India is bolstering its defences vis-a-vis China in a big way and is set to spend at least $15 billion for China-specific military activities by 2017.
Though the scale of the Indian military preparation is grossly small compared to what China has already done with regard to India, it gives a sense of how much China has been dominating Indian military thinking and strategy over the past few years.
George Fernandes was the first Indian Defence Minister to have gone on record in describing China as India’s “potential enemy one.”
Members of a Chinese People's Liberation Army honour guard. AFP
Members of a Chinese People's Liberation Army honour guard. AFP
The then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had corroborated this articulation immediately in the wake of the May 1998 Pokharan-II nuclear tests by explaining to the world powers that the Indian move was in response to the threats posed by Chinese nuclear weapons.
Since then China has officially replaced Pakistan as India’s number one threat perception.
It is now a decade-and-a-half since India has been overtly preparing itself militarily to deal with the potential Chinese threat even though the two neighbours continue to intensify their bilateral engagement, which includes military-to-military contacts. India-China trade has been galloping with every passing year and the quantum is all set to reach a historic $100 billion mark very soon.
But then bilateral trade cannot be any insurance against military and foreign policy threats. Nothing can be a better reminder of this than China-Japan relations. Asia’s number one and two economies (India is the third) have had a robust bilateral trade totalling a whopping $ 300 billion per annum, but look at their political ties. The two Asian giants have virtually been at each other’s throats for years. There have even been serious projections of China and Japan being on the brink of a war over a host of issues.
India-China relations smack of China-Japan ties, though our relations with China are not rocked by war-like scenarios. The two Asian neighbours are currently engaged in a game of one-upmanship militarily and strategically. However, it is also a fact that India has not started this race unilaterally, but has been compelled by China to join it for larger national security considerations.
China started a massive military and infrastructure buildup along the Indian border years ago. India is only trying to play catch-up. Even now, when the Chinese threat has completely dominated all near-future plans of the Indian defence establishment, the Indian counter is neither as good nor as complete.