The Indian Defense Ministry has contradicted reports of Chinese troop mobilization on the border. In a statement on Wednesday, the ministry said there had only been a general state of alert on the Chinese side and a routine annual military exercise was held near Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, in June.
This is despite a report by People’s Daily on Wednesday citing “expert” opinions that China’s “recent military moves along the Sino-Indian border … have sent a strong message to India amid the two nations’ standoff”.
The daily assessed that “Chinese experts believe that the actions showcased China’s strength and sent a strong signal to India. Though India has more troops scattered along the disputed area, China’s rapid deployment of troops, its powerful weaponry, and its advanced logistics support give China the edge over India.”
However, New Delhi is studiously playing down the border tensions. The government has taken exception to Indian media hyping the standoff with China.
Unnamed army sources in Delhi disclosed on Wednesday that no flag meetings as such had taken place between local commanders and that the standoff was being discussed at the “highest level” of the government.
Indeed, Indian Foreign Secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told a parliamentary committee on foreign affairs in Delhi on Tuesday that diplomatic efforts were under way to end the standoff.
National Security Adviser Ajit Doval is due to travel to Beijing next week to attend a BRICS event on security issues. Doval, who reports directly to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is also concurrently India’s special representative on border talks with China.
It is entirely conceivable that Doval will sound out the Chinese side on some face-saving formula that ends the standoff, devolving upon pullback of Indian troops from Chinese territory.
On the Chinese side, too, a lowering of rhetoric has been discernible for the past several days after a Xinhua commentary took note of the “positive remarks” by the Indian foreign secretary from a podium in Singapore last week to the effect that “India and China should not let differences become disputes”.
The Xinhua commentary, however, revisited the Chinese refrain that a condominium of Hindu nationalists and the hawkish Indian military is fueling tensions.
In an unsparing commentary on Wednesday, the Global Times newspaper drew a fairly accurate picture of the ascendancy of Hindu nationalists since Modi came to power and the latent groundswell of zero-sum opinion in India vis-à-vis China, laced with a sense of pain over the defeat in the 1962 war, disquiet over China’s rise and an “ingrained suspicion of Chinese strategy”.
The commentary warned that Indian “strategists and politicians have shown no wisdom in preventing India’s China policy from being kidnapped by rising nationalism…. India should be careful not to let religious nationalism push the two countries into war.”
But the salience lies, perhaps, in the Chinese commentary differentiating Prime Minister Modi himself from his “core constituency” of Hindu extremists.
What lies ahead?
The Modi government is doubtless keen to end the standoff, but a face-saving formula needs to be found. It takes two to tango.
However, looking further ahead, it is difficult to anticipate any significant shift in the trajectory of India-China relations. The relationship has become adversarial and, arguably, the Modi government’s foreign-policy compass of “muscular diplomacy” toward China (and Pakistan) is not happenstance.
There is an entrenched opinion within India’s strategic community that shares Defense Minister Arun Jaitley’s recent barb aimed at Beijing that today’s India is not “the India of 1962”.
A thoughtful Indian military analyst, Ajai Shukla, wrote this week that “border incidents are increasingly triggered by India’s increasing military strength and an increasingly assertive posture on the border”.
Shukla explained the paradigm shift this way: “The little-known upshot is that India’s military posture has become significantly stronger than China’s on the 3,500-kilometer Line of Actual Control. This is enhancing confrontation between the two sides.
“For decades, India maintained an insignificant military presence in Daulet Beg Oldi, in Ladakh…. But when India’s thickening troop presence blocked Chinese patrols into the area, a prolonged confrontation ensued in 2013. One general involved in that standoff says: ‘The Chinese demanded to know why we were blocking them now, when they had been patrolling that area for years.’
“A similar confrontation took place in Chumar, in Ladakh, in 2014. Now, in Doklam, Chinese anger stems from being blocked in 2017, after facing no resistance between 2003 [and] 2007, when they tested the waters by building the existing track.”
Of course, it takes gumption for an ex-army officer to acknowledge with such brutal candor the ground realities. But Shukla’s opinion is shared silently by many within the Indian defense-policy community.
However, Modi’s dilemma lies elsewhere. Indian strategists have a habit of spouting opinions from the ivory tower, whereas Modi is ruling an increasingly unmanageable country through choppy waters with eyes set on the 2019 elections. And the plain truth is that the Indian economy will crumble if a war is thrust upon the country.
Because of a clever change in the methodology of calculating gross domestic product, the Indian economy’s growth rate looks impressive, but in actuality, under the combined pressure of the recent policy moves on demonetization and goods and services tax (GST, a unified tax structure for the entire country), an economy that had already been slowing is now virtually crawling.
The disruption has huge consequences for short-term growth. On top of it, if a war is thrust upon the country, the political economy will enter crisis zone.
Modi understands this, which explains why the standoff with China is handled at the “highest level”. As the European statesman Georges Clemenceau, who served as France’s prime minister during World War I, said famously, war is too important to be left to the generals.
Carlos De Souza how do you figure that? I don’t how cognizant you are about the current political situation or perhaps you are one of those people who echoes someone else. People who is asked about it, they just respond what they were told . In reality know sh….
Search way out of border stand off… Is this correct or MK’s wishful thinking? Because it seems New Delhi deliberately walked into the stand off.
are abiding with UN approved sanctions
With the level of those Indian who express their view here, no wonder all its neighbors wanting to befriend China, eventhough they have been forced to follow so called friendship treaty with India. Is there any country in the world who want it’s neighbors to outsource their foreign relation and military affair to them , no one except the colonialists of 18th century.
India says they are not ‘India of 1962’ Chinese say O! all right! It seems that war is also a humane nature and necesary for humane being just like food and water. We can not fight that is different thing, but they can fight. Therefore, best of luck for both of them. Please hold your dhoti kurta tightly! After all, they are not like us and you can not BLOCKADE them like us!
India is a dangerous pest hole.
Look at Indians and their ,,culture”: full of misery, dirty cities, cramped, crowded, polluted.
Indians do not wash themselves, they stink, they are dirty, They do their chores in public, sleeping where they grab through, in train stations, under the open sky, they defecate outdoor, they let their dead to rot in the Ganges River, and they are drinking the water from there.
They eat with their hands, mostly dirty, garbage everyware. There is a total lack of hygiene and civilization. They are rapists.
They consume and splash their houses with cow urine – the cow is ”holy” nevertheless.
They will never change and that’s because it’s written in their genetic code to behave like this. You will not see a civilized indian unless he tries to mimic the European civilization. It’s their DNA, and that’s all.
Chinese propaganda in full flow! Who needs the face saver!? All big statements from Global Times and other state controlled media with no strategy to fall back! China has exposed its color (its not RED anymore but YELLOW)?
Because India think their “"strategy concern” can be solved with forwarding troops.
1. Chinese build roads on chinese soil (India has built lots of roads and bunkers on other parts of the long border too)
2. India have strategic interests in this area (as we all know)
3. India manipulated Bhutan government and make a new claim towards the area despite of the 1890 treaty (!!!). (At the name of protecting Bhutan & Indian superiority) And the illegal trespassing of the Indian border troops was organized and premeditated as a deliberate act to disrupt the status quo in the Sikkim section. In other words, India try to make this area “disputed”
“The Convention Between Great Britain and China Relating to Sikkim and Tibet (1890) has officially delimited this particular section, whose validity is recognized by both the Chinese and Indian governments. This convention is effective and legally binding to both sides. ” But still…
4. …Indian army entered in the chinese territory to stop the project. (Still unbelievable)
5. Indian used to propaganda that china is the aggressor. But this time, since people have no excuse, people starts to be non-reasonable & non-negotiable. (Like “we just won’t let you build that road…”) What a JOKE.
6. Actually the confrontation border is far away from Indian main city. But it is close to the chinese Shigatse city, and also Lhasa, capital city of Tibet.
7. India always say that Tibet has relatively close culture to India thus deeply in heart always want to “"free Tibet” and control it. That is the reason why India is frequently hosting Dalai Lama. The ambition to expand territory. Taking a view on chinese side, it is a potential invasion & threat. The chinese are very sensitive about this kind of threat as they suffered from the WWII. Actually many Chinese think that the PLA shall push Indian troops back to their lands (Better not to use guns).
8. A road without trust can only be of military usage. With trust, a road can also be a way for cooperation, for prosperity and peace.
9. Although India “"is ready for 2 wars and a half”, I do not think it is wise to have any war between the two countries. Negotiation is a far better way.
10. Both countries need time to develop and reduce proverty. As time goes by, the two countries may find a way to resolve the problem.
Carlos De Souza The chinese are the one who want to wage a war get real…whatever be capability of china like a man if he loses eyes,legs,hands he becomes incapable for future war….so that is choice china has to make when it wants to bully India & other countries who will join India
The fact that China is intruding into Bhutanese territory seems lost on you. Chna has done the same thing to various other countries and got away with it. Lets see what happens this time around.
Haav Bline China was freed from Japanese occupation with support from India,UK,USA….you thought what Mao freed his people on his own…if they had stayed neutral you would be speaking Japanese so same way other countries don’t want to speak chinese so they will join India’s war efforts
I disagree with you completely here. Much as they might dislike China, none of them are in a position to take on China, even combined. Besides, they are proven cowards with the exception of Viet Nam.
LMAO. Dreamer.
Ken Nguyen Don’t try to equate India with China. This provocation has come solely from China. Vijay is right. China has to be tamed and tamed now. Once and for all.
I have confidence in India but no confidence in china…..if only Mao had used his brains before invading tibet chinese like you will not be accusing others for beings troll of CIA.So what did Mao dynasty do for itself by invading tibet it has surrounded itself with 14 neighbors who all want to teach you morality like they say mistake of the ancestors is paid by sons & grandsons
Now, this is a balanced write-up. Iss Buddhey ko shayad kuch akal aa gayi hai 🙂
CIA troll working overtime. LOL! India and China will not fall for such tricks. Crawl back to your shit hole.
If India declares war i think Indonesia,Malaysia,Vietnam,Central Asia will also declare war on china …..they will not like chinese hegemony in the region & when these countries enter the war chinese race has to face hostility of 2.5 billion people for next 1000 years or who knows they may have to sacrifice tibet….
Following facts should also be taken into account for an objective analysis.
1. It is not a "sovereign" Chinese territory rather a disputed between China and Bhutan
2. Chinese road construction in a disputed region is responsible for standoff and vitiating the atmosphere
3.Different interpretations of 1890 treaty by both sides
4. China is responsible for violating the 2012 agreement that the tri-junction boundary points will be “finalised in consultation” with all the three countries
It would not be fair to link China skepticism to religious nationalism alone, infact China is equally responsible for mishandling India China relations. If any compromise has to be found then it has to be face saving from both sides.
The chinese strategist may want to test if a small skirmish happens will USA intervene….if it is no then they will lap up Bhutan,Nepal….then they will create a small skirmish in south china sea & see if India intervenes which is unlikely to happen so they have broken US intervention in region once for all.
However there is a risk for china if India engages in a full fledged war & china’s capability goes down by 25% also it knows it will be cleaned up by Japan,USA,NATO,Russia & will destroy chinese empire forever…..if the chinese think in a full fledged war they will lose only 5% then they will play hard otherwise they cannot….I think India should be firm with china & not relent
Even a small skirmish will mean china will have hostility of 1.5 billion people & a 1000 year war will happen for them