There might be some truth to that. We don't know what agreement Doval and Parrikar made during their respective visits but I remember that China had said in official state media last week that India is trying to milk both China and US, or something to that effect. So, it seems India has made some formal commitments to China (which only the establishment knows about) maybe about not indulging in an active war against China over SCS but restricting our participation to just doing joint patrols (maybe in exchange for some concessions relating to Pakistan). So China keeps reminding us through these indirect taunts to make our establishment come clean on our official stance.
One thing we all know for sure is that India will never antagonize China to the extent of US. From our point of view, US is no different than China, neither of them are our wellwishers, so we have no stake in sacrificing our own soldiers to help one party annihilate the other, because what happens when China is gone? US will come for us! Even if a war doesn't happen, joining a US coalition is tantamount to surrendering our strategic autonomy and becoming a junior partner. What happens when US starts occupying Vietnam and Philippines under the pretext of fighting China? will the US not be in a position to threaten our maritime trade and use it as a blackmail tactic? (remember 1971?) It will be a classic case of
"aasman se gire, aur khajur pe atke".
Why do people assume that the US will be friendlier to us than China? We will get a better deal if we send our war machinery to Vietnam and handle it our own way instead of letting US make inroads and build permanent bases here. We are all suffering the consequences of the US making inroads in the Af-Pak region, we don't want the same to happen in the ASEAN region. We should co-operate with China to keep US out of S.E Asia, in exchange, it will free up strategic resources for us to break Pakistan and remove US influence from our western border. India, China, Russia can jointly agree on what the new order in Asia would look like after Pakistan is fragmented. In essence, US will be ousted from the Asian great game. Once this broader framework is agreed upon, we can sort our LAC border issues with China among ourselves. That is not an urgent matter now. Pakistan is; The same Pakistan to which US is dying to provide more weapons and aid. US is the real enemy.
@asianobserve Don't get too excited about the US-Phli mutual defense treaty. What it means is that the US will send troops to your country and occupy your land on the pretext of helping you fight China (just like NATO has done with Europe). You are basically volunteering to being colonized by the US for the fear of being colonized by China. We all know what happens when US troops occupy a land, they never leave! they will sit there, they will bribe your politicians and defense establishment to manufacture public opinion to make sure that they never have to vacate your nation. Japan is learning it the hard way. They will sit on your land and provoke China just to keep the Chinese threat alive in your minds and use it to extend US occupation.