Some thoughts on China by my uncle who has retired from the Indian armed forces
You are absolutely right when you say that Chinese are still rankling over the humiliation that they suffered due to the Opium Wars. But that is not the only problem. Now they have acquired sufficient military and financial clout.
The power that they have just acquired has given them global ambitions that they are now pursuing aggressively at the expense of their neighbours. The Covid 19 pandemic, which was in all probability created deliberately, has given them a definite advantage wrt their neighbouring countries. They are using this advantage to try to settle old scores (Aksai Chin and Galwan with India, Senkaku Islands with Japan, and claims in South China Sea that affect Indonesia, Malaysia and of course Taiwan) from a position of relative advantage. Any success here will definitely boost up their international image.
In the short term we need to play for time, and try to delay any military confrontation till next summer when we will be fully prepared and the effects of corona hopefully behind us. China has to be made to realise that any localised tactical confrontation will not be to their advantage. In the long term we need to make alliances with our neighbours who are also being pushed by China ,and isolate them to weaken their economy. This is already happening, as most of the world has lost trust in China.
We need to make greater efforts to prevent Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka from falling into the Chinese camp. No point wasting time over Pakistan as they are already a client state of China.
Incidentally, to know more about Opium Wars I suggest you read books by Amitav Ghosh- Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke, and Flood of Fire. They are fiction, highly readable, and at the same time very informative about Opium Wars.
My response to the above.
It has not been proved that the COVID pandemic was deliberately engineered. If it is proved then war may be inevitable between nuclear armed powers (China on one side and the other nuclear powers on the other). But after the US invasion of Iraq about 16 or 17 years ago was proved to be unjustified it may be better to wait until we have conclusive evidence of complicity as far as the pandemic is concerned.
R (one of my cousins) made a point to me on WA that the Chinese are acting boldly because they think that the USA will not intervene to fight the wars of other countries. In order to get the US to intervene against China India may require conclusive proof that COVID was deliberately engineered. So it makes sense to get the international community to put maximum pressure on China to allow an international probe as to what caused the pandemic.
I am not sure if the Chinese will yield to this pressure (especially if they are guilty) but India should maintain this pressure (with the goal of getting the USA and European nations to intervene whenever China flexes its muscles). If China refuses point blank then I am not sure what advice to give. But such a refusal would lead to a strong presumption of guilt.
Another related question is whether we can take on China militarily on our own if the western nations wash their hands of the matter. But I do not think that nuclear war is at stake. The territories that are claimed by the Chinese (from India) are very sparsely populated and do not have much strategic importance. For example there are no natural resources in those areas (as far as I know). If it turns out that the disputed territories have oil in them then it may be worth risking a big war. But not otherwise. I am not sure what strategic importance the armed forces will have for the disputed territories though.
The Chinese communist party is very hawkish and the Indian population very patriotic, uneducated and easily enraged. As such there is not much chance of dividing the disputed territories on the negotiating table and solving the problem.
So (as in the case of Pakistan) we may have to live with the fact that there are disputed territories between our two nations and we may have to be satisfied with managing the problem instead of solving it. India and China may have to pass on this problem to the coming generations.
More thoughts by my uncle in response to the above comments and my praising the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu.
If Nehru and Gen Thapar had read Sun Tzu the debacle of ‘62 may never have happened.
In response to your what’s app message, it is always very difficult to prove that China engineered the pandemic deliberately. Particularly when they are not permitting any inspections of their labs (why would they? That would let the cat out of the bag.) But no one can have any doubt that they are taking full advantage of situation caused by the pandemic which undoubtedly started in China. The most charitable way of putting it is that it might have been a result of callousness rather than malice! Most of the western world and also countries neighboring China do hold China responsible for the pandemic (other than Pakistan and N Korea of course, who are their client states) and rightly so. I think China will face economic isolation over a period of time. It will have to be gradual as presently we are all dependent on Chinese goods. This dependency has to go.
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