The status of the current submarine force level is alarming and we need to address the threat perceptions expeditiously. Critical decisions pertaining to national security cannot be delayed any further due to the rapidly changing maritime threat perceptions and growing strategic importance of the Indian Ocean region, asserts Commodore Venugopal Menon (retd).
"We value our partnership with India, and we've been increasing it and doing a lot more, over time. They have the same security challenge, primary security challenger that we do, and it's real on their northern border," Admiral John Christopher Aquilino, commander of United States Indo-Pacific Command, told members of the House Armed Services Committee during a hearing on Indo-Pacific National Security Challenges.
The memorandum of understanding on mutual logistics support is the first such major agreement that Vietnam has signed with any country.
Qin, who is visiting New Delhi to attend the G20 Foreign Ministers meeting on Thursday, is expected to meet Jaishankar on its sidelines though the foreign ministry here is tight-lipped about it.
He claimed China has a policy of keeping "hot spots like Taiwan, South China Sea and Tawang burning" in order to divert attention to its own failings.
Videos circulating in China's social media showed clinics in Beijing and some other cities flooded with patients with queues extending onto footpaths with people patiently waiting for their turn in the cold winter.
The Fujian was launched at a brief ceremony held at the Shanghai shipyard, the official media reported from the eastern metropolis.
Expressing grave concern over a US nuclear-powered submarine sustaining damage in the disputed South China Sea, China on Friday demanded Washington to reveal the details and the location of the accident and blamed America's frequent air and naval sorties in the Indo-Pacific to assert the "freedom of navigation" as the "root cause" of the incident.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said China believes that state-to-state interactions should be in line with the trend of the time which is peace and development rather than exclusivity.
China is engaged in hotly contested territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas. Beijing has also made substantial progress in militarising its man-made islands in the past few years, which it says it has the right to defend.
Key to China's decision regarding Taiwan will be its leadership's assessment whether the US will come to Taiwan's defence, explains Jayadeva Ranade, the former senior RA&W officer and China expert.
The epicentre is 39 km away from the county seat of Luding and there are several villages within the 5-km range around the epicentre.
China on Monday termed as "disgraceful" the British government's permission for a Taiwan representative in the UK to sign the condolence book of Queen Elizabeth II, who passed away on September 8.
A suspected Chinese spy balloon, said to be the size of three buses, was spotted over the United States' airspace, the Pentagon has said, a development that has further strained the already tense bilateral ties as Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday abruptly postponed his key visit to Beijing.
The top diplomats of Quad nations on Friday denounced as "inadmissible" any use or threat of use of nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war and strongly opposed any "unilateral actions" that seek to change the status quo in the South and East China Seas, a region that has witnessed increasing Chinese military offensive.
The US "Indo-Pacific Strategy" is bound to be a failed strategy, Wang said in the comments posted by the Chinese foreign ministry on its website.
An India-Japan joint statement said the two leaders expressed serious concern over the conflict and the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.
The report came at the time when British-based health data firm Airfinity, said that the infections in China are likely to be more than one million a day with deaths at more than 5,000 a day.
China on Monday reported the first fatalities in Shanghai due to the ongoing COVID-19 surge in the city where the Omicron variant continues to paralyse the country's business hub of 26 million people.
Crowds carrying lighted candles in memory of those killed in the fire at an apartment block reported under COVID-19 lockdown in Urumqi in Xinjiang shouted slogans against the arbitrary lockdowns by the government to curb the spread of the virus and in solidarity with the weekend protests in Shanghai.
Doggedly persisting with its much-criticised zero-Covid policy, China has slipped deeper into the coronavirus quagmire as it reported a record 31,444 infections on Thursday with many of its cities, including Beijing, resorting to community lockdowns to stem the virus amid worsening wintery weather.
'China would want to take a tougher stance against India forming those strategic partnerships and prevent Quad from becoming a military alliance.'
The remarks of White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki came ahead of the 14th round of military-level talks between India and China on the 20-month row in eastern Ladakh.
The former British colony also reported COVID-related 87 deaths taking the overall toll to 3,729, the report said.
A US RC-135S reconnaissance aircraft on Wednesday flew near the ongoing Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) drills in the South China Sea, a day after another US spy plane, a U-2, trespassed into another PLA exercise restricted zone, state-run Global Times reported.
China has said that it successfully carried out a land-based mid-course anti-ballistic missile (ABM) technical test on Sunday with Chinese experts claiming that the tests, stated to be the sixth of its kind, validated the reliability of the country's anti-ballistic missile umbrella.
Shenzhen which has been battling an Omicron surge since late February, will carry out three rounds of citywide COVID-19 tests next week.
US State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus on Sunday said five years ago on September 25, 2015 the Chinese President, standing in the White House Rose Garden, promised 'China does not intend to pursue militarisation' of the Spratly Islands, and China's outposts 'would not target or impact any country'.
The coming together of the Quad and the Australia-UK-US grouping would be a formidable adversary, moving toward the creation of a 'thousand ship navy' that reins in the PLA navy in the Indo-Pacific.
Although the Malabar is a routine exercise which has been carried out for several years now, security experts attach a lot of traction to it in view of China's assertive behaviour in the South China Sea, observes Rup Narayan Das.
China has been an aggressor against India along the Himalayan border, a top American diplomat nominated by President Joe Biden as his next envoy to Beijing has told lawmakers, stating that the US must hold the Chinese government accountable for failing to play by the rules.
It was the 12th day in a row that US military planes have approached the mainland coast, the report said.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has made a clear break with the past on UK-China relations as he declared that the "so-called golden era" of bilateral ties is over in the face of the "systemic challenge" posed by the Chinese regime to British values and interests.
Much on the expected lines, Beijing reacted angrily to Hands' visit, saying that it violates the one-China principle to which London is a signatory.
In a show of strength, China is deploying its aircraft carrier group and a nuclear submarine in large-scale military drills in the Taiwan Strait in response to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's high-stakes visit to Taipei which infuriated Beijing as it claims the island as part of its territory.
General Naravane said that the Chinese army has been trying to alter the status quo along the LAC in very 'small incremental steps' and over a period of time Beijing has gained a lot.
Gen Naravane said that the Indian Army did not hide casualties during Galwan clash in eastern Ladakh as the Chinse have done.
China, which has territorial disputes with many countries in the strategic Indo-Pacific region, has been opposing the Quad alliance since its formation.
Deputy director for the People's Liberation Army Office for International Military Cooperation Major General Huang Xueping held a video conference with his US counterpart Michael Chase last week.
China is expected to boost its nuclear arsenal after President Xi Jinping's remarks at the key Congress of the ruling Communist Party in Beijing for the first time that Beijing will establish strong strategic deterrence, experts have said.
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