Express News Service | The New Indian Express
HYDERABAD, India, 23 April 2013
China at present is most concerned about India’s maritime and aerospace capabilities, according to Dr Lora Saalman, associate, Nuclear Policy Programme at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, Beijing. However, India, and probably the rest of the world, might be unaware of the capabilities of China and its growing military expansion, at a time when mistrust has been growing between the two fastest growing economies in the world, she says.
Dr Saalman, an expert on Chinese arms control policies and Sino-Indian and Sino-Russian strategic relations, was delivering a lecture, “Fractured Mirrors: Chinese Views on Indian Deterrence”, at the Administrative Staff College of India, organised by the US Consulate General, Hyderabad, on Monday.
“The Chinese analysts are really looking at Indo-Pacific at the moment.
If you see, it is not the power centre Beijing anymore; they are really expanding their bases,” she said.
Maintaining that a lot of confluence exists when China discusses India and the US, she said, “Chinese realise that India has made its own huge advances and indiginousness in terms of its maritime and aerospace capabilities.”
She pointed out that the Chinese are closely monitoring Indo-US relations as there is a huge amount of suspicion in intent.
According to her, after researching over 120 military and strategic Chinese journals, China uses 10 different terms to describe India’s deterrence posture, reflecting three primary shifts from defensive to offensive, regional to global, and denial to control.
The world is armed to the teeth and countries do not trust their neighbours especially in Asia. China is claiming a peaceful rise and talks peace, and at the same time prepares for war. China should learn to live with its neighbours and not act like a bully. They have conflicts with all their neighbours. I think India is right in developing its weapons systems to balance China in Asia. This will be good for all the neighbours, keeping China in check is necessary for peace in the region. Being a totalitarian government the Chinese leadership can change their policies at any time.