Indian think tanks afraid of calling China threat, says expert

[beijingwalker]

Indian think tanks afraid of calling China threat, says expert

By Sarvjeet Singh on July 15, 2013

It is well-known that the Chinese economy is way ahead of ours. Even when it comes to military might, Indian military is far behind the Chinese. But there is one thing that China fears even more than the Dalai Lama — Indian media. Pramit Pal Chaudhuri, Editor (Foreign Desk), Hindustan Times, said as much at the launch of a monograph titled China Threat.

“China does not take India seriously, but it fears Indian media, which is violently against China, the most. The second thing which China fears is Dalai Lama and India’s growing friendship with the US,” said Chaudhuri.

Government think tanks have long maintained that China is not a threat. It was only in 2005 that India officially accepted that there is a boundary dispute between the two countries.

The event was a rare occasion where a prominent researcher of one of India’s leading think tanks on strategic affairs accepted the fact that China is a threat.

“Think tanks fear calling China a threat. I accept China is a threat,” said Rajiv Nayan, Senior Fellow, Institute for Defense and Strategic Affairs. Nayan said that such behaviour was because of fears of escalating tensions. Nayan was frank in accepting that the fear was mainly because of China’s growing might, its new policies, thinking, and behavior.

“2012 was the year of India-China friendship and after that Depsang (the now infamous Ladakh intrusion) happened. Nobody has an answer to why Depsang happened,” said Nayan.

As recently as July 11, it was reported that two Chinese helicopters violated Indian airspace in the Chumar sector in Ladakh.

“What we don’t understand is why China does what it does. As many as two hundred border intrusions happen ever year between India and China. Interestingly, Depsang is an area which has never been claimed by China as its own,” said Chaudhuri.

It has been reported many times in the media that these intrusions are conducted by China to speed up boundary talks, but Chaudhuri pointed out that these intrusions could have been carried out by the Chinese Army on its own as a signal to its new leadership not to go too fast in normalising its relationship with India. The second reason could have been internal fights in the central leadership of the Communist Party of China.

According to Chaudhuri, China is getting technical help directly from US. Not only this, China is also trying to influence Indian media, academia and intellectuals in a bid to neutralise them.

Supporting Chaudhuri’s viewpoint, Nayan said, “There is no harm in visiting a country, but in what capacity you are visiting a country is a matter of concern.”

War-preparedness is also an important area to pay attention to. Till date, ever since the India-China war, out of the sixty-two roads sanctioned along the India-China border, only sixteen have been built. The Indian Army optimally needs eight to nine mountain divisions along the India-China border, but so far, only three to four mountain divisions have been raised according to the experts present during the release of the monograph.

“In 2009, NSA was told by the Indian Army that it will not be able to stand a full scale Chinese attack,” said Chaudhuri. “According to reports, China has begun modernising its nuclear warheads. They were testing short and medium range missiles with greater frequency, but last year they have increased the tests for long rang missiles as well,” said Nayan.

“Missiles are generally used as a deterrent, but of late China is trying to develop a technique through which it will be able to use both short and long rang missile actively in an ongoing war with a conventional warhead,” he added.

https://www.niticentral.com/2013/07/15/indian-think-tanks-afraid-of-calling-china-threat-says-expert-104202.html

 

[IndoCarib]

The event was a rare occasion where a prominent researcher of one of India’s leading think tanks on strategic affairs accepted the fact that China is a threat.


there you go !

 

[beijingwalker]

This Indian report is stupid,who cares about what Indian media say about China..Indian media people think too much about themselvs to this world.

 

[acid rain]

niticentral BS.

 

[bornmoron]

Troll Thread,,

Reported !

 

[OrionHunter]

“In 2009, NSA was told by the Indian Army that it will not be able to stand a full scale Chinese attack,” said Chaudhuri. “

This is utter nonsensical clap trap by this idiot who knows squat! The India Army NEVER ever said that it will not be able to stand a full scale Chinese attack. This is complete poppyc0ck! It will and can. In fact the IA will soon be prepared to fight a two front war.

Does that knucklehead even know what it would take for the Chinese to launch a full scale operation over mountainous terrain with limited lines of communication and next to nix deployment areas? Does this clown even know the requirements of the huge logistics support required for such an op over such restricted terrain over the Himalayas?

I don't even want to go into it here as some of the Chinese school kids on this forum who cannot understand the complexities of war, will start shooting from their hips about what happened in 1962!

 

[blood]

This Indian report is stupid,who cares about what Indian media say about China..Indian media people think too much about themselvs to this world.

then why did you post it idiot.

 

[Srinivas]

When Indian defense minister went on record saying that "China is the number one enemy" who needs Think tanks to confirm that again........

 

[beijingwalker]

been carried out by the Chinese Army on its own as a signal to its new leadership not to go too fast in normalising its relationship with India.

This has some truth in it,some PLA generals are very itchy for a fight.

then why did you post it idiot.

To show how idiotic you and your media are,doesnt it go without saying,idiot.

 

[beijingwalker]

Does that knucklehead even know what it would take for the Chinese to launch a full scale operation over mountainous terrain with limited lines of communication and next to nix deployment areas? Does this clown even know the requirements of the huge logistics support required for such an op over such restricted terrain over the Himalayas?

China Speeds Past India’s Slow Train to Kashmir Himalayas - Free Press Kashmir

KATRA: India’s struggle to build a railway to troubled Kashmir has become a symbol of the infrastructure gap with neighbouring China, whose speed in building road and rail links is giving it a strategic edge on the mountainous frontier.

Nearly quarter of a century after work began on the project aimed at integrating the revolt-torn territory and bolstering the supply route for troops deployed there, barely half of the 345-km (215-mile) Kashmir track has been laid.

Tunnels collapsed, funds dried up and, faced with the challenge of laying tracks over the 11,000 foot (3,352 metre) Pir Panjal range, railway officials and geologists bickered over the route, with some saying it was just too risky.

The proposed train, which will run not far from the heavily militarised border with Pakistan, has also faced threats from militants fighting Indian rule in the disputed region, with engineers kidnapped in the early days of the project.

China’s rail system has been plagued by scandal. A bullet train crash killed 40 people and triggered a freeze on new rail project approvals, but the country managed to build the 1,140-km (710-mile) Qinghai-Tibet line, which crosses permanently frozen ground and climbs to more than 5,000 metres above sea level, in five years flat.

It has also built bitumen roads throughout its side of the frontier, making it easier for Chinese troops to move around — and mass there, if confrontation ever escalates.

Indians have long fretted about the economic advantages that China gains from its infrastructure expertise. But the tale of India’s hardships in building the railway line also shows how China’s mastery of infrastructure could matter in the territorial disputes that still dog relations.

Both train networks, China’s running far to the north and India’s hundreds of miles away in the southern reaches of the Himalayas, reflect the desire to tighten political and economic links with their two restive regions – the Tibet Autonomous region in China’s case and Kashmir for India.

But they would also form a key element of military plans to move men and armour in the forbidding region in a time of conflict.

Should India-China relations ever deteriorate to the verge of military confrontation and if riots in Tibet erupt, the People’s Liberation Army’s mountain brigades can rapidly deploy to the region. Railway and road construction have been China’s Himalayan strategy for decades.

“China outstrips India in at least three respects: the ability to execute large and complex projects; rapid implementation; and – importantly – the foresight to embark upon these projects for economic and strategic purposes,” said Shashank Joshi, at London’s Royal United Services Institute, who has written extensively on India-China ties.

He also said China was also more proficient at concealing its failures because of its closed political system and excellent information management.

On the other hand, India hasn’t yet determined its priorities in the region, which shares borders with both Pakistan and China.

“India has to decide what it wants to be. If integrating Kashmir is a top national priority, then the project should have moved on a war footing long ago,” said one visibly exasperated military commander in Kashmir.

SIGNS OF STRUGGLE

Here in the lower stretch of the line, workers are struggling to build tunnels through soft mountains to bring the track from the railhead in Udhampur, 25 km (15 miles) away.

Of the seven they built over the past four years, one has collapsed and the other is seeping water. Now engineers have gone back to the drawing board to figure out an alternative route.

For now, there will be train services from Banihal to Qazigund in Kashmir valley and onward to Srinagar and Baramulla. The rail link from Banihal to Udhampur in Jammu, expected to be completed by 2017, will then provide a seamless connection to the rest of the country.

Bigger challenges lie further down the track, including completing the world’s tallest single-span bridge over the river Chenab at an elevation of 387 metres (1,270 feet), higher than the Eiffel Tower at 324 metres.

Railways plans to complete the bridge by 2016.

Across the valley floor are signs of the struggle to build a network that even the country’s former British rulers gave up on

after briefly considering it in 1898 because of the forbidding and often uninhabitable terrain.

A tunnel built into a cliff edge has been abandoned near Tikri in the lower section, at another place work has been stopped after workers found that the section in the hills they had blasted and drilled through had become waterlogged.

The train station built at Katra in anticipation of the line is looking worn out, with paint peeling off and moss growing on the building, two years after it was completed.

Local herdsmen leave their ponies to graze in the grounds around the eerily empty building.

“People have lost their land, there are no jobs and there is no train,” said Lal Chand, a herdsman.

The deadline for completion of the project was August 2007, but it has been pushed back to 2017, and even that is seen as an optimistic assessment. Cost estimates have jumped, from 45.5 billion rupees ($1.0 billion) in 2002 to 195.6 billion today.

China, meanwhile, began work last year to build a rail spur that will connect the Tibetan capital of Lhasa with Shigatse, the monastery town that is the seat of the Panchen Lama, the second-most powerful figure in Tibetan Buddhism.

Joshi said China was in a position to bring far greater resources to public sector investment than India. For instance, Indian investment in railways in 2010 was about $9-10 billion. In China, it was $118 billion.

“If the Chinese had to build the Kashmir track, they’d do it faster and better than the Indians – but it might still fail, and they’d plough much more into it.

UNFAIR COMPARISON

For the hard-hatted men tasked with building the railway line, comparisons with China don’t sit easily.

“These mountains are full of surprises. Normally you would survey one to two kilometres and then, based on the results, extrapolate the geological pattern for the rest of the stretch, but here it changes every 50 metres,” said senior railway engineer.

Most of the line runs either through tunnels totalling 109 km (68 miles), the longest of which is 11.4 km (7.1 miles), or across more than 780 bridges, many of which span deep gorges.

“The comparison with the Tibet railway is overstated. The Tibet line is largely flat, only 10 percent passes through mountainous terrain and the rest is through plateau,” said Railway official.

“It is not to belittle the challenges they faced. To build a network at that altitude and with those kind of weather conditions is creditable. But the comparison doesn’t stand. They had to do a lot less tunnelling, far fewer bridges.”(REUTERS)

 

[beijingwalker]

India has to move troops to that region and station them there waiting.China doesnt have to do that,we have better facilities and road connectivity,we can do that right before any conflicts happen and finish the deployment in days if not hours.

 

[beijingwalker]

He is not the only person says so,both your navy and airforce chiefs said the same thing,Indian is nowhere close to be able to take on China militarily.

 

[beijingwalker]

haha,keep it up..I REALLY enjoy this Indian dirty show

 

[blood]

haha,keep it up..I REALLY enjoy this Indian dirty show

you can't write proper english chinki don't try to act cool! you make a fool out of yourself whenever you write those oneliners

 

[OrionHunter]

China Speeds Past India’s Slow Train to Kashmir Himalayas - Free Press Kashmir

You still don't get it do you? Infrastructure that the Chinese have built is well within its own territory, ie, in Tibet and not over the Himalayas up to the LAC. The PLA can deploy their forces in Tibet with the infrastructure they've made. I'm not countering that at all. It's the huge mountainous areas in between which is the issue I'm talking about!

An offensive through these areas will be suicidal considering the horrendous problems in logistics and deployability. And then, the IA is not what it was in 1962 where the government dithered in employing the IAF. There was not a single sortie allowed then. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then. And the PLA knows it!