There's ample proof of Chinese irredentism. China is preparing for a future large-scale conventional wars (informationised and mechanised included) on 'multiple fronts' against India. Prakash Katoch, veteran Lieutenant General of the Indian Army, explains.
National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon on Monday downplayed the recent "map row" with China contending that the issue required to be looked at in the perspective of boundary talks, which have made progress.
'We are not going to be threatened by China neither are we going to threaten China.'
There are many provinces in Pakistan such as Pashtunistan, Balochistan, Sindh and others which want to break away from it due to its social, political and economic conditions, Kumar said.
'The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting' said the famed ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu. That seems to be the ploy behind the Chinese intrusion in Ladakh, says Colonel (retd) R Hariharan
Ahead of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's New Delhi visit, India and China on Monday explored ways to resolve the vexed boundary issue as the special representatives of the two countries held the 14th round of border talks in Beijng.
'It is a pattern of behaviour of the Chinese that whenever a Chinese leader visits India or an Indian leader visits China, some incidents take place.' 'When Modi visits China, we should look out for some similar demonstration by the Chinese.'
In a chapter titled 'Dealing with Kashmir issue' in his much publicised book My Country My Life, Advani also accuses the then Congress government of illegally handing over the Aksai Chin territory to China
The government must figure out what the Chinese game plan is and thwart the endgame before it is upon us, possibly in early winter, advises David Devadas.
'Manmohan Singh's fond hope of avoiding conflict over territory by 'making borders irrelevant' is increasingly difficult to realise in a world where institutional restraints on aggression are weakening and the new game in town is unalloyed power play,' notes T N Ninan.
India should have learnt lessons from the 1962 war but no headway was made in the development of border infrastructure till 2014, he claimed, adding that the Modi government increased the budget for the same from Rs 3,500 crore to Rs 14,500 crore.
Justice Subramonium Prasad issued notice to the Centre seeking its stand on the former MP's petition for a direction to the authorities to give an "effective response" to his query.
Overall, the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) has focused on building ground-based air defense networks and network-centric operations rather than trying to match the Indian Air Force (IAF) in terms of straight fighter numbers along the border. All air assets fall under the Western Theater Command of the PLA, the largest geographic region of China's five military theater commands.
Dai Bingguo, who served as the China's boundary negotiator with India from 2003 to 2013, told Chinese media, "If the Indian side takes care of China's concerns in the eastern sector of their border, the Chinese side will respond accordingly and address India's concerns elsewhere."
A controversy was kicked up on Thursday with China's state-owned television CCTV showing India's map without Jammu and Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh while reporting on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit.
'Once accession to Pakistan appeared unlikely, the British instituted Operations Gulmarg and Datta Khel respectively to foil possible accession to India.'
Rahul Gandhi's questions on Chinese aggression in Ladakh, in tweets directed at Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, have drawn a response from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's MP in Ladakh, Jamyang Tsering Namgyal.
One hopes the new Lok Sabha will mark a break from a dismal tradition -- lack of interest in defence and security policies, argues Colonel Anil A Athale.
'The Chinese are retaining geostrategic pressure on India by keeping troops there and building infrastructure continually.'
'The real issue between India and China is that the Chinese have transgressed along the Line of Actual Control at multiple points.'
India has not yet received any confirmation on Chinese President Xi Jinping's in-person participation at the upcoming G20 summit, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday amid reports that he is likely skip the conclave.
We should have anticipated it on August 5 last year, when we made the big changes in J&K. Amit Shah left nothing to chance when he told Parliament that 'we will bring back Aksai Chin even at the cost of our lives'. 'Then, there were the new maps, objections to the CPEC going through Indian territory, the weather reports.' A broad territorial status quo had existed in Ladakh-Aksai Chin since 1962. India made its intention to change this public, notes Shekhar Gupta.
"Even though the first Sino-Indian war took place in 1962, the Chinese incursion had started taking place in 1957. The government knew it but it did not inform the public. After five decades, the same thing is happening as the Chinese incursion has been taking in Aksai Chin for long, but we have woken up now," said Ram Pradhan, former Union home secretary and former governor of Arunachal Pradesh.
'If Islamic extremists regain power in Afghanistan, Pakistan will lead them to Kashmir as a fighting arena again. India needs to fortify Kashmir and prepare against these Islamic extremists before they come again.'
'China will do everything to hamper our ability to be a competitor.' 'China wants every country in the region to be subservient and we are the biggest stumbling block.'
'With continued focus on votes, upcoming by-polls and purchasing politicians, the political hierarchy has little time for national defence.' 'They would do well to heed a veteran scholar, who says, "There will be war with China in the next few years. The next full scale war will have the involvement of Pakistan and terror elements, insurgents and intelligence assets operating inside India",' warns Lieutenant General Prakash Katoch (retd).
'Chinese troops are not geared to fight Indian troops who are battle hardened and acclimatised and are far more hardy.'
The Bharatiya Janata Party is hopeful that the issue will come handy to its efforts to gain political traction in Dravidian state as it gears up for the Lok Sabha polls.
It is well-known, and the Brooks-Bhagat report vouches for it, that the real failure for the 1962 debacle against China was not military, but political, says Ram Madhav.
India-China Special representatives are currently holding their 18th round of border dispute talks in the capital.
The 9.5-km long bridge inaugurated by Prime Minister Modi on May 26 is India's longest bridge.
China will flood direct flights to India with wholesale takeaways of the authentic stuff; Indian businessmen will fight for the commission and the consumers for the cuisine, predicts Sunanda K Datta-Ray.
'China wants to change the status quo of India's Northern Border and proves that it can do whatever it wants in what it perceives as its own territory,' states Claude Arpi.
'India cannot allow Beijing's policy of stabilising and destabilising the border at will to perpetuate its own ends.' A riveting excerpt from Manish Tiwari's 10 Flashpoints; 20 Years National Security Situations That Impacted India.
'If we had sent a few airplanes (into Tibet), we could have wiped the Chinese out.' 'And everything could have been different in the 1962 War.' 'They did not believe me there was no Chinese air force.' 'Can you imagine what would have happened if we had used the IAF at that time?' 'The Chinese would have never dared do anything down the line.'
Throughout its standoff with India along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), Chinese officials sought to downplay the severity of the crisis, emphasising Beijing's intent to preserve border stability and prevent the standoff from harming other areas of its bilateral relationship with India, the Pentagon said in a report on Tuesday.
'Unquestionably, the spirit behind the Panchsheel agreement and the 'Hindi Chini bhai bhai' slogan were thrown overboard by the Chinese, and a trust deficit was injected between the two nations.' A revealing excerpt from General J J Singh's The McMahon Line: A Century Of Discord.
A deft hand on India-China relations, Bambawale earlier handled the China desk at the MEA.
'At critical moments an inability to take tough decisions resulted in potentially far-reaching solutions slipping out of our grasp.' 'If similar opportunities come Narendra Modi's way will he act differently?' asks Karan Thapar.
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