Below is a short excerpt of Mountain to climb – China’s complex relationship with India which was posted on the Jane’s Intelligence Review website (http://jir.janes.com/public/jir/index.shtml) May 7 and appears in the May print edition.

 

The latest issue to raise heckles [in India] has been cyberespionage. In January, India’s National Security Advisor MK Naryanan directly blamed China for multiple hacking attacks, and the chairman of India’s Cyber Law and IT Act Committee warned that same month that China had “raised a cyber army of about 300,000 people and their only job is to intrude upon the secured networks of other countries.” In April, a study by US and Canadian researchers claimed that a Chinese ‘shadow network’ had copied secret files of India’s defence ministry, potentially compromising some of India’s advanced weapons systems. 

Such events only aggravate the mutual antipathy between the two countries over their disputed border and suggest worsening relations in the future. While a re-run of the 1962 border conflict between the two nuclear-armed neighbours is not yet likely, the situation will only guarantee continued strategic and military competition across the Himalayas….

 ….Over the past half decade, there has been a palpable strategic reorientation in New Delhi; one in which the focus on Pakistan as the exclusive external threat has given way to a more pluralistic view of India’s security concerns. What started out as a policy discussion in India’s strategic community has evolved into a fundamental change in India’s military doctrine. 

In December 2009, the Indian army revealed that it was revising its war doctrine to meet the challenges of a “two-front” war.  Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor explained that there is now “a proportionate focus toward the western and northeastern fronts.” This followed a comment by India’s Air Force Chief Marshal Fali Homi Major in May 2009, who told the Hindustan Times: “China is a totally different ballgame compared to Pakistan… they are certainly the greater threat.”…

 

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