The Chinese hypersonic missile vehicle test

The report of a Chinese hypersonic missile vehicle test is yet another signal that the People’s Republic of China intends to contest the hegemony of the United States across the spectrum. However, given the American lead in terms of military power, China’s thrust continues to be towards developing asymmetrical  capabilities generally classed under the acronym A2/AD (anti-access/area denial). In the case of the hypersonic vehicle test, the target seems to be the American anti-ballistic missile programme. In other words, China is ensuring that its nuclear deterrent against the US will not be degraded by any American capabilities in the anti-missile field.

The first report of  the Chinese test of an hypersonic missile vehicle on  January 9  came from the legendary Bill Gertz writing in the Washington Free Bacon newspaper and available on freebacon.com.

 http://freebeacon.com/china-conducts-first-test-of-new-ultra-high-speed-missile-vehicle/

Gertz, for those who may not be familiar with him has deep ties in the Pentagon and he cited US officials as saying that the vehicle appeared designed to deliver warheads through US ballistic missile defences.  Subsequently, on January 15, the Chinese Ministry of Defence confirmed the report noting: ““Our planned scientific research tests conducted in our territory are normal. These tests are not targeted at any country and at any specific goals.”

According to Gertz, citing US officials, the hypersonic craft was designed to be launched on one of China’s intercontinental ballistic missiles, and which then glides and maneuvers at speeds of up to 10 times the speed of sound from near space  to its target.

Vehicles traveling at hypersonic speeds—between 3,800 to 7,500 miles per hour—are the cutting edge technology which can be both powered and unpowered, the former can take off on their own, while the latter can be boosted atop launch vehicles.

The US and Russia have been experimenting with hypersonic vehicles for some time, and now China has joined the list. India has also talked about a follow-on to the Brahmos supersonic missile. But in all likelihood, the key technologies here will be provided by the Russians. In any case they are the world leaders in hypersonic technology with many missiles using ramjet propulsion. The Russians are already in the flight testing stage and the Russians are now involved in next gen technologies using hydrogen-fueled scramjet engines.
 A former commander of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces in Moscow said China’s hypersonic vehicle test was a milestone but that Beijing trails both Russia and the United States in the development of the arms.
“China has hardly surpassed the Americans and the Russians as it has just accomplished its first hypersonic missile test,” former Strategic Rocket Forces commander Col. Gen. Viktor Yesin told Interfax-AVN. Without access to the Chinese test results it is impossible to gauge the success of China’s hypersonic weapons program.
“We should say at the same time that the United States and Russia have conducted a number of hypersonic missile tests but they have not achieved the successful separation of glide hypersonic warheads,” he said.
“The designers have run into numerous problems and most of them have not been resolved so far.” http://freebeacon.com/chinese-defense-ministry-confirms-hypersonic-missile-test/

The key Chinese expert cited in many places in the Chinese media was Chen Hu, whose background and specialisation is not clear. Many of the reports repeated  his interview to the Chinese Central People’s Broadcasting Station. Subsequently, a version of this appeared in  the  Huaxia Jingwei website   http://www.huaxia.com/thjq/jsxw/dl/2014/01/3708693.html (translated excerpts given below)

“What is the core secret of the Hypersonic weapons?

In general, before the ballistic missile re-enters the atmosphere, it can release warheads. It can be both a single-warhead and also a multiple-warhead. Outside the warhead, there is a carrier device that re-enters the atmosphere. In principle, it is a bit like the re-entry of the Shenzhou spacecraft, which requires the material of the outer case to be capable of withstanding harsh environment, so as to protect warheads to complete its flight. A warhead, in general, is a ballistic flight warhead. Speaking from its significance in the past, it used to be a free parabolic type of warheads which took flight according to a fixed trajectory. Now after we have a hypersonic gliding vehicle, once the warhead enters the atmosphere, it completes the flight, following the flight trajectory.

what is the real significance of Hypersonic weapons?

The United States launched an anti-missile system to settle the problem of early warning, and fixed trajectory of the ballistic missile. By a lucky coincidence, it has left room for reaction time, because in the fixed ballistic missile, only if one can accurately measure parameters such as location and speed, only then can one calculate the entire ballistic path. It leaves enough reaction time for interception at the end. Once the gliding vehicle is used, the ballistic trajectory changes immediately on contact with the atmosphere, flying according to controls. Therefore, the greatest significance of the hypersonic weapons is to effectively break through the core technology of end phase interception of anti-missile system.

what FRINGE BENEFITS will the Hypersonic weapons bring in?

　　

Such a gliding-type loader will bring in some fringe benefits: first, the effective range of the missile can be extended. Its flight distance will be much more than the original free fall, which means that the range of missile can be significantly increased. A bomb is still a bomb, rocket is still a rocket. But as long as the warhead is used in a modified way, its range will expand. This is obviously a very big advantage.

　　

Hypersonic weapon provides technical possibilities for hitting an aircraft carrier

Another benefit is that since it will complete flight in flight mode, it will then require accurate positioning, and then must accurately hit that point. These warheads have to have an accurate terminal guidance system. The speed of the warheads of the Intercontinental missile, during the carrier phase, may be above 20 Mach. Therefore, when it re-enters the atmosphere at high speeds, the friction between the warheads and the atmospheric air produces high temperatures and heat, leading to the production of plasma and the blanking of electric circuits. Therefore, it must have a black barrier zone. Once it enters the Black barrier zone, radio communications and video signals are interrupted. The speed of the glider will then drop from 20 mach to 10 mach, avoiding a blackout zone and making precision guiding possible. It will then have the ability to hit moving targets. This is very significant, since it means that it can be effective against targets at sea. It also provides technical possibilities for striking an aircraft carrier.”

Published in ORF website Jan 22, 2014

India Losing Clout in South Asia

Things have been bad enough for India in Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka, and we now face the prospect of our relations with Bangladesh going down the tube in the coming months.
After having a friendly government preside over a stable neighbour in the last five years, we are now confronted with the prospect of violence and anarchy in a country with which we share a 4000-km border.
The cause of this alarming development is not too difficult to find - the continuing and debilitating quarrel between the two Begums of Bangladesh - Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed and her predecessor, Khaleda Zia, the chief of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

Jamaat activists set fire to an Awami League office in Bangladesh on an election day that was marred by violence

Rivalry

The occasion, too, has a sense of déjà vu. With national elections scheduled in January 2014, Begum Khaleda had demanded that they take place under the aegis of a caretaker government, and not the incumbent Awami League dispensation headed by her great rival.
Not surprisingly, Sheikh Hasina refused, just as Khaleda Zia had done in 2006 when she was prime minister. It had taken two years of agitation and strife to gain her commitment to hold the polls under the aegis of a caretaker government and the Awami League alliance had won by a landslide - 263 seats out of 300.
We are now probably headed to the same place with the numbers reversed in favour of the BNP. The international community has uniformly denounced the January 5 elections which saw a voter turnout of about 30 per cent against the 83 per cent who voted in 2008.
As many as 153 out of the 300 seats were won uncontested by the Awami League alliance which secured a three-fourths majority. In the wake of domestic protests and international condemnation, Sheikh Hasina has more or less conceded that she will have to undo the elections.
The question is of timing. The longer the violence and anarchy plays out, the worse it will be for Bangladesh.
A re-election, which will almost certainly see the victory of the BNP, is bad news for India. But New Delhi can only blame itself for its predicament. It did little to show its appreciation for the friendly government in Dhaka - it was neither able to push the Teesta water-sharing accord, nor the border agreement.
Given the binary nature of Bangladeshi politics, it was bad strategy for New Delhi to be seen as Sheikh Hasina's benefactor. This may have been a reality in the past, but in the last five years, at least, New Delhi needed to have moved to a stance that would protect Indian interests, regardless of who headed the government.

People gather in front of a burnt and vandalised house after Bangladesh Jamaat-E-Islami activists attacked a Hindu village in Jessore

Rift

The events in Bangladesh have also brought out an uncharacteristic rift between New Delhi and Washington DC. In the past year, the Americans have been warning against the holding of elections in a climate of violence, while India has made it clear that all its eggs are in Sheikh Hasina's basket.
Had the two countries put forward a united stand on the elections, perhaps things would not have come to this pass. On Monday, the United States issued a statement that categorically called on the Awami League government to fix the situation.
In Washington DC, Marie Harf, the official spokesperson, denounced the violence and said: "We believe Bangladesh still has an opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to democracy by organising free and fair elections that are credible in the eyes of the Bangladeshi people."
The American statement was in sharp contrast to the Indian official spokesperson's comment on the election, which was also delivered on Monday. In his daily briefing, the official spokesman said that the elections in Bangladesh were a "constitutional requirement" and that it was for the people of the country to "decide their own future and choose their representatives in a manner that responds to their aspirations."
Ignoring the issue of the legitimacy of the elections, the spokesperson said that "violence cannot and should not determine the way forward." This was not a blanket endorsement of Sheikh, but it was close enough, given the universal criticism she has otherwise faced.
India's predicament is manifest. Sheikh Hasina is one of the few friends we have in the South Asian region. In 2013, we have had trouble-prone relations with Sri Lanka, Nepal and Maldives; and ties with our adversaries Pakistan and China remain unchanged.
But in the last five years, with Sheikh Hasina as prime minister, relations between India and Bangladesh were warm and friendly. She cracked down on the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) sheltering in Bangladesh, as well as on domestic Islamists who were used by the ISI for anti-Indian activity.
Moreover, stable Bangladesh enjoyed a handsome six per cent rate of growth.

Equations

Sheikh Hasina's added virtue was that she took on the Jamaat-e-Islami and had it on the run. Equally important, the Awami League's control of the government provided New Delhi some comfort with regard to the advancing Chinese influence in the region, even though India was not able to reward her sufficiently.
On the other hand, Khaleda Zia and her BNP are allied to the Jamaat which is virulently anti-Indian. Begum Khaleda's own attitude towards India cannot but be deeply skewed by the perceived closeness between India and Sheikh Hasina.
As far as India is concerned, the issue of Bangladesh cannot be handled by a lame-duck government in New Delhi.
But beyond personalities and politics, there is one basic question we need to ask ourselves: Why even 66 years after independence, is New Delhi's influence in its region shrinking instead of expanding?
Mail Today January 7, 2014

The year of the Lokpal

This could well be the year of the Lokpal. With the Lokpal Bill having passed both houses of Parliament, all that remains is for the president to sign it before it becomes a law.
Of course, the political class can still have some tricks up its sleeve because the Union Home Ministry is the one that will write the rules of the Act and sometimes these are so cunningly crafted that they undermine the intent of the legislation.

Even so, the Lokpal Bill will be a new mechanism to fast-track probes against allegedly corrupt government officials — the prime minister, cabinet ministers, chief ministers, MPs, and the staff of state-funded outfits.
If there was one legislation, which has in recent times, truly come from the people, it is the Lokpal Bill. For decades, the ruling elite has sought to make anti-corruption legislation toothless. But Anna Hazare’s famous fast and the upsurge in favour of the Lokpal Bill compelled the ruling party, as well as the principal Opposition, the BJP, to push the bill.
In that sense, the main thrust of the legislation is to have some means of dealing with the soaring levels of corruption in a country where the existing mechanisms have been ineffective. Complaints registered under the Lokpal will have to be acted on within 60 days and would be prosecuted in special courts.
The arrival of the Lokpal will be an important development in the Indian polity. Of course, the Aam Aadmi Party insists that only the Jan Lokpal Bill will satisfactorily curb corruption. However, critics are right when they say that the Jan Lokpal idea is a bit over the top. We need to ensure that the Lokpal remedy does not become worse that the disease.
In recent years, at various points in time, we have seen how certain constitutional bodies — the Supreme Court and the Comptroller and Auditor General being two examples — have tended to assume powers that actually belong only to the executive. But such was the public mood against the government, that no one gave heed to the serious damage that was done to the constitutional system. Maintaining the constitutional balance is an important part of
our democracy.
There has been a tendency, especially in the Congress party, to believe that legislating a promise is tantamount to actually delivering on it. The reality is otherwise. In its two tenures, the UPA government has passed the Right to Information (2005); Right to Work (2005); Forest Rights Act (2006), Right to Education (2009); Right to Food (2013) and the Prohibition of Manual Scavenging Act (2013). But in all these areas, there is a long way to go in the effective implementation of the acts.
What India needs to understand is that legislation or institutions by themselves do not bring about social change. Countries of Europe or the United States, too, had a history of political corruption. But over the years they have cleaned up their act considerably because of popular sentiment, as well as institutions and laws.
It is not as though corruption does not still occur there. But it is not as all-pervasive as corruption has become in India and the penalty for getting caught is heavy and the guilty are more effectively prosecuted.
Corruption weighs heavily in India. Virtually every major and minor deal, be it for an entrepreneur to set up a steel plant, or a rehri-wallah selling vegetables on the street corner, money must be paid.
Corruption in the area of defence purchases is in a class of its own. This is evident from even the minor deal for the purchase of 12 Augusta Westland helicopters which the government recently terminated. A collateral casualty of the case could well be an army brigadier who offered to fudge the trial records of the competition relating to the acquisition of 197 light utility and surveillance helicopters in exchange for five million euros.
The big areas of corruption are well known — sale and purchase of land and real estate development (Adarsh), in the award of contracts, income tax assessments, mineral allotments (think of the Coal allocation scam), transfers and sale of positions, purchase and sale of medicines (think of the National Rural Health Mission scam) and so on.
Clearly, the first target of the Lokpal system will have to be the police. There is a Latin saying, Quis custodiet insos custodies (Who will guard the guards themselves?) India’s police is rotten to the core and this is evident to every aware citizen. Most people believe that the police are hand-in-glove with the criminals on one hand, and the politicians on the other.
It was through targeting the police in Hong Kong that the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) cut its teeth and enabled the emergence of the modern city which is considered one of the cleanest in the world. But it was not an easy task and the process also revealed the problems that arise when you give so much power to one body.
However, at the end of the day, what matters is the quality of political leadership that is provided to the anti-corruption crusade.
Mid Day January 7 2014

Three years ago, around this time of the year, I wrote a piece in these very columns listing six things that ought to be done in the coming year, but probably would not be.That was the year when the first flush of the United Progressive Alliance's stunning electoral performance of 2009 showed signs of wilting.
The year began with two senior army officers being indicted for the Sukhna land scam, and soon skeletons were tumbling out of the cupboard at an alarming rate.
Focus returned to the shenanigans of army officers, politicians and bureaucrats over the Adarsh housing cooperative building. There was a continuous cacophony accompanying the run-up to the Commonwealth Games, outdone only by the revelations from the Radia tapes, followed later in the year by the CAG report revealing the extent of the 2G scam.

My suggestions for what was doable in the year to follow, 2011, were not particularly utopian and tinged by the corruption scandals that had exploded through the year 2010: The establishment of an autonomous directorate of prosecutions, the abolition of the single-point directive which requiring government sanction to prosecute civil servants, creating the post of a Chief of Defence Staff to modernise and synergise India's higher defence management, deep reform of India's hopeless police system, dropping of a number of known corrupt ministers from the union council of ministers, and reforming agriculture and food logistics to rein in food inflation.

Fixes

Barring the idea of a separate directorate of prosecutions, nothing has really changed since. However, it is that time of the year when hope triumphs over experience and optimism rules. The recent elections suggest that the volcano of expectations that has built up in the country is ready to explode and sweep aside anything that stands in its way.
So here goes with my eight things to fix in the coming year:

• A foreign policy for the country which is anchored on national security. As a country with disputed borders and aggressive adversaries, it matters little if India can get a seat on the high table, but get pushed around in its own backyard like a banana republic. This is not just about military strength, but ways and means to enhance India's shrinking footprint in our neighbourhood and beyond.
• Overhaul our internal and external security system from bottom up. Which means getting down to the thana level policing on one hand, and restructuring higher management of national security on the other. This includes the appointment of a Chief of Defence Staff to synergise India's defence capabilities across the three Services, and unleashing private sector investment and energies to remove the public sector deadwood clogging our defence R&D and industry.
• Communal violence is a virus that has been allowed to persist for too long. It diminishes us as a nation and it is time we got serious about tackling it. Whether we need a legislation to do this, of course, is another matter.
• Reining in food inflation: Pass the Goods & Service Tax, repeal the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee Acts and check runaway support prices for wheat and rice. The three measures will help bring huge revenues to the government even while driving down food prices.
• Initiate a new energy policy. Most of our power is generated from coal and despite huge reserves we face shortages. Remove Coal India's monopoly, reform the state electricity boards, and come up with a plan to reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels. Recall that China, the largest fossil fuel consumer of today has been hard at work to put in place an alternative energy programme since 2001.

Reforms

• Begin right sizing the government. The Fifth Pay Commission had called for a 30 per cent cut in the size of the central government. Our governments are much too big and consume a huge amount of our national resources. Ironically, if large parts of the government are bloated, there are other vital parts, like the Indian Foreign Services, the Intelligence Bureau and the Research & Analysis Wing which do not have adequate manpower.
• To merely say that we need desperately to reform our education system is stating the obvious. But there is need to make a beginning and now before we slip further down in global rankings. Across the country we are spending a great deal of money in universities which provide third rate education to hapless young people who are unaware that this education is unlikely to equip them to be either good citizens or employable young men and women.

Change

• The last two years have seen the passage of significant legislation based on pressure from below-laws on rape, sexual harassment, land acquisition and, yes, the lokpal. What 2014 needs is a beginning of their effective implementation as well as their refinement, considering that some of the laws were passed in a hurry or in moments of emotion and can become a liability just as the nuclear liability law of 2010 has become.

The agenda for change is a large one. This list or any other can be multiplied several times and still come up short. But the compulsions of reform are urgent. With a bulging profile of young people, India is said to be on the cusp of a demographic dividend. But that dividend could well become a nightmare unless we are able to fix our politics, our governance system, economy, national security machinery.
But for all these changes to take place we need one crucial fix-leadership. This is a commodity of which there is an acute shortage, at least at the central level.
There was a time you could get away by leading from behind. But today's wired world and a much more informed citizenry is demanding discerning and decisive leaders who will lead from the front and deliver.

Mail Today December 31, 2013

In need of fundamental overhaul

 
The year gone by has not been a particularly exciting one. All it did was to confirm to us just how dysfunctional the United Progressive Alliance government had become. The year to come, 2014, promises better things. That is not only because we believe that things can’t be worse than they are today, but because it comes with a general election which promises to shake up things in the country as they have not been shaken for some time now. Modi’s upsetting the BJP hierarchy and Kejriwal’s defeat of Shiela Dixit could well be a forerunner of a greater churning in Indian politics in the coming year.
Cynics will no doubt argue that given the way life really works, it is more likely that after some sense of upheaval, things will be back to what they were, a country of elephantine proportions doesn’t change its ways easily. That complexity is probably most visible in our economy. Many of us hope that some miracle will somehow restore high growth and banish inflation next year. But that is easier said than done. Surely, some change will come through the better business climate within the country and abroad, but economists warn that there are problems with what is called the trend growth rate. India needs a fundamental overhaul in its governmental system if it is to see sustained economic growth in the coming decades.
So far, in its liberalisation processes, the government has always the crucial bit of residuary powers in its own hand, in other words, even the shift from government control to regulation has not been an honest one. These were manifested in the scandals of the past couple of years, relating to land, spectrum, iron ore and coal allocation, as well as the arbitrary functioning of the tax regime.
Actually, if we could venture a solution, we would say that the most important reform that any government could carry out is to dismantle the antiquated IAS-led bureaucracy and replace it with some other, more efficient and responsive form of governmental management. But none of this can be done in a matter of one year, so we may see a spurt of growth next year but for long-term sustained growth, there is need for deep, even revolutionary reform, which is next to impossible in the era of coalition governments.
In foreign and security policies, too, we are not likely to see any fundamental change in 2014. One reason for this is that change here is controlled by external factors over which we have little or no control. But another reason for this is that the key instrumentality of the government —the armed forces — are in no shape to play their role in the process. What we mean is that should India wish to take a tougher posture with regard to Pakistan and China, to the extent of being willing to go in for a localised confrontation, it will be handicapped because its three services suffer from shortages of key equipment and the higher management of security in the country is obsolete and shoddy.
The situation with Pakistan could deteriorate, but it is unlikely to go beyond pinpricks on the Line of Control. This, however, does not include any situation that may arise out of another high-profile terrorist attack from Pakistani jihadi groups. Actually the public mood is such that no government in New Delhi would find it easy to stave off pressure to take some military action in response.
In 2001, following the attack on the Parliament House and 2008 after the Mumbai attack, the government seriously examined the possibility of a retaliatory military strike, but did not give the final order because the services were simply not ready for a longer drawn out war.
That is why, there is so much concern over Chinese behaviour, generally across the world, as well as in our region and, more importantly, our borders.
The new Border Defence Cooperation Agreement seems to be working, but, to be blunt, will do so till the Chinese decide otherwise. The imbalance of power between China and India is increasing by the day and, for the present, Beijing is preoccupied with its confrontation with Japan. But things could change and we could be affected.
On top of all this, we have landed in a new mess in our relationship with the United States. Whatever be the rights and wrongs of the Devayani Khobgrade issue, what is certain is that relations between India and the US have suffered a major setback. Many in India do not realise the important indirect role that the US plays in India’s security as the global hegemony. For example, the security of the oil sea lanes, through which 70 per cent of our petroleum products come from the Persian Gulf, depends on the US. In the event of a conflict or tension, it is the US which uses its muscle to keep the sea lanes open. The same, of course, could be said about sea lanes elsewhere, for example in the South China or East China Seas where we have seen an alarming escalation of tension between China and Japan.
Clearly, year on year analyses are not too heartening. Indians need to realise that the time has come for decision-making and thinking which is multi-year, though not in the Five Year Plan kind of a way. What is needed are steps that go beyond partisan approaches and election-cycles aimed at providing the desperately needed transformation of the way India manages its governmental system. Steps that will impact across this decade and the next.
Mid Day December 24, 2013

Prepare for war in the East China Sea

On December 5, a Chinese naval vessel tried to force a U.S. warship to stop in international waters in the latest instance of the growing Chinese tendency to flex their muscles.

This incident comes hard on the heels of the situation in the East China Sea region, where Beijing had declared an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) on November 23 which included the Japanese-controlled, but disputed, Senkaku/Diayou islands.

Some alarming analysis suggests that the Chinese may not be above seeking a limited conflict in the region. 

Incident

According to US officials, the guided missile cruiser USS Cowpens, was confronted by Chinese warships in the South China Sea near Beijing's new aircraft carrier Liaoning.

What appears to have happened is that the US ship had been deputed to tail the Liaoning, which had been carrying out manoeuvres in the East China Sea as part of Beijing's effort to brow-beat Japan over the Senkaku/Diayou islands.

A Chinese navy vessel hailed the Cowpens and ordered it to stop. The ship refused and continued on its course because it was in international waters.

Thereupon a Chinese tank-landing ship came directly into the path of Cowpens and stopped, forcing the American vessel to sharply change course.

The incident took place about 100 nautical miles from the Chinese coast. China's Exclusive Economic Zone, which has been defined under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS) goes out 200 nautical miles into the sea.

The US has not ratified UNCLOS, which China, Japan, India and most of the world have, but it says that it generally observes its rules.

As part of these it insists on the unfettered movement of not just its merchant marine, but warships, in the EEZ.

 

However, China has strongly opposed this interpretation noting that naval vessels' military aircraft by definition do not undertake "innocent passage."

The Chinese have bridled at US intelligence and surveillance ships that keep track of Chinese maritime activity.

US intelligence-gathering ships like the USNS Impeccable and Victorious have faced Chinese harassment regularly over the past few years.

In this instance, there are some who believe that the Chinese may have deliberately staged the incident as part of a larger strategy against Japan and the US. 

Dispute: Chinese troops recently apprehended five Indian nationals along with their cattle inside the Indian territory in the Chumar area, a remote village on the Ladakh-Himachal Pradesh border

Two days after the Chinese announced their new ADIZ, the US sent two unarmed B-52 bombers to fly through the zone.

However, it has advised its civilian aircraft to observe the ADIZ and give prior notification of any flights they plan through the ADIZ. 

Strategy

The Japanese have declared that they will not recognise the ADIZ and for their part, the Chinese have in recent days sent in their Su-30 and J-11 fighters, along with their KJ-2000 AWACS aircraft, to show that they intend to monitor the airspace they have declared as part of their ADIZ.

In 1981, when Deng Xiaoping began China's opening to the world, he also enjoined the Chinese to follow what is called the 24 character strategy in its foreign and security policies: "Observe calmly; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capabilities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership."

Conversations with Chinese thinktank officials reveal a certain candidness about Beijing's changed global posture which, of course, has implications for India.

They say that the era of the 24 character strategy is over. Indeed, they acknowledge that, as of 2012, they have become more assertive. 

Interests

However, observers say that the shift began at least five years before that in 2008 when the Chinese government ordered its marine service to begin patrolling the maritime areas claimed by China.

In 2009, it asserted its expansive South China Sea claims when it submitted a map to the UN along with the U-shaped Nine Dash line that comes down to the coast of Brunei.

In 2011, a Chinese ship cut the cable of a seismic survey ship. In 2012, it created a new administrative zone around the city of Sansha to have jurisdiction over the Spratly and Paracel islands.

This was also the year when the Chinese issued a new passport with the map including the ridiculous Nine Dash claim.

The Chinese say that their interests in the East China Sea are what bother them the most because of their proximity to the Chinese heartland.

The South China Sea, they insist, is not a problem area of the same dimension. Beijing's unambiguous goal is to isolate Japan, divide the ASEAN and befuddle the United States.

The tough stance on the Senkaku/Diayou is part of this, and the recent tour of the ASEAN by Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang showed the extent to which the Chinese are willing to go to befriend the region, minus the Philippines.

Even that old and formidable adversary Vietnam is being wooed by Beijing.

As for the United States, its stand on supporting the regional nations is less than clear. It insists that it is neutral when it comes to the maritime disputes, but maintains that it will stand by its treaty allies like Japan and the Philippines in the event of a conflict.

The developments in the East China Sea have important implications for India because we, too, have a major border dispute with China and we have also seen a shift in Beijing's border management policy since 2008.

China has been quick to say that its ADIZ only has implications for its maritime borders, but who is to say that such a maneuver could not be attempted against us?

Actually, what China is doing in the East China Sea is what it did in the Himalayas in 1962: Create and, indeed, push "facts on the ground" which compel the other side to back off, or undertake a confrontation which could lead to war.

India handled things badly then; hopefully the Japanese and the Americans will be more deft.

Mail Today December 17, 2013