Alright, coming out of radio silence after more than a year now.
The recent India-China standoff has everyone hooked especially folks of our ilk but am unable to make sense of China's steps. Can a guru help us understand why China is doing what it is doing?
- Learning India's response/tactics and see what India can bring in terms of resources to counter it so that they can better prepare for the actual showdown?
- Create a precedence, harp on that event to show India as an aggressor and retaliate telling it's audience that it's only acting in self-defense? (Like broadcasting documentary on CCTV)
- Genuinely wanted to bully India down and salami slice as it has been doing in some of the past incidents?
- Grossly miscalculated India's resolve and nature of response?
- Preempted India's move on GB/PoK and save the day for Pakis and protect it's own CPEC investments?
Just too many questions but not a single answer makes sense in understanding China's recent moves.
1. Learning India's response/tactics and see what India can bring in terms of resources to counter it so that they can better prepare for the actual showdown?
Unlikely, this has been a learning experience for India, too, and besides tactics and chains of command are always subject to change. Moreover, China has lost the element of surprise, and gave New Delhi enough stimulus for massive equipment acquisitions, overcoming inventory shortages, and personnel reforms across the board. I'd go as far as to say that India has been stimulated enough to raise even more Mountain Strike corps facing China.
2. Create a precedence, harp on that event to show India as an aggressor and retaliate telling it's audience that it's only acting in self-defense? (Like broadcasting documentary on CCTV)
So far, China has done a piss-poor job with both information warfare and global narrative management. Nobody in India is intimidated, the top Indian print- and television media are right-of-center and BJP-pliant; and India's decision to ban Chinese social media platforms is a crippling blow to their IW capabilities. Thanks to US hostility toward China, western media is largely neutral, and China's mediabucks aren't succeeding at creating an anti-India narrative.
3. Genuinely wanted to bully India down and salami slice as it has been doing in some of the past incidents?
This is the likely explaination. They wanted to take advantage of the fact that most of the world, especially the Modi administration, had its hands full with COVID-19, and wanted to deal a military defeat (or territorial loss), which would destroy the BJP politically. In the initial stages of this engagement, they even partially succeeded in creating this narrative through their proxies in India's opposition parties and pliant sections of the media.
4. Grossly miscalculated India's resolve and nature of response?
Oh yes. This stunt will haunt China. They've kicked India out of its strategic slumber, made it both a military- and economic belligerent, and more importantly, cut themselves off from a 1.3 billion-strong data-mine. They've also potentially triggered the collapse of TikTok in the US and EU.
5.Preempted India's move on GB/PoK and save the day for Pakis and protect it's own CPEC investments?
India taking action on PoK became less likely after COVID-19. Besides, Chinese aggression has had the opposite effect. Not only will India complete an all-weather, black-topped road to DBO, but also eventually set up a Joint Base at DBO, complete with an Army garrison, an ITBP post, and a paved all-weather runway that can serve as an IAF FOB rather than an ALG. This will be very problematic for the Karakoram highway. Also, I doubt this has changed India's capability or resolve to strike PoK at the next Pakistani miscalculation. India's strategic message to Pakistan is "be very afraid of India, because it's not afraid of China."
