On the eve of the 2004 general elections, a meeting of the China Study Group (CSG) was held to review the state of border roads along the Royal Line of Control (LAC) with the then Deputy Head of State Army Major informing the apex group on highway strategies. At this meeting, the then Interior Minister asked the Army general why we were not building strategic north-south highways and questioned the delays in doing so. The answer was that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could use these roads to enter India. The Interior Minister replied that, at this rate, India should also stop building roads in Delhi.
Sixteen years later, the Indian military has finally shrugged off the specter of the PLA and is looking at the Chinese in Ladakh with the sole aim of reestablishing the status quo ante at all friction points along the line of control. real. The shift in the mindset of the Indian army came after the Galwan outbreak on June 15, in which Colonel Santosh Babu and his men engaged in hand-to-hand combat with their adversaries, which Chinese state media project as warriors of the Shaolin Temple.
Indian army officers on duty say that once India’s prime minister went to Ladakh to boost morale and the Indian public rallied to honor the fallen, in contrast to the silent burial of their dead by the PLA , the mood changed. Despite the terrible pandemic that originated in Wuhan, the honor bestowed on fallen Indian troops, including a brave NCO from the elite special border force in the Aug. 29-30 operation in southern Pangong Tso, has raised the morale of the Indian forces.
While both armies are stocking up for the polar winter in the Ladakh heights, the PLA with its troops largely made up of conscripts who were dispatched to Aksai Chin as part of an annual exercise must be asking questions of their military commanders. The recruits are the only children of their parents in China, who join the military for a limited period to ensure state funding for their college education. The thought of spending your winters in the rarefied heights of Ladakh is sure to test not only your stamina but also your commitment to PLA, as exercise has the potential to get worse at any moment.
Although the situation is tense on the border, India’s national security planners say the wildly ill-calculated aggression ordered by Commander-in-Chief Xi Jinping in Ladakh has finally removed the Chinese specter from Indian backs. In the past two decades, China had become Lord Voldemort or the one whose name will not be used in Indian diplomatic, military and intelligence circles. Former Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes had to bear the brunt for simply telling the truth that China was a threat. This has now changed with the Modi government mincing words about China and seriously examining Beijing’s penetration into the Indian system. India is using software mining to identify parent companies and their country of origin from the details of front companies investing in India. This is a sea change from the 2000s, when Chinese workers received thousands of business visas to come to India. And when the mandarins of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs believed that the subject of Tibet was like “whipping a dead horse” and had lost its relevance.
While predicting the military or diplomatic outcome of the LAC exercise is more difficult than reading tea leaves, the PLA’s aggression this summer in Ladakh, the South China Sea, Taiwan, and the Senkaku Islands has revealed China’s true colors to the world. . It has revealed the weakness of the European powers and the cowardice of the so-called Tiger powers of Southeast Asia in confronting China due to their economic dependence on that country. It has shown that if you have money to throw away, not a single Muslim power will interrogate you in the concentration camps for Sunni Uighurs in Xinjiang, even as they rant about Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya. It has shown that while the world will happily chant “om mani padme hum,” it will maintain a deathly silence on the open and planned sinicization of Tibet.
In the run-up to the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), its supreme leader, Xi Jinping, has laid bare China’s strategic ambitions to become the sole world power under the mask of the coronavirus pandemic.
The world has taken note of this. How you react is not difficult to predict.
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