{"id":1130,"date":"2023-04-22T13:21:14","date_gmt":"2023-04-22T10:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kaf1.org\/?page_id=1130"},"modified":"2023-04-22T13:22:56","modified_gmt":"2023-04-22T10:22:56","slug":"the-sino-indian-rivalry-is-reshaping-asia","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/kaf1.org\/?page_id=1130","title":{"rendered":"The Sino-Indian Rivalry Is Reshaping Asia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Apr 21, 2023Brahma Chellaney<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sino-Indian Rivalry Is Reshaping Asia<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n

By standing up to Chinese territorial encroachments, India has openly challenged Xi Jinping\u2019s expansionism in a way that no other world power has done. The current military stalemate in the Himalayas serves as yet another reminder that Xi has picked a border fight with India that he cannot win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEW DELHI \u2013 Three years after China stealthily began encroaching on India\u2019s territory<\/a> in the Himalayas, no end is in sight for the two countries\u2019 border standoff. While the rival military buildups and intermittent clashes<\/a> have received little attention in the West, the escalating border confrontation has set in motion a long-term rivalry that could reshape Asian geopolitics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By locking horns with China despite the risk of a full-scale war, India has openly challenged<\/a> Chinese power in a way no other world power, including the United States, has done in this century. Chinese President Xi Jinping\u2019s strategic overreach<\/a> has caused India to shift away from its previous appeasement policy and accelerate its military buildup, turning a potential partner into an enduring foe, while appearing determined to forestall a Sinocentric Asia. Similarly, Xi\u2019s muscular revisionism and geopolitical ambitions have forced Japan and Australia to readjust their strategic frameworks and work to counter China\u2019s expansionism in the Indo-Pacific. By drawing up plans to double defense spending by 2027<\/a>, Japan has effectively abandoned<\/a> its pacifist postwar national-security policy. Australia, for its part, has renounced its previous hedging approach<\/a> and joined the AUKUS defense pact with the US and the United Kingdom. China\u2019s attempt in spring 2020 to occupy hundreds of square kilometers in the icy borderlands of India\u2019s northernmost Ladakh region, at a time when India was enforcing the world\u2019s strictest national lockdown, amounted to a cynical effort to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic to further Xi\u2019s strategic aims. But Xi miscalculated when he assumed that China could force India to accept the new status quo as a fait accompli.<\/em> Since then, India has more than matched China\u2019s military deployments, fueling the largest-ever military buildup in the Himalayas, one of the world\u2019s most inhospitable regions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With India refusing to buckle, Xi has sought to overwhelm its defenses by opening up a new front in the eastern Himalayas, more than 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles) from China\u2019s 2020 land grabs. In December 2022, a Chinese incursion into the strategically crucial border state of Arunachal Pradesh was repelled by Indian forces, reportedly with help from US intelligence<\/a>. In an effort to strengthen its territorial claim and provoke India, China has Sinicized the names of sites in Arunachal Pradesh. Calling Arunachal Pradesh \u201cSouth Tibet,\u201d the Chinese government has asserted<\/a> that the sprawling state \u2013 more than twice the size of Taiwan \u2013 is \u201cChinese territory\u201d and that Sinicizing Indian lands is its \u201csovereign right.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All this has given India a stake in Taiwan\u2019s continued autonomous status. If Taiwan were to fall to China, the Austria-sized Arunachal Pradesh could become the Chinese government\u2019s next target<\/a> for \u201creunification.\u201d China\u2019s annexation of Tibet in 1951 proved to be one of the most significant geopolitical developments in post-World War II history, giving China common borders with India, Nepal, Bhutan, and northwest Myanmar. A Chinese takeover of Taiwan could lead to a similar geopolitical reordering, enabling Chinese naval forces to break out of the \u201cfirst island chain<\/a>\u201d and easily access the Pacific. China\u2019s claim that Taiwan has \u201calways been\u201d part of China is historically dubious. Taiwan did not become a Chinese province before the late nineteenth century, and China lost control of the island just eight years later<\/a>, when the Qing Dynasty ceded it to Japan in perpetuity<\/a> following its defeat in the 1895 Sino-Japanese War. But in laying claim to Taiwan, Xi is working to complete Mao Zedong\u2019s expansionist vision of a \u201cGreater China.\u201d Similarly, Tibet is the key to Chinese expansionism in the Himalayas despite the fact that it was a part of China only when China itself was occupied<\/a> by outsiders like the Mongols and the Manchus. Because it cannot claim any Han-Chinese connection, its territorial claims in the Himalayas rest on alleged Tibetan ecclesial or tutelary links. Even tiny Bhutan has not been spared; China has been nibbling away<\/a> at its borderlands. Against this backdrop, India\u2019s willingness to stand up to China is crimping Xi\u2019s expansionist agenda. As Admiral Michael M. Gilday, the US Navy\u2019s chief of naval operations, put it last year, India presents China with a \u201ctwo-front<\/a>\u201d problem. \u201cThey [Indians] now force China to not only look east, toward the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, but they now have to be looking over their shoulder at India,\u201d he said. Moreover, the Sino-Indian rivalry has flared up at a time when China\u2019s economy is running into long-term constraints, including a shrinking and rapidly aging population<\/a> and slowing productivity growth. By contrast, India, which has one of the world\u2019s youngest populations<\/a> with a median age of 28.4<\/a>, is reaping a demographic dividend. While its GDP is still smaller than China\u2019s, it is the world\u2019s fastest-growing major economy<\/a>. Given that its military is the world\u2019s most experienced<\/a> in hybrid mountain warfare, India has an edge in the high-altitude Himalayan environment. Moreover, in contrast to India\u2019s all-volunteer military, the Chinese People\u2019s Liberation Army largely relies on conscripts<\/a> who ostensibly \u201cvolunteer\u201d for two years of service after they reach the age of 18. That helps explain why China has chosen to engage in stealth encroachments rather than direct combat. The current military stalemate in the Himalayas serves as yet another reminder that Xi has picked a border fight with India that he cannot win. With the US-China rivalry deepening, the last thing China needed was to make a permanent enemy<\/a> of its largest neighbor. Ultimately, bringing India and America closer could prove to be Xi\u2019s lasting legacy \u2013 an unintended consequence that threatens to undermine his regime\u2019s aggressive irredentism. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apr 21, 2023Brahma Chellaney The Sino-Indian Rivalry Is Reshaping Asia By standing up to Chinese territorial encroachments, India has openly challenged Xi Jinping\u2019s expansionism in a way that no other world power has done. The current military stalemate in the Himalayas serves as yet another reminder that Xi has picked a border fight with India […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_regular_price":[],"currency_symbol":[],"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1130","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"post_slider_layout_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","post_slider_layout_landscape_large":"","post_slider_layout_portrait_large":"","post_slider_layout_square_large":"","post_slider_layout_landscape":"","post_slider_layout_portrait":"","post_slider_layout_square":"","full":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaf1.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaf1.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaf1.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kaf1.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kaf1.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1130"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/kaf1.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1136,"href":"http:\/\/kaf1.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1130\/revisions\/1136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaf1.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}