China recently seems to want to pick a fight with all of its neighbors. Sinking Vietnamese n Philippine fishing boats, Stationing more assets against Taiwan, Flaring up skirmishes along Indian border, pushing Nepal to start issues with India, renegading on HongKongs autonomy etc
Viewing Chinese aggression thru various angles:
It could be that The CCP is scared of the coming external combined retribution from rest of the world that might weaken CCP domestically. Its trying to signal its enemies (US,India etc) not to push CCP too hard or a PLA military coup might take place and China under hardcore PLA extremists will be even more belligerent than china is today. And thus its not in interest of Chinas enemies. This is similar to paki army claiming not to sanction and weaken them too hard otherwise terrorists will take over paki nukes and outcome will be worse. Its basically the "alternative is worse" play. I dont think it will work bc world sees thru it.
It could be that CCP is feeling pressure internally from the PLA that its seen to be too soft and is allowing the military to do a few stunts to satisfy them. Like the pakis, CCP is big on H & D and has low tolerance for losing face (this is a weakness we could use.)
It could be that domestic unemployment and govts mishandling of coronavirus is increasing general populations anger towards CCP. And CCP is just trying to whip up nationalistic fervor to divert attention from its failures.
It could be that CCP genuinely believes its in a good position now to reap benefits from weakened neighbors. Thus testing waters by increasing military presence at the borders.
It could be that CCP senses a war is coming eventually anyway and is tying up all the lose domestic ends (hong kong) and preparing for a pre-emptive, action to benefit from a first strike now rather then wait for others to make the first move.
It could be a Xi Jinping vs CCP move. Recently there were reports that secretly CCP sent feelers out to the west asking "what if they replace xi jinping, will the west go back to normalcy visavis china?" Like Kim Jong Un, it could be Xi is testing loyalties of his comrades or trying to gauge possible foreign calculations. Xi Jinping could be trying to further secure his position among growing revolt within CCP.
Could be CCP returning to its own old tricks. Projecting itself much stronger than it actually is against its neighbors. Hoping that all the huffing and puffing makes them back down and not start a real war which would actually expose chinas military to be much weaker than projected. This has been chinas strategy against its neighbors till now. It somewhat worked against Philipines, Vietnam, pre-2014 India. Didnt work against India at Doklam in 2017.
Chinas CCPS biggest fear is an actual war. It knows its military cant fight (for various reasons) and fears it coming to light. They keep on salami-slicing to keep conflict below threshold of a hot war. It plans on winning concessions from its neighbors without firing a single shot by building huge quantity of shiny toys using its over-sized industrial capacity. They are playing from their strength, which is their huge economy & industrial capacity. They are avoiding their weakness, which is actual test of its forces in a long, dirty, drudgy, brutal combat with another professional force.
India should call Chinas bluff. On our Himalayan borders, we have them exactly where we want them to be. We have all the advantage in man, material, short logistical supply lines etc. We should now start salami-slicing against china and move eastward to regain our lost land and let them beg for de-escalation. Forces of Inertia and imprint of 62 defeat is clouding a lot of peoples minds in babudom and goverment. On the eastern front it makes all the sense for us to be the aggressors and let the chinks be on the backfoot. Capturing Lhasa is a lot easier than capturing Gilgil-Baltistan and there are a lot of levers we can use against china, which we havent used before. Tibet and its Indian border is Chinas soft belly. If exposed, its a free reign to conquer han mainland. We control more rungs of escalation ladder now, more than ever before. We have a lot to gain by being hard on China now.
