is winning? Richard Bernstein and Ross H. Munro’s have rebutted the rosy scenarios painted by Peter Engardio’s Chindia. The seminal book called “The Coming Conflict with China (1997)” describes a nightmarescenario for Asia. He  foresees disasters just around the corner. As Beijing prepares for the “Chinese Century“, many questions are unanswered. The end of an era, the shrinking superpower, the emerging quad led by China.

The conventional wisdom globally is that Pakistan is China’s Israel. China is the dominant power in Asia and increasingly it looks that Bharat will remain an “also ran”. Certainly Harvard analysts like Paragh Khanna seem to think so. He says Delhi has missed the boat. Depite a lot of rhetoric emanating from Delhi the Slumdog power has been unable to challenge the Chinese moves in Kashmir, Tibet, Lanka, Mayanmar, Thailand, Bangladesh, Gwader, Tehran, Korea, or Africa.

Nehru had tried to wrest control of Tibet from China. It has failed to do so and a few years back Delhi acknowledged the suzerainty of Beijing over Lasha. However Bharat never loses as opportunity to stir up trouble for China in Tibet and thinks of Tibet as its strategic depth–a way to destroy and balkanize the Chinese republic.. Bharati catatonia about China’s intentions are based on it policies of intervention in all her neighbors, Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Thailand, Mayanmar, Maldives and of course Pakistan.

Much is going on behind the scenes and on the ground along the 4,057-kilometer-long McMohan Line, the British demarcated ephemeral line in the sand that roughly demarcates the borders between the “Union of Indian states” called “Bharat” and the Middle Kingdom called “China“.

The Indian army has predicted a war with its nuclear-armed neighbor China by 2017 as Beijing continues to strengthen its military muscle. Press TV

The world is prophesying a Chinese Century. Are Delhi’s statements about China meant to appease Washington and get US arms, or is the threat perception real?  It is however pedagogical to study this phenomenon.  Bharathas three major issues with China.

1. It has border disputes with China in Aksai Chin, Arunchal Pradesh and along the old McMohan Line.
2. China’s rising military strength threatens Delhi’s analysts.
3. China’s near abroad in the Indian Ocean, Pakistan, and Afghanistan seem to scare some in Delhi.

Bharat(aka India) seems obsessed with the so called threat from China and this paranoia is deeply entrenched in the Indian psyche. The ghosts of 1962 are camped in the Rashpati Bhavan, the Lok Sabha, the Rajha Sabha as well as the Indian Army. India places many of its aircraft on what it calls advanced bases in Ladakh and in territory occupied from China which India calls “Aranchal Pradesh”.

Bharat has been making some very aggressive moves on its Northern border. It has called China the biggest threat to Delhi. To make waters worse, moved its latest Su-30s and 30,000 troops along the Chinese border and is also setting up new airfields and bases like Tezpur, and Chabua. Delhi feels very vulnerable, specially in the Northeast troublespots.

We have two visions for China. In one vision, India thinks of China as its biggest threat. The other vision sees China and India working together. Since 1962, Indian politicians have considered China as its biggest threat. A search on Google with the keywords “China is India’s biggest threat” produces 1.2 million threads. Most recently, Air Chief Marshal Fali Homi Major of the Indian Air Force made a remark that China has become a bigger threat than Pakistan.

Aksai chin is Chinese territory. Both parties to the dispute, China and Pakistan agree. India is not a party to this issue. 

Pakistan was crucial in helping China maintain its internal cohesion. By giving Aksai Chin to the the Chinese Pakistan allowed China to get land access to Tibet. Without Tibet, Bharat would have placed a wedge into the heart of China and allowed it to disintegrate into the pieces that the colonial powers had planned. Manchuria would have remained a Japanese enclave, and Hong Kong would have been expanded deep inside China. Without the stability and security provided to China from Pakistan Ughuristan would have been taken over by Russia as an independent republic. Mao Ze Dung and Chou En Lia recognized the importance of Pakistani help, andthey secured their Western borders with Pakistan very early.

Not long ago the entire Chinese nation was kept in bondage by the East India Company which forced the country to continue to import opium. When the patriots revolted, Britain forced two wars on them. Finally Mao Ze Dung led the country to freedom from the machinations of Imperial Japan, Colonial Britain and a US which was supporting others in the civil war.

Scared of a repeat of 1962, Delhi has reopened airfields in Daulat Beg Oldi and Fukche in Ladakh near the Aksai Chin border. Delhi is trying to set up five air force bases in in the East– in Tezpur, Purnea in Bihar, Chabua and Jorhat in Assam, and Panagarh in West Bengal.

Map Sikkim Bhutan Chumb: Schonela peak south of Chumbi Valley in Tibet (China). Bhutan is negotiating Chaumb Valley to China. The pregnable Siluri corridor the thin land between Nepal, Bangladesh, and slightly south of Bhutan and Chinese Tibet. The Siliguri corridor is 500 km north of Chumbi valley

China and the People’s Republic spends $80 billion a year on defence. According to a report by Stratfor, the Texas-based private intelligence agency, “China has been seen as a threat to India, and simplistic models show them to be potential rivals. In fact, however, China and India might as well be on different planets. Their entire frontier runs through the highest elevations of the Himalayas. It would be impossible for a substantial army to fight its way through the few passes that exist, and it would be utterly impossible for either country to sustain an army there in the long term. The two countries are irrevocably walled off from each otherl…. Ideally, New Delhi wants to see a Pakistan that is fragmented, or at least able to be controlled. Towards this end, it will work with any power that has a common interest and has no interest in invading India.”

To be certain, India andChina are not military rivals. Who is India then going to fight with? Bharatiya Sthalsena (the Indian Army) has a total of 13 corps, of which six are strike corps. Of the 13 corps at least seven have their guns pointed towards Pakistan. The 3rd Armoured Division, 2nd Armoured Brigade, 4 RAPID (Reorganised Army Plains Infantry Divisions), Jaisalmer AFS, Utarlai AFS and Bhuj AFS are all aiming at splitting Pakistan into two (by capturing the Kashmore/Guddu Barrage-Reti-Rahimyar Khan triangle). The News. Bharatiya Sthalsena Sunday, March 01, 2009 Dr Farrukh Saleem. The writer is the executive director of the Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS). Email: farrukh15@hotmail.com

The border dispute between China and Bharat stems from the 1962 border war between Bharat and China when Delhi lost 38,000 square kilometers of territory in Aksai Chin in the northeastern corner of Jammu and Kashmir.

India has been buying weapons and trying to build them for decades. It has been buying junk from Moscow (Flying Coffins) and has been unable to produce weapons on its own. The list of Indian failures is long. Kevari Engine, Tejas LCA, Trishul, Nag, Agni Arjun and Brahmos are a few examples of the total failure of the Delhi arms. Indian missile failures

Bharat Occupies Southern Tibet and calls it Arunchal Pradesh 

Despite spending humongous amounts of money the bureaucrats of the Ganges have been unable to make Bharat self-sufficient in arms production. It is the only country of any sizable size which cannot produce arms that it can export. This colossal failure of the Bharati arms industry has filtered down to the total lack of any credible manufacturing from Goa to Gurdaspur.

Bharat occupies 90,000 square kilometers of Chinese Southern Tibet which Delhi calls ”Arunachal Pradesh”. Bharat also claims 5,180 square kilometers of land in Kashmir which was in the hands of Islamabad ’till 1963 which the Pakistanis ceded to Beijing in 1963.

The response from China to the recent augmentation of forces at Arunachalwas swift. An editorial in Global Times, a tabloid of the People’s Daily group, a mouthpiece of the Communist Party of China, said that India seemed to believe that China would “defer to it on territorial disputes”. Dismissing this as “wishful thinking”, it stressed that “China won’t make any compromises in its border disputes with India”. Sudha Ramachandran Asia Times.

Chinese control over Southern Tibet and the Twang Valley will help China get sympathies from the people of Tibet, and the control will allow Beijing commanding control to overwhelm the valley of the Bramaputra, slicing off the 7 sister states of the Assam.

China’s has built rail lines through Tibet andplans to extend the Golmud-Lhasa rail up to Yatung,  near the trading center of NathuLa. This mountain pass connects Tibet with Sikkim, and to Nyingchi, a trading town north of Arunachal at tri-country node with Burma. China has the capability to deploy troops via rail right up to the border in Southern Tibet. The Chinese have also built an excellent road network allowing most Chinese andPLAN troops to drive right up to the border with Bharat.

The Slumdog power mesmerized by Bollywood (filmed outside Bharat) cannot come to terms with the simple fact that 80% of its population lives below $2 per day with the hunger index placing it below Burkino Faso. Why doesn’t Russia transfer plane technology to India?

One out of every 200 Indians is already employed by the Indian Armed Forces. Three out of every four Indians already live at or less than $2 a day. Bharat Sarkar(the Government of India) has, however, now jacked up the defence budget by a massive 55 percent. Who is India going to fight with?

India has 3,773,300 troops, plus 1,089,700 paramilitary forces (www.nationmaster.com). India’s army is secondonly to China in size. The Indian Air Force, witha total aircraft strength of 1,700, is the world’s 4thlargest. The Indian Navy already operates some 13 dozen vessels with INS Viraatas its flagship, the only “full-deck aircraft carrier operated by a country in Asia or the Western Pacific, along withoperational jet fighters.” Who is India going to fight with?

India has six neighbours; Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, Nepal and China. India now spends a colossal $32.35 billion on defence, Pakistan $4.8 billion, Bangladesh $830 million, Nepal $100 million and Burma $30 million (according to Business Standard, India’s second-largest financial daily, “There is no apparent reason for India to understate its defence budget. No IMF conditions constrain defence spending…. But India continues to camouflage what other comparable liberal democracies transparently show as defence spending). Collectively, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma and Nepal spend $5.7 billion a year on defence. Who is India going to fight with?  The News. Bharatiya Sthalsena Sunday, March 01, 2009 Dr Farrukh Saleem. The writer is the executive director of the Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS). Email: farrukh15@hotmail.com

Lord Delhousie built the British train system in the Empire. Nothing has changed since. They fogot to connet Sikkim and Bhutan to the grid, because there were no soalmines or gold mines there. There are no trains in Sikkim, Tripura, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh.

 “dispatch of 60,000 troops” .. “a rivalry between the two countries” and asked the Indian government to consider “whether or not it can afford the consequences of a potential confrontation with China”. Chinese Daily Editorial

“China is seen in India as both a potential threat and a competitor to surpass. But India can’t actually compete with China in a number of areas, like international influence, overall national power and economic scale. India apparently has not yet realized this.” Peoples Daily Editorial

“the whole of the state of Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory”. November 2006, Beijing’s ambassador to India, Sun Yuxi told an Indian television station.

“In a Feb. 23 editorial, The People’s Daily addressed U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, with a focus on improving Pakistan’s position against India, saying, ‘It is clear that without Pakistan’s cooperation, the US cannot win the war on terror. Therefore, to safeguard its own interests in the fight against terrorism in South Asia, the US must ensure a stable domestic and international environment for Pakistan and ease the tension between Pakistan and India.’ This means supporting Pakistan’s position on Kashmir,” said William Hawkins of Front Page Magazine.

Ideas of Pakistan’s Gwadar Port as China’s Gibraltar and China’s billion-dollar port of Hambantota as Beijings’s Guantanamo defies India in the area of the oceans. An investigation is in order. At Rupee News, we scrutinized the issue and wrote to Dr. Daojiong. We could not find an iota of evidence of a shift in Chinese policy away from Pakistan.

Many Chinese leaders have chosen to visit Pakistan and not India, a resurgent Russia has waged war in Georgia to contain NATO, India has signed a nuclear deal with the US, and Russia’s Gozprom is building the Iran-Pakistan pipeline without India.

China has not threatened Bharat. It became a nuclear power years before India ever was, and it has a fantastic growth rate over the past several decades. The Hindu growthrate from 1947-1980 was the butt of jokes around the world. The past few years of global economic growth raised all boats, and Bharat also attained a respectable rate of growth. However Bharat has now returned to the low single digit rates which have been emblematic of Delhi’s economy.