Articles

China has been regularly coming out with white papers in many areas of its endeavour including defence and space activities. Promoting transparency is claimed to be one of the main goals of such an exercise. But largely such papers hide more and reveal less. Further transparency, at times can be a double edged sword especially in the military arena where one would like to both show off own competence so as to deter one’s likely adversaries as also be secretive about any exceptional progress made so as to not reveal too much; in addition at the same time one would like to hide own weaknesses.

Chinese roads on the LAC

It is more practical to limit the review of India’s security mainly to the classic concept of a nations’s security, not its extended definition given today that includes energy, food, water etc. With the end of the Cold War and the lowering of the threat of a military conflict between the big powers, attention has shifted to economic competition. With depletion of fossil fuel resources and the search for viable alternatives, the focus is on energy security. Climate change and prospects of water scarcity has brought the issue of food security to the fore.

For China, which joined the global space league in a modest way with a launch of a lightweight satellite in 1970, the year 2011 is all set to stand out as both “eventful and exciting”. Indeed, for this Asian communist giant, which has set its eye on emerging as a space and military power on par with USA and Russia, the launch of eight tone box car sized space module Tiangong-1 by means of March-2F rocket from Jiuquan space centre in Gobi desert in late September was a veritable space spectacular.

How stealthy China’s gigantic river projects will create strategic conflicts in a region suffering from growing water scarcity

Friction betwen India and China has expanded from South Asia to East Asia. Reacting to two oil exploration blocks offered by Vietnam to India in the South China Sea, China has called on countries to refrain from such ventures because of its “indisputable sovereignty” over the Sea. India has firmly rebuffed these objections by stating that its cooperation with Vietnam or with any other country is always as per international laws, norms and conventions, reiterating, furthermore, that it “supports freedom of navigation in South China Sea” .

The Annual Report of the Department of Defence colloquially known as Pentagon’s Report on China’s Military Power has been released. The Report is mandated by the US Congress and provides a bird’s eye view each year of developments in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). An overview read in conjunction with the China’s White Paper on Defence 2010 highlights a significant trend, fast track modernization of the PLA.

The proximity that has been characterising China and Pakistan relationship may turn out to be not quite all-weather if investigations into the recent violence in Chinese controlled Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region reveal a Pakistan-based Islamist connection. Indeed, it seems Beijing—until now—had deliberately been avoiding any mention of Pakistan in the interest of the partnership that it has been engendering with Islamabad, as also to guard it against censure from countries that have been victims of violence emanating from Pakistani soil.

The June meeting of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) has legitimized the supply of two additional nuclear reactors to Pakistan by China in violation of its own NSG commitments. This is a blow to our security interests. China presented the NSG with a frontal challenge, and the NSG has buckled.

The Chinese civilization is characterized by its ability to do long term perspective thinking of an unusual order. As far back as 1952, Chairman Mao Ze dong had articulated that Water Stress in the Northern and Western parts of China would be a very major challenge that would emerge a half century or so later. In fact this strategic long term thinking seems to have originated much earlier than 1952 and seems to have been instrumental in China’s decision to invade and conquer Tibet – the Water Tower of Asia – in 1950 itself.

The following facts are pertinent:-

The recent row between Vietnam and China in the South China Sea is yet another illustration of ‘peaceful rise of China’. It began in the last week of May and continued through second week of June, when in two similar incidents, exploration cables of Vietnamese oil and gas survey ships were cut off by Chinese patrol and fishing boats respectively. The first clash occurred between a Vietnamese oil and gas survey ship and Chinese patrol boats in an area around 120 km off the south-central coast of Vietnam and about 600 km south of China’s Hainan Island.