Humphrey Hawksley
Economic Times
Sep 28, 2014
China’s president Xi Jinping is leader of the world’s most populous country and the second biggest economy. He presides over the building of roads, railways, airports and infrastructure at an astonishing rate. He and his colleagues are the architects of a system that has pulled hundreds of millions out of poverty, structured robust institutions and created world-class transnational corporations.
Earlier this month, Alibaba, the Chinese online retailer, made a record $25 billion launch on the New York stock market. The rags-to-riches story of its founder resonates with the dreams, ideas, success and money of modern China whose economic achievements have been the envy of India, indeed of much of the developing world. Yet for all of that Xi appears to have an itch on his face. Time and again he makes public statements instructing his military to prepare for war.
He did this in April and December last year. Then earlier this week he did it again, telling his generals to “improve their combat readiness and sharpen their ability to win a regional war in the age of information technology.” The latest emphasis is on the region and technology and the question raised is what does it mean for India.
First, technology. For more than a decade a once top secret agency within the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), known as the Advanced Persistent Threat Unit 61398, has been honing its hacking skills. Among its targets is the Indian government. Intelligence officials believe the core Chinese teams operate from a drab, 12-storey building in Pudong, an industrial suburb of Shanghai.
Tech Wars
The next major war, whether regional or global, will be fought as much with electronic weapons that jam systems and crash stock markets as with missile strikes and boots on the ground. China is beefing up this part of its military. India must do the same. With home-grown hi-tech skills that stretch from California to Bangalore to the Defence Intelligence Agency, Indian tech geeks are more than capable of taking on China, but they do need the budget.
Second, the region. After years of ham-fisted diplomacy, China finds itself bereft of strategic allies and its record in choosing them has been dreadful. Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, Myanmar’s military junta and North Korea’s dynastic dictatorship have hardly been partnerships of strength and reliability. Its key ally, Pakistan, is pitifully unstable.
So, China finds itself more strategically isolated in Asia than it was a generation ago while the world’s two biggest democracies, India and the US, have forged a flawed but active alliance which arose from one of America’s post 9/11 foreign initiatives. It is not difficult, therefore, to guess the war-gaming taking place in Chinese military academies.
Potential enemies include Japan because of history and the disputed East China Sea islands; South Korea over a possible mishandled collapse of North Korea; the Philippines or Vietnam over Beijing making a push too far into the South China Sea; America in any flashpoint in the Asia-Pacific; and of course India where Chinese and Indian troops continue to face each other on the disputed Chumar area of Ladakh.
All these governments, bar one, have some kind of strategic or military arrangement with the US. Therefore any flare up into a hot war would put China into direct hostility with America. The exception is Vietnam with whom China fought a war in 1979. Battle hardened from defeating both France and the US, Vietnamese troops ran rings around the Chinese who through sheer numbers reached their objectives and then rapidly fled.
Against this spectre of war comes talk of trade and the peace dividend of entwined economies. Xi has pledged $20 billion to India over the next five years and India has invited Chinese involvement in infrastructure projects — a far cry from the thorny relationship 10 years ago when China was banned from such projects because of security concerns.
Chinese Checkers
There is, of course, no reason for conflict. Every country in Asia — apart from North Korea — is steadily getting wealthier and more secure. But lessons over the past century — from World War I to the present crisis in Ukraine — tell us that if politicians have the fire of war in their bellies, booming economies count for nothing. China’s behaviour in recent years indicates that this might be the case — however illogical and absurd it might seem.
India, though, is well placed to face it down. Its weakness is that China has more of just about everything in military hardware.
Its annual defence budget of $131 billion is nearly three times that of India’s $46 billion. But its strengths are the creative hi-tech geeks who, given a chance, will give the PLA’s unit 61938 a run for its money in electronic combat. India also now has a strongly mandated leader who appears to know his mind and, for the first time, is not beholden to a parliamentary coalition or a dynastic legacy. Prime minister Modi, an Indian nationalist, can do what he wants.
It might be wise, therefore, for Xi to hold his tongue about regional war, not the least because it shows a reckless immaturity of global leadership. Supposing every world leader routinely rallied his armies to prepare for war. Then, surely, sooner or later, war would happen. And, in Asia, up against the nuclear weapons, computer geeks and foot soldiers of India, America, Japan, South Korea and probably Vietnam, China might well lose. It’s time for Jinping to scratch that war itch off his face.
