Understanding China’s LAC deployment capabilities

Broadening of the India-China standoff into multiple theatres will present formidable challenges for Chinese forcesAll eyes are on the meeting between Indian external affairs minister S Jaishankar and his Chinese counterpart on September 10 in Moscow, nevertheless, it has increasingly become clear over the past few weeks that the two countries are preparing for a...The article was originally published in Deccan Herald.

Xi’s new approach to Tibet will affect India

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent remarks at the seventh Central Symposium on Tibet Work indicate that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is doubling down on its hardline approach in the region, which evolved gradually after the 2008 protests.The strategy for the next few years that Xi outlined entails a mix of persuasion, development, connectivity, indoctrination and coercion. This will not only have serious implications for ordinary Tibetans but will also impinge on the Sino-Indian boundary question, particularly in the context of China’s claims on Arunachal Pradesh.Read the full article in Hindustan Times.

The US-China tech war is being fought across a bamboo curtain

It is becoming clear that the ongoing “tech war" between the United States and China is taking place along five fronts: semiconductors, network infrastructure, operating systems, platforms and content. While it was Beijing that first erected a defensive Great Firewall around its internet users over 25 years ago to censor content, it is now Washington that is on the offensive on all fronts. The ostensible reason for this, as cited by officials of the Donald Trump administration, is national security—to prevent espionage, surveillance and influence operations by the Chinese government, as also its corporate proxies and agents.

The deeper and less-articulated reason is strategic: the US wants to increase its relative technological advantage over China. It is doing this by containing China’s progress and by rejuvenating its own high-technology industrial base. Both sides of the partisan divide in Washington have recognized that three decades of globalization resulted in the relocation of high-tech industrial capacity away from its soil, and that even if American firms and investors reaped the benefits of free trade, the strategic consequence has been the empowerment of an economic competitor and political adversary in the form of China. Nation-states are sensitive to changes in relative power, and the US has decided that China is too close for comfort.

Read More

India must treat the oil spill near Mauritius as SoS. Lockdown has left seafarers exhausted

he Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius is facing one of its most serious crises in its modern history. On 21 July, around a week into its voyage from Singapore to the Brazilian port of Tubarao, the MV Wakashio, a 300-metre long bulk carrier, owned and operated by Japanese companies, deviated from its course and headed towards Mauritius instead of the regular shipping lanes several nautical miles south of it. A few days later, it struck a reef just over a kilometre from the shore, ran aground, spilled around a 1,000 tons of oil into the sea, before splitting into two. A major portion of the front part of the massive ship (or the “bow”) has been towed some distance to the south where it has been allowed to sink. The remaining parts lie on the reef, as weather and sea conditions do not permit its disposal. The ship’s 20-member crew has been arrested by the Mauritius authorities, and its captain, Sunil Kumar Nandeshwar, an Indian national, has been charged with endangering safe navigation.

Even without accounting for the Covid-19 pandemic, Mauritius is under-equipped to deal with environmental and economic disasters the marine accident has brought upon the nation. Over the past month, French and Indian marine disaster management personnel have joined their local counterparts in containing the damage, and Japanese and other international experts are to follow in the coming days.

Read More

What is driving China’s aggression?

There has been growing debate in recent times in India and other countries about China’s aggression. What’s driving Beijing to engage in contests on multiple fronts, be it Hong Kong, the near seas, or India, particularly amid a pandemic and economic weakness? Is it opportunism? Is it hubris? Is internal turmoil and insecurity leading to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) lashing out? Or are there structural factors that one must consider?Read the full article in The Hindustan Times.

Understanding Implications of Hong Kong’s Tech Ecosystem Changes for India

This article was first published in Deccan Herald. Views are personal.While the pandemic rages on, the Chinese leadership in Beijing has tightened its control over Hong Kong. Earlier in 2019, the region saw fierce protests take place regarding an extradition bill. Now, Chinese lawmakers have voted to adopt the Law of the People's Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.The law came into force by being added to Annex III of the Basic Law (de facto Constitution of Hong Kong) and hence was not debated in Hong Kong’s legislature. There had been plenty of speculation about the dynamics of the move and how that reflects on China itself. But since the law has been put into place, it has met with sharp responses, especially within the tech community.

Arriving at a new normal in India-China relations

This article was first published in The Hindustan Times.The ongoing stand-off between the Indian and Chinese forces in eastern Ladakh is a fork in the road, fundamentally reshaping the direction of the bilateral relationship. Over the last few years, the architects of the gradual thaw and developing partnership between the two sides, which began in 1988, had been warning about the withering of old mechanisms that had kept the peace on the disputed boundary.Despite the pageantry of informal summitry, the strategic guidance provided by the leaders to their respective militaries has clearly not succeeded in stemming incidents. In November 2019, the minister of state for defence, Shripad Naik, told Parliament that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had transgressed into Indian territory 1,025 times between 2016 and 2018. Roughly a third of these incidents took place in 2018. In April that year, Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping held the first of their two informal summits. Recent reports suggest that the number of transgressions across the Line of Actual Control (LAC) increased significantly in 2019.

Is China's Western Theatre Command Confident Enough to Challenge India?

In 2013, during the Third Plenum of the18th Central Committee, it was announced by Xi Jinping that China would introduce widespread military reforms. This shift in policy came a year after Xi Jinping had succeeded Hu Jintao as General Secretary and at the beginning of his program of consolidating his faction’s hold over the Chinese Communist Party. Amid other reforms, including announcements on the economy, the Third Plenum specifically identified the People’s Liberation Army leadership, command and force structures, institutions, and civil-military integration as key areas for major reforms.

Xi initiated the reform process two years later in 2015 with the ambitious goal to make the PLA a fully mechanised force by 2020, informatised by 2035 with the key aim of turning it into a world-class army by 2050. These reforms included changes to the Central Military Commission’s bureaucratic structure, the creation of newer forces like the PLA Strategic Support Force (SSF) and the PLA Joint Logistic Support Force (JLSF), and the formation of theatre commands for improving effectiveness between the various branches. Alongside these institutional reforms, Xi Jinping also prioritised weapons modernisation with the deployment of newer weapon systems.

The formation of the PLA’s Western Theatre Command (WTC) in 2016 saw the replacement of the old Chengdu and Lanzhou Military Regions and established a single unified command structure across Xinjiang, Tibet, and along the border of key states from Afghanistan and India. The impetus to modernise the PLA was accelerated after the 2017 Doklam stand-off which saw Indian and Chinese troops face-off in Bhutan. This along with amplified military training has helped the People’s Liberation Army to improve its firepower and develop its combat readiness, making it now more confident to challenge India along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

Read more

India can resist China by acting in concert with its adversaries

At an emergency cabinet meeting, the Prime Minister indicated that the border fighting did not constitute a threat to India. The strategic Chinese threat, he maintained, lies in the rapidly increasing industrial power base of China as well as the building of military bases in Tibet. The only Indian answer, he continued, is the most rapid possible development of the Indian economy to provide a national power base capable of resisting a possible eventual Chinese military move." Arthur Cohen of the United States’s Central Intelligence Agency wrote this in his 1963 study of border skirmishes that occurred in Ladakh in 1959. The Prime Minister he refers to was Jawaharlal Nehru.Read moreThis is part 1 of a 3-part series of essays for Livemint. You can read the entire series at:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

The global upheaval caused by China’s premature power games

As a sign of its arrival as a major power, global developments this decade have largely been shaped by China’s acts of commission and omission, and by the world’s response to it. Although Beijing’s exercises of power took a sharper turn after the global economic crisis of 2007-08, China’s leaders had been preparing their country to assume the mantle of great power at least a decade before that. In 2003, the very first year of his term as party leader, Hu Jintao organised a “collective study session" of the entire Politburo for a historical investigation into the world’s great powers. His government then commissioned a slickly produced 12-part documentary, aired on state-run TV from 2006, that got a star cast of scholars to discuss the rise of great powers from Spain and Portugal in the 15th century to the US and Soviet Union in the 20th. One of the most important lessons they must have drawn is that great power status does not just settle on you, and must be fought for and won.

Read more

This is part 1 of a 3-part series of essays for Livemint. You can read the entire series at:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

Power is the only currency that will work in dealing with China

In January 2016, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China—a position that outranks his commonly used job title of president—made an important speech assessing the global situation. China, in his view, was faced with “three unprecedented situations" and “three dangers". On the opportunity side of the ledger, it was “closer than ever before to being the centre of the world stage", he said; “It is closer to achieving its goals, and it now has the ability and the self-confidence to achieve its objectives." The dangers he spoke of were external aggression and internal division, an economic slowdown and political challenges to the party’s supremacy.Read moreThis is part 1 of a 3-part series of essays for Livemint. You can read the entire series at

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

Indian unpredictability could make China rethink its game

The South China Sea is thousands of miles away from the Indian heartland. Very few people in our country pay attention to developments in that part of the world, and although it has a bearing on India’s national interest, it barely figures in our self-centred public discourse. There, over the past decade, China has incrementally occupied islands disputed by several South East Asian countries, built military infrastructure on several of them, imposed its political administration, and is on the verge of declaring an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the entire region, threatening military force against any aircraft that overflies without its permission. Read more

Time for Modi to take political stand on China. Military talks won’t deter the bully

n an earlier article on how China has crossed the Lakshman Rekha, I had noted that ‘diplomatic virtuosity is insufficient to resolve the issue unless it is accompanied by political sagacity and boldness’. Two weeks later, we saw talks through military and diplomatic channels between India and China, but there is not much sign of the role that political sagacity is playing. It is well possible and understandable that political moves beneath the surface are going on and the matter will be resolved through an agreement. The incident at Galwan, which has resulted in the tragic death of a Commanding Officer and 19 jawans on 15 June, is symptomatic of China’s continued violations of agreements and protocols.You can find the article here

What are China’s weak points?

What is common to PayTM, Ola, BigBasket, Swiggy, and OYO? Yes, they are all made in India startup success stories. Some of them have achieved global success too. Did you know the Ola taxi service was launched in London in February? And OYO rooms are available in almost a dozen countries other than India? However, the other common factor to all of them is that they are substantially funded by Chinese investors. As reported by the digital publication, The Ken, all the top ten startups of India, ranked by venture funding raised, have Chinese investment. Apart from the five mentioned above, these include the app-based self-learning platform Byju’s and a very successful logistics company called Delhivery. A startup needs angel funding in the very beginning, and venture funding soon thereafter. Indian banks cannot help. Once the startup becomes successful, its value increases. If its value exceeds billion dollars (which is roughly Rs 7,500 crore today), then it is called a unicorn. The Gateway House, a think tank, reports that 18 out of 30 unicorns in India have Chinese investors. These investors are crucial to the startup community, because in their earlier years these companies have been incurring losses, and these have to be funded by some rich uncle, at least to pay salaries. Since there are not enough Indians willing to patiently fund losses for the first few years of startups, the Chinese have happily stepped in. In the process, Indian companies have achieved scale, and some can become world-beaters. The Chinese investors will make handsome money, but that is because they took risks and were patient for all these years. Besides, eight out of 10 startups fail. So the investor makes up by hitting a jackpot on the ninth or the tenth that does not fail.Read More 

Xi’s Strategic Folly: Why a New National Security Law Highlights China’s Insecurities

This article was first published in The Diplomat.Xi Jinping’s move reflects Beijing’s insecurities over Hong KongLast week was among the most critical in Hong Kong’s history since the 1997 handover of the territory to the People’s Republic of China. On Thursday, the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s top legislature, approved a draft decision to pursue enacting new national security legislation by a vote of 2,878-1, at its annual session in Beijing, with six abstentions. Over the past few days, there’s been a spate of demonstrations and crackdowns in the city amid concerns that the new legislation would be the end of Hong Kong’s autonomy.

How Covid-19 Changes the Geopolitics of Semiconductor Supply Chains

On May 15, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) — a semiconductor manufacturing behemoth that makes Apple’s A-series chips — announced its plans to build a $12 billion plant in the state of Arizona. On the same day, it was reported that TSMC has stopped taking new orders from Huawei to fully comply with the latest export control regulation imposed by the US. These are significant shifts in the semiconductor industry. We have an analysis of why these changes are happening and more importantly, why are they happening now.We argue that the economics of semiconductors — turbocharged by efficient and lean global supply chains — has made it a viable geopolitical tool. The US-China confrontation over Huawei is just one manifestation of this confrontation over semiconductors. COVID-19 only exacerbates this contestation. We evaluate four specific risks and write that COVID-19 will change the resilience-efficiency trade-off in the semiconductor industry. National governments and the geopolitical environment will be the key drivers of this transformation.The full article can be read on South China Morning Post here.

China has definitely crossed India’s Lakshman rekha but it won’t lead to 1962 again

Is this going to be another 1962?’ asked my neighbour, an 80-year-old naval veteran. ‘Not at all,’ was my instinctive reply, not because I had any special insight into the ongoing military situation in Ladakh, but because 1962-type wars now linger only in military imagination and tend to get confined largely to the dustbin of history. In reality, due to the shadow of nuclear weapons, the remote possibility of such ‘big fights’ tenant the deterrence space that keeps militaries armed with the state-of-the-art weapons system.You can find the article here

On Trump's Offer to Mediate Between India and China

The Print’s daily roundtable TalkPoint posed a question connected to the US President Donald Trump's offer to mediate between India and China over the “raging border dispute": Does Trump help or harm India’s interests when he offers to mediate with China, Pakistan?My response:

US President Donald Trump’s offer to mediate is a needless distraction in the grand scheme of things.Assessing what the US foreign policy would be like based on Trump’s offer to mediate on Twitter is a risky exercise. Often, there is a considerable gap between the two, like in the case of Afghanistan.Officially, the White House released a report on 20 May that said in no uncertain terms that Beijing “flouts its commitments to its neighbours by engaging in provocative and coercive military and paramilitary activities in the Yellow Sea, the East and South China Seas, the Taiwan Strait, and Sino-Indian border areas.” We can only guess whether Trump’s latest offer to mediate follows as a result of this understanding.Nevertheless, India’s position on such offers has been consistent — it intends to solve such disputes bilaterally and not through third party mediation. China is not likely to accept any such offers of mediation either. Hence, it would help the Indian and American interests both, a lot more if the US and India work together to build capacity to resist Beijing’s coercive and arrogant approach to border disputes.The case with Pakistan is also similar. The border dispute there is just one issue in a consistently strained India-Pakistan relationship. In fact, the US support to the Pakistani military-jihadi complex over the years has made this problem even more difficult. Here again, it would help the Indian and the US interests a lot more if the US adopts an overall strategic stance that sees Pakistan as a part of the problem.

You can read the full conversation on ThePrint. here. 

Flashpoints on the Periphery: Understanding China’s Neighborhood Opportunism

How is China taking advantage of the pandemic to pursue its foreign policy goals?

Tensions in China’s periphery have increased dramatically over the past few months as Beijing stepped up the use of military and diplomatic tools within its neighborhood. The frequency of the events involving Chinese actors, especially in the second half of March, increased as normalcy started returning to the mainland after the COVID-19 pandemic’s outbreak.This raises a few questions. First, is this evidence of China’s opportunism at a time when the United States is struggling to maintain its presence in the East and Southeast Asian regions? Second, has Beijing adopted a more aggressive approach for the post-pandemic period? Third, would the recent spike in activities impact the regional order?Read more

This article was originally published in The Diplomat.

How India can end Chinese transgressions: Take conflict to a place Beijing is worried about

How should India respond to another surge in Chinese transgressions at several places along our Himalayan frontiers? Over the past 15 years or so, strategic analysts have recommended two diametrically opposite approaches.

The first, advocated by sober defence traditionalists and by hawks, is that we should hold the line along the Himalayas and escalate the conflict if we have to. They point out that Indian troops enjoy favourable positions in many places, and our strength has been bolstered over the past 10 years with more mountain forces and better infrastructure and equipment. The objective of this approach, they contend, is to make the Chinese realise that they can’t ‘win’ this game.

Read more