The South Asian neighbourhood is threatening to turn volatile with China bolstering its forces along its border with India and its nuclear capabilities.
Briefing reporters after the submission of a Pentagon report on Friday, US deputy assistant secretary of defence for East Asia, Abraham M. Denmark, said: “We have noticed an increase in capability and force posture by the Chinese military in areas close to the border with India.”
A Pentagon report, “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2016”, states that worried over the US, Russia and India’s advances in nuclear capability, China has strengthened its own nuke forces.
“India's nuclear force is an additional driver behind China’s nuclear force modernisation. The PLA has deployed new command, control, and communications capabilities to its nuclear forces to improve control of multiple units in the field”.
It adds: “Through the use of improved communications links, ICBM units now have better access to battlefield information and uninterrupted communications, connecting all command echelons. Unit commanders are able to issue orders to multiple subordinates at once, instead of serially, via voice commands”.
Citing the September 2015 border skirmish between the two Asian giants in Northern Ladakh, the report says: “Tensions remain with India along their shared 4,057 km border over Arunachal Pradesh (which China asserts is part of Tibet and therefore of China), and over the Aksai Chin region at the western end of the Tibetan Plateau, despite increases in China-India political and economic relations”.
The Pentagon report is striking in the backdrop of a front-page report in the Chinese government-run English daily Global Times on Friday on Chinese plans to elevate its military command along the Indian border.
The report had stated that the TMC’s (Tibet Military Command) political rank would be elevated to one level higher than its counterpart provincial level military command and would come under the leadership of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
The TMC, in that case, will no longer be under the country’s Western Theatre Command, which is headquartered at Chengdu in Sichuan Province.
The paper quoted Mr Song Zhongping, a Beijing-based military expert, as saying: “The TMC bears great responsibility to prepare for possible conflicts between China and India, and currently it is difficult to secure all the military resources they need.”
An authoritative source in India’s military establishment told this newspaper on condition of anonymity: “Till date TMC was not an operational command. It was to mainly help in force mobilsation and logistical support. With this move, China has established the military importance of TMC. We will have to see by how much the Chinese force increases in the region”.
Combat operations in the TMC’s tough terrain calls for special mountain skills and long-range capabilities, and troop deployment in the region will substantially add to better and more effective combat preparedness along the Sino-Indian border.
Mr Jayadev Ranade, former additional secretary, Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) and avid China watcher, said: “The situation is still not very clear. The Western Theatre Command includes at least one-third of the Chinese military and that is why it has been listed as the number one Theatre Command.”
“Also, the present chief of the PLA was, till January, the commander of the Chengdu military region which included the Tibet Military district. So there is a definite link there.”
