Indian Defence Review

Covert Cyber & Trade War. China has been covertly conducting ‘Cyber Warfare’ against India, aimed at affecting the command and control systems by virus attack on Indian official computers, either to make them dysfunctional or hack them to extract vital information. Towards this end, China has recently demonstrated her capability to shoot a satellite, which can cripple command and control systems based on satellite communications.

Also, China has been carrying out a clandestine trade war to capture markets frequented by Indian goods—like the Nigerian Malaria drug incident, where spurious medicines were being sold under brand name India. We all know that some months back, China had tried to block aid to Arunachal Pradesh from Asian Development Bank. There is a hot debate in the media worldwide about an article, recently published in a Chinese ‘Qiushi Journal’, an official publication of communist party of China, which seemingly threatened her neighbors from Japan, Australia, Philippines to Vietnam and India to stop ganging up against China, which it believed was being orchestrated by USA. In fact, China warned her neighbors of a war, if she found her national interests being threatened. A specific mention was made of use of her economic might to harm the nations.

Also read: China: is it enough to just watch?

In conclusion, I see no major military conflict with china in the near future other than the exploitation of India’s vulnerabilities by China as part of an ‘Outsourced war’ or which I would like to call a “ designer war package” for India. I expect a spurt in the verbal spats as part of the Cold war between two Asian giants—more from China and muted response from India. In fact, this century is the century of a Cold War between two Asian neighbors, which has just begun. India can no more ignore deliberate Chinese acts of sending a contingent of PLA into Gilgit and getting into threatening postures. We have to respond by cultivating nations like Vietnam, Japan, Australia and USA. To counter China’s trump card of Pakistan, India has to pay more attention to Afghanistan.