Delusionary Generals

By Pravin Sawhney

When French Prime Minister George Clemenceau wrote that, ‘war is too important to be left to the generals,’ he had people like Lt Gen. Syed Ata Hasnain in mind who do not understand military coercion or coercive diplomacy as distinct from war-fighting, are mixed up between perception management and reality check, and fail to appreciate that land war is just one of the six domains of war. The war-fighting domains are land, sea and air, while military coercion (short of war also called non-contact war) is possible in space, electromagnetic space and cyber domains.

Military coercion is more demanding than actual war-fighting because in addition to the kinetic capability it needs credibility to deter and compel if deterrence fails. A failed military coercion demonstrates a blunted conventional war-fighting capability. This has adverse political, military, diplomatic and psychological implications as the enemy gets emboldened.

An example of failed military coercion is India’s Operation Parakram in 2001-2002 against Pakistan. The Indian Army lost 979 soldiers in what General V.K. Singh refers to as ‘mine panic’, which ‘exposed the hollowness of our operational preparedness’ (his book: Courage and Conviction); India, by official account, spent Rs 858 crore; and New Delhi eventually blinked after the 10-month military stand-off seeking refuge in a vague posture called ‘strategic re-deployment.’ Pakistan’s 26 November 2008 Mumbai attacks were a direct consequence of India’s failed military coercion.

On the other hand, an example of successful military coercion is the three-week intrusion in April-May 2003 by Chinese border forces in Depsang plains (Ladakh). At the political level, Union minister of state for home, Kiren Rijiju told the Rajya Sabha (13 August 2014) that ‘No intrusions have been reported or taken place on the Indo-China border during last five years (since 2009).’ At the military level, the Chairman of the National Security Advisory Board, Shyam Saran wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on 10 August 2013 after a spot-inspection ordered by the Prime Minister Office that, ‘the PLA troops are not allowing their Indian counterparts to patrol the Indian perception of the LAC in eastern Ladakh.’ (Hindustan Times, 3 September 2013).

The inference is obvious: China’s successful military coercion compelled India to reduce its patrolling limits. Moreover, New Delhi (Modi, and not Manmohan Singh government), as evident from Rijiju’s statement, acquiesced to Beijing’s diktat as it does not want military escalation assessing that it has little hope of winning a war. Indian political leadership correctly concluded that it is easy to start a ‘localised showdown’, the difficult part is to control escalation which has its own dynamics. After all, there is the dictum that no war plans, however brilliantly conceived, usually survive first contact in war.

In the larger sense, when Chinese shot down one of its own satellite in the low earth orbit demonstrating its Anti-Satellite (ASAT) capability in February 2009, the Pentagon saw this as a coercive reminder to the United States that it could not count on uncontested control of space commons. Within months, the US’ Raytheon was given the contract to work on a defensive shield in space to ensure that Chinese ASAT capabilities do not interfere with US’ military use of space with debris from destroyed satellites hampering their optimal utilisation.

Against this background and without digressing any further by explaining the implications of the 20-day recent stand-off in Chumar-Demchok (Ladakh) which coincided with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to India starting September 17, I would like to return to Gen. Hasnain’s comments on my writing (reproduced below for the readers).

To Gen Husnain’s suggestion of a ‘localised showdown’, I argued that China would prefer military coercion through three probable methods, namely, shooting our satellite, cyber-attacks, or by test-firing its ballistic missiles with conventional warheads. This will be done to remind us of our miniscule capabilities in these non-contact war areas, and also to rub in that the PLA is well past the 1986-87 Sumdorong Chu crisis when both sides had more or less matching military capabilities. To be sure, China has no reason for a border war with India when it could achieve its purpose through lesser methods like the 2013 Depsang crisis.

What is Gen Hasnain’s response? He writes that I (Sawhney) do not ‘understand perception management’, which according to him means a gradual build-up for war. ‘Conflicts do not reach levels of shooting satellites out of sky without a build-up,’ he adds. Now, why is a forces’ build-up required for shooting satellite? Gen. Hasnain read about military coercion! I recommend Joseph S Nye’s brilliant book ‘The Future of Power.’

Coming to ‘perception management’, this is meant for psychological operations (psy ops) as a part of counter-insurgency operations. An adversary, however, does not get swayed by ‘perception management’, but does a ‘reality-check’ of the opponent’s capabilities and capacity before deciding the form of military power to be used in pursuance of his political objectives.

For argument’s sake, why will China get into a ‘localised showdown’ with India when there are few political objectives to be won? In a worst case scenario (extremely unlikely) it will go for a full-scale war with a capability to pump in 38 to 40 divisions in addition to unleashing other domains of war against India. This is where military strategy and operational art, where the PLA has mind-boggling capabilities, comes into play.

While Gen. Hasnain boasts of teaching operational art, he, to be sure, has, while in uniform, been a tactical player. According to the Indian Army doctrine, a corps (the highest field formation that he has commanded) is the highest tactical level of war; operational art is practiced at the command level. This is not all. He seems to have an aversion for operational art as he commanded the elite 21 strike corps (any officer will feel blessed to command an offensive force) for an unprecedented low period of mere three to four months before getting himself posted to 15 corps in Srinagar. A strike corps by practising manoeuver contributes to operational art in a land war.

However, considering Gen Hasnain teaches higher levels of war, I recommend three basic books for his reading and reflection. These are: Colin S. Gray’s ‘Explorations in Strategy’, Gen E.B. Atkeson’s ‘The Final Argument of Kings: Reflections on The Art of War’, and Edward N. Luttwak’s ‘Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace.’

To appreciate things closer home, I suggest that the he read my first book, ‘The Defence Makeover: 10 Myths that Shape India’s Image,’ written in year 2001, when he was probably a colonel posted somewhere. This book was reviewed among others by Maj. Gen. Ashok Mehta, Amitabh Mattoo and P.R. Chari. The reason why he should read my book is also to know that CI ops in J&K have floundered because its strategic underpinning was never spelt out. The political leadership should have given two directives to the army, namely, the end-state and the need for a mix of offensive and defensive methods. It is a truism that no insurgency can survive without a robust sanctuary outside (Pakistan Occupied Kashmir in our case).

During the initial years of the insurgency we were fortunate to have army chiefs like Generals Rodrigues and especially Bipin Joshi. I remember too well how Gen. Rodrigues urged me (I was in Times of India then) to visit the LC and see how our units were responding to Pakistan’s machinations by aggressive firepower and raids; the Pakistanis were on their toes. The next army chief, Gen. Joshi spent a lot of time with me (I was in Indian Express then) assuring that the army should not and will not do CI ops open-endedly. Gen. Joshi died early and his successors, unfortunately, realised that there were rewards and awards to be won in CI ops besides of course an elevation of status. Where else but in J&K can a corps commander challenge an elected chief minister publicly? The pits came in 2004. With Operation Fence, the Indian Army reduced itself to being a (glorified) paramilitary; the Pakistani troops could now sleep well at night. The fence has instilled a Maginot Line mentality in the army. Nowhere in the world there is a fence on a military-line.

Generals like Hasnain who pontificate on the virtues of the fence are unmindful of the three harms it has done to the army. One, the over 450 suicides in the army (in 2013-14 given by the defence minister Arun Jaitley in Parliament) are a consequence of the continuous war-like situation (with a defensive mind-set) in J&K since 1990. The army leadership does not agree with this and reels out a list of other reasons underplaying the primary one.

Two, the army has found itself less than prepared in all crises since 1990, namely, the Kargil conflict, Operation Parakram, and 26/11 attacks. It is rueful that with the largest annual capital acquisition budget amongst the three defence service, in 2013-2014, the air force spent 48 per cent of the total capital outlay followed by the navy. The army leadership is so obsessed with CI ops that war preparedness has taken a back-seat. In the latter, the focus is not on consolidation of assets, but on expansion of manpower. And three, as a consequence of the above, the air force, unlike in the previous wars, is no longer in a supporting role to the army. It is actually the other way round, something that the army leadership is yet to come to grips with.

All this pains me because I care for the Indian Army, an organisation that I am proud to have served. But, those days we did not have officers like Gen. Hasnain. We had professionals who understood war and operational art. They were not obsessed with CI ops and perception management. And self-projection.

Round One to China

By Pravin Sawhney

The Chumar-Demchok military stand-off in Ladakh will end to China’s advantage. There are two reasons for this. At the strategic level, China gives far more importance to psychological victory than to military gains. The postponement of army chief, General Dalbir Singh’s Bhutan visit is indicative of the stress within the Indian establishment; the Prime Minister Office certainly does not assess the stand-off as a tactical show of strength. Hypothetically speaking, if the Chinese were to show signs of reinforcing their capability in the entire Ladakh (which given its infrastructure is no big deal), even Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be hard-pressed to reconsider his US visit.

At the operational level, Chinese would be amused at Indian generals and television experts who proclaim Indian Army’s capability to take-on PLA might. For example, recently retired Lt Gen. Syed Ata Hasnain wrote in Indian Express (September 24): ‘Beijing would do well to realistically analyse India’s military potential, which may appear weak but, in effect, is sufficient to dent China’s image should there be a localised showdown’.

Really? Why will the PLA join a ‘localised’ conflict when for example, it can destroy India’s communication satellites with its proven Anti-Satellite capabilities, jam its cyber communications and test-fire a salvo of its ballistic missiles with conventional warheads from Tibet Autonomous Region as part of military coercion. In any case, give the shabby state of the Indian Army in terms of its capabilities, capacities, training and mind-set, does Gen. Hasnain’s claims do India any good by his pretensions? The PLA which always fights in so-called ‘self-defence’ will use this hollow bravado to its advantage. The problem with generals like these is that they mix up China with Pakistan (two adversaries as apart as day and night) and tactics with operational art of war where the PLA has mind-boggling advantages over the Indian military. Fighting a war with China is not an option for India; balancing China with a mix of politico-military means is.

Specific to Chumar-Demchok when President Xi Jinping was visiting India, experts should know two fundamental things about China: it can pursue aggression and talks simultaneously as the premium is on psychological victory rather than military (tactical) advantage. And, negotiations are never about instant gains and losses, but are a part of protracted confabulations meant to tire and frustrate the opponent so that he starts seeing advantage in Chinese’s viewpoint.

To reflect on these truisms, I recommend two books as a beginning: Qian Qichen’s ‘Ten Episodes In China’s Diplomacy,’ and Henry Kissinger’s, ‘On China.’ Qichen was Chinese foreign minister (vice minister for foreign affairs) and vice-Premier from 1988 to 2003. He was witness to two momentous events: Tiananmen Square and the demise of Soviet Union. The well-known Kissinger, probably the best western observer on China, has personally interacted with four generations of Chinese leadership before the 2012 arrival of President Xi Jinping.

In the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre, the world came down heavily on China. Starting 5 June 1989, the US, Japan, the European community, and the G7 Economic Summit announced one after another that they would stop all bilateral high level visits, stop exporting arms for military and commercial purposes, and defer new loans to China provided by international financial institutions. Amidst all this, US President George Bush (senior), who did not want to sever all ties with China, sent his National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft on a secret mission to Beijing to assess how the damage could be minimised. What did China do?

According to Qichen, Deng Xiaoping told Prime Minister Li Peng, ‘We will talk only about principles today. We don’t care about the sanctions. We are not scared by them.’ Then, he reminded his team a Chinese saying, ‘It is up to the person who tied the knot to untie it.’ The saying, according to Qichen is ‘not an ordinary argument about the meaning of words. It is the crux of bilateral relations.’ In another context, the prescient Qichen in a lecture told Chinese student in 2002 that, ‘I believe, as long as our overall strength (political, economic and military) continues to grow, Sino-American relations will change in our favour.’

In his book, Kissinger explains the difference between western and Chinese strategies. ‘Western strategists reflect on the means to assemble superior power at the decisive point, Chinese address the means of building a dominant political and psychological position, such that the outcome of a conflict becomes a foregone conclusion. Western strategists test their maxims of victories in battles; Chinese test by victories where battles have become unnecessary.’

He further writes that, ‘They (Chinese) do not think that personal relations can affect their judgments, though they may invoke personal ties to facilitate their efforts. They have no emotional difficulty with deadlocks; they consider them the inevitable mechanism of diplomacy. They prize gestures of goodwill only if they serve a definable objective or tactic. And they patiently take the long view against impatient interlocutors, making time their ally’.

So what is the PLA up to? As a continuation of what it did in Depsang plains (Daulet Beg Oldie) in April-May 2013, the PLA is doing the following: At the tactical level, it is seeking to position itself advantageously in Chumar-Demchok area. At the operational level, it is pushing the military Line of Actual Control in Ladakh westwards to reach its 1959-1960 claim line. And, at the strategic level, it is putting psychological pressure through coercive diplomacy to remind India of its Achilles Heel.

What India should watch out for during Chinese Prime Minister's visit

By Pravin Sawhney

We now know from the horse’s mouth why the Chinese border guards trooped in, pitched tents on Indian land in Ladakh, and left suddenly in 20 days. Their objective of getting Indian commitment to hold its capacity (infrastructure) and capability (troops and equipment) building below the threshold of military activism had been achieved. Encapsulated in the Defence Border Cooperation Agreement (DBCA) which was handed over to foreign minister Salman Khurshid during his recent Beijing visit, China is determined to operationalise a dormant clause of the 1993 Border Peace and Tranquillity Agreement (BPTA) on its terms for a quieter border.

Speaking recently with select Indian journalists, Qin Gang, director general, external publicity in the Chinese embassy in Delhi, gave two Chinese takeaways from the recent tension. One, ‘both sides did not allow it (intrusion) to contaminate other spheres of cooperation’. Translated, this means that Beijing is happy that India disregarded its core-interest of border resolution by focussing instead on overall bilateral relations. And two, ‘the incident should spur both sides to make greater efforts for a quieter border’. Explained, India should abandon its plans for more troops (proposed mountain strike corps, about 40,000 troops), equipment, airfields and advanced landing grounds, ballistic missile silos, and border infrastructure along the 4,056km Line of Actual Control (LAC). These issues will be discussed under the DBCA.

Unlike India, China does not have regular troops on the LAC. Instead, it has awesome air lift capability, a preponderance of accurate ballistic and cruise missiles, formidable Special Forces, world class space and cyber capabilities, and a flat Tibetan plateau to fight a border war. Above all, it has the psychological advantage of having vanquished Indian political leadership in the 1962 war. Given all this, India, under pressure of the 20-day Ladakh stand-off, should not have agreed to discuss the DBCA which fundamentally calls for reduced Indian military presence on the border.

To be sure, the DBCA will set the stage for bilateral relations under the fifth generation Chinese leadership, beginning with Prime Minister Li Keqiang’s visit on May 19. Beijing had been uneasy since 2008 when in a bottom-up approach, the Indian defence ministry had given the go-ahead to the army and the air force to build capacity and capability along the Western (Ladakh) and Eastern (Arunachal Pradesh) sectors of the LAC which is neither demarcated (identified on ground) or delimited (agreed on maps). In the classified ministerial directive issued to the defence services in February 2009, defence minister, A.K. Antony had instructed them to prepare capabilities for a two-front (Pakistan and China) threat. To China’s discomfiture, the tussle between the activist military seeking means to defend the disputed border and the pacifist foreign ministry mandarins who since the 1988 visit of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to China had accepted that the border dispute was not India’s core-interest had to be settled.

Chinese reasoned that burgeoning Indian military activism would not only impede its grand strategy of strategic encirclement of India from land and sea, but could also cross path with China’s core-interest of Tibet. For instance, after the passing away of the Dalai Lama, China is certain to ask India to ban the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamshala. And the means to exert pressure would be the disputed border with imbalanced capacity and capability for a border war. Thus, by relenting on Chinese terms to discuss and settle the DBCA, India is likely to deprive itself of the muscle for meaningful and serious diplomacy, which must involve a give and take. Considering that the foreign ministry has taken credit for resolving the 20-day Ladakh crisis, its policy of appeasement is expected to prevail.

This will please China, accustomed to signing advantageous treaties with India since 1988 when Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi visited China. Gandhi accepted Deng’s terms for building bilateral relations. The border dispute was not discussed by them and emphasis was placed on developing overall relationship. Worse, in a unilateral goodwill gesture, the 15-year border infrastructure and military build-up plan which was started in 1980 by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and General K.V. Krishna Rao was abandoned. India decided to take-on the Chinese challenge by diplomacy alone.

The September 1993 BPTA signed during Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao’s China visit re-named the entire disputed border as the Line of Actual Control (LAC). India’s sense of agreeing to this was that instead of resolving the entire border as one whole, both sides could now do so progressively in three parts (Western, Middle and Eastern) and make it peaceful. In reality, it worked to Chinese advantage. With the entire border being called the LAC, intrusions and border skirmishes increased, as Chinese with more gumption kept pushing the border envelopment. Thus, while between 1962 and 1993, there were only two border incidents in 1967 at Nathu La and the 1986 Sumdorong Chu crisis, thereafter, border intrusions rose steadily with each year.

Now, China wants to activate a generic sentiment listed in the BPTA which seeks less troops on the border; something that Delhi has agreed to work upon. However, having accepted to discuss DBCA, Delhi should not agree to any more Chinese conditions for a quieter border, for these will put Indian military at a disadvantageous position.

Seven Days in China

Pravin Sawhney at the Great Wall of China

FORCE Editor Pravin Sawhney spent a week in China at the invitation of the Chinese ministry of national defence. In Beijing and Shanghai, he met officers from PLA Army, PLA Navy and PLA Air Force, plus members of Chinese press. Here are his 10 takeaways from the visit

Beijing/Shanghai: It took me some time to figure out who had invited me on a week-long visit to Beijing and Shanghai. The call came from the first secretary, press section at the Chinese embassy in New Delhi. When told by my office that I was in Munich, he called me there. Extending the invitation on behalf of the All China Journalists’ Association (ACJA), he asked me to join a group of ‘senior Indian journalists’ to visit China. The proposed dates did not suit me, so in less than 48 hours the Chinese graciously altered their dates by a week.

Two things struck me as unusual. Why did the ACJA not invite me directly and why were the dates changed to accommodate me? When I asked the Chinese press officer about the programme, he spoke about the opportunity to meet with Chinese military officials and visit defence installations. The detailed itinerary, he said, was being worked out and would be provided on arrival in Beijing. I had never been to China and here I was being offered the opportunity to meet with Peoples’ Liberation Army (PLA) officials. That I was excited is putting it mildly. I have been working on China for years and my first book: ‘The Defence Makeover: 10 Myths that Shape India’s Image’ published in 2001, long before the Indian government woke up to the military threat, listed ‘China is not a military threat’ as the foremost myth successfully perpetrated by New Delhi.

My maiden visit to China from June 17 to 22 was a success and here are my 10 takeaway observations:

·                     Months before the visit of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to India in December 2010, China decided to unilaterally announce its perception of the border, making any further negotiations on border resolution impossible. For this reason, at the 15^th round of Special Representatives (SR) talks held in Delhi on 17 January 2012, both sides signed the ‘Border Mechanism Framework’ for stability on the Line of Actual Control. The two foreign offices had established formal means to keep the border peaceful. Against this backdrop, Colonel Guo Hongtao, staff officer of the Asian affairs bureau, foreign affairs office, Ministry of National Defence (MND), who had participated in the Special Representatives (SR) talks on border resolution, told me with an air of finality: “China’s border with India is 2,000km long”.

·                     China has indicated that its claims on the disputed border are more complex than are understood in India. “Indian security forces have made more intrusions in 2011 into Chinese territories (disputed border) than we Chinese have made into India,” said Major General Yao Yunzhu, director of the Centre of China-America Defence Relations, PLA Academy of Military Sciences. She was seated next to Colonel Guo Hongtao during the long interaction with us (visiting Indian journalists) at the Ministry of National Defence (MND) in Beijing. In another interaction, the deputy director general, information department, ministry of foreign affairs, Ma Jisheng, went a step further and asserted that: “All reports (in Indian media) of Chinese ingressions are false.”

·                     China says that the complex border resolution should not come in the way of overall bilateral relations, especially trade. “As both sides have agreed to have peaceful borders, the (Indian media) focus should not be on the border issue,” General Yao said. In another meeting, another day, Ma Jisheng cautioned, “There are HIGH difficulties in border resolution. I believe the issue will be resolved with time.”

·                     There is an extraordinary consistency in what the PLA (MND) officials and diplomats (ministry of foreign affairs) say on the disputed border issue. Unlike in India, not only is the PLA authorised to speak on the politically sensitive border issue, it has an extremely important, if not the leading role in this policy-making.

·                     There were repeated suggestions for the Indian media to exercise overall restraint when talking about China so as not to impede improvements in bilateral relations. The lead in conveying this was taken by senior editor, Zhu Shouchen, executive secretary, member of the board of leadership, ACJA. He spoke at length about the ‘code of conduct’ followed by the ACJA. Most of the Chinese media are members of ACJA organised in 494 media committees under six major regional centres, across China.  Each regional centre contributes a vice-chairman to the Board of Leadership of ACJA. The ACJA has three tasks, namely to train journalists, teach them to abide by the code of conduct and facilitate foreign journalists in China. Any lingering doubts on Chinese media and journalism were cleared by senior editor, Wang Lan of the multi-billion dollar Wen Hui group in Shanghai. The code of conduct, she said, meant journalism with Chinese characteristics. “My media group is open to healthy criticism of the government on health, education and science and technology matters,” she said with a smile. Earlier, a senior editor at the China Daily newspaper office in Beijing admitted that a government constituted board cleared every evening what news would go into the paper.

·                     China is conscious that as a (the) risen power, constantly on the global radar, it needs to open up and be transparent. This has been accentuated by an inter-dependent world shrunk further by the information revolution. The world’s focus on China is clearly in two areas: defence and diplomacy. China opened its State Council (council of ministers) Information Office in 1990, established the foreign ministry’s Press Information Office in 2001 and set-up the Ministry of National Defence (MND) spokesperson system in 2008. Both the state council and foreign ministry information offices that we visited are grand buildings with posh facilities and extremely competent staff. I was told that there are nearly 700 foreign journalists living in Beijing alone. The daily regular press briefing (packed with foreign journalists) that I attended could well have been at the US state department, the only reminder that it was Beijing was the Chinese spokesperson speaking native language through a translation gadget provided on each desk.

The chief information officer at the State Council Information Office, Xi Yanchun was a bright and attractive lady in her thirties (she told us) who had worked in the US media for four years when she was offered the present position. She has been in this position since 2002 and was happy to talk about China’s public relations system. “Before 2002 there were no press conferences and the news releases, if any, were ad hoc. There was no mechanism,” she recalled. “Now, this office does a variety of things, from press releases to organising press conferences and briefings, to interviews and replies to emails and of course publicity on the internet,” she said. With a pause and smile she added that it was still difficult to get officials to understand the importance of media interaction. The staff under her has increased and many people have been sent to the US and the UK for ‘internet training.’ She admitted that after the foreign ministry and MND opened their own information offices, few journalists come to the state council information office. “Those two offices are considered important,” she added rather ruefully.

·                     All the Chinese officials I spoke with agreed that Wei qi (pronounced way chee) is the most popular intellectual game in China as opposed to Chess in the rest of the world. More as an afterthought, one PLA officer said that many Chinese now play both games with equal interest and ease. At one of the official dinner banquets I attended, another PLA official told me that in today’s world, it is difficult to hide capabilities. What Wei qi teaches is the art of hiding intentions, which should never be disclosed. Explained by Henry Kissinger in his book, ‘On China’ Wei qi is about strategic encirclement as opposed to Chess which seeks a checkmate with head-on collision. Later, spending some time by myself in a Shanghai popular market, I discovered that no shops kept chessboards, but Wei qi was readily available.

Kissinger provides a keen insight into the two games in his book. ‘If Chess is about decisive battle, Wei qi is about the protracted campaign. The Chess player aims for total victory. The Wei qi player seeks relative advantage. Chess teaches the Clausewitzian concepts of centre-of-gravity and the decisive-points, the game usually beginning as a struggle for the centre of the board. Wei qi teaches the art of strategic encirclement. Where the skilful chess player aims to eliminate his opponent’s pieces in a series of head-on clashes, a talented Wei qi player moves into empty spaces on the board, gradually mitigating the strategic potential of his opponent’s pieces. Chess produces single-mindedness; Wei qi generates strategic flexibility.’

Once we finished discussing Wei qi, I found that all of us had been presented with two slim booklets titled ‘The Wisdom of Sun Tzu’ and ‘The Great Wall’ by the MND information office in a small gift bag. Sun Tzu is about China’s distinctive military theory which is in harmony with Wei qi. The central message of Sun Tzu, I remembered, is to develop strategic thought that placed a premium on victory through psychological advantage and preached avoidance of direct conflict. The Great Wall of China suggests that China has no expansionist designs. This was mentioned to me by a PLA officer at another official dinner. He added that the Chinese fight in self-defence only when their core interests are affected.

·                     The Chinese view colonial rule, (which started in the mid-nineteenth century with the Opium wars and ended with the arrival of Mao’s communist China), when China was subjugated by Britain, France, Russia and later Japan, as a period of deep humiliation. During the visit to the National Museum in Shanghai, our guide dwelt on the humiliations depicted in a series of paintings. But this was not the real point they wanted to drive home. Speaking in English, the museum guide and our language interpreter compared China and India under colonial rules. Unlike all Chinese, many Indians believe that the colonial period had ‘many positives’ about it, they averred.

China, we were told, sees itself as the ‘Middle Kingdom’, conveying the notion of China’s centrality in global affairs and the importance of both national unity and the need to recover territories, purportedly lost during the subjugation period, now called core interest areas. Probably, this is a reason, why all Chinese officials we met during the visit spoke only through the language interpreter, a pleasant freelancer called Liu Non, when making official points even when they understood and spoke good English. An added benefit of speaking through an interpreter is that the person gets more response time to a query; this may help in thinking up a credible rather than the real reply.

·                     All PLA officials I met were reluctant to talk about Pakistan, which has been indicated as China’s bilateral relationship. The need, they said, was for India and China to have more bilateral cooperation and openness. However, without asking, PLA officials in command positions spoke about the West and the US in particular as their enemy. For instance, during the visit to 1 armoured regiment (brigade) outside Beijing, the commanding officer, senior colonel (brigadier) Su Rong said that during simulation training, the home forces are depicted in red colour, while the enemy is shown in blue. With a grin, he pointed to a soldier practicing simulation shooting and said the tank he was seeking to destroy was the US Abram.

He did not stop at this and decided to drill his point further. The PLA soldier, he boasted, can fight better with a fourth of the food eaten by a US soldier. And unlike the US which dropped nuclear bombs, Chinese soldiers will fight only in self-defence. Interestingly, the three military installations we visited — the PLAA (PLA Army) 1 armoured regiment headquarters, the PLAAF (PLA Air Force) 24 air division outside Beijing and the PLAN (PLA Navy) Shanghai naval garrison — were new and grand constructions. If indeed the PLA has such good defence works for its middle-level command headquarters, it conveyed an eloquent sense of generous finances being spent on acquisitions and capabilities.

·                     All presentations emphasised on the PLA ‘making progress towards “information-isation”, which it hopes to complete by 2020.’ Explained, this means total networking of all sensors, communication & reconnaissance systems and platforms, with computers at each level. To test the waters, I casually mentioned that Indian senior military officers (especially army officers) aren’t comfortable using computers. Colonel Yang Yujun, the Deputy Director General of the information office, MND was quick to tell me that senior PLA officers do not suffer from this handicap. “All officers are comfortable with computers,” he asserted.

However, in private, a senior PLA officer in a lighter mood conceded that many PLA generals were also uncomfortable with computers, in which junior and middle rank officers are adept. If this is indeed true, will the new generation of PLA officers, which understands equipment and ‘informationised’ operations better, have a larger say in defence policy making as well? And will they be more assertive? I wonder.

The answer to who had actually invited us was provided by the itinerary. The invitation was from China’s ministry of national defence (MND) and the All China Journalists’ Association (ACJA) was merely the front. This was probably the first time that the MND has invited Indian journalists for a peek into the enigma that is the PLA. After the visit, the first secretary, press section of the Chinese embassy sent me a message expressing hope that the Indian military would consider a reciprocal interaction. The visit was China’s attempt at transparency in defence matters.

The last thing I wondered was why had the MND invited four Indian journalists with such dissimilar understanding of the subject? Surely, they would have done homework on the invitees’ backgrounds?

Instead of focussing on PLA’s perspective on various issues, a lot of time was spent by my colleagues asking questions which could make page-one stories for newspapers back home. For example, what do you say when an Indian journalist who’s been covering defence for a Hindi newspaper for over three decades, asked the Shanghai naval garrison commander what he thought of the INS Shivalik’s combat capabilities (It had recently come port calling there). All the poor fellow could say was “The ship was clean and tidy and I understand it has stealth capability”. Talking through the interpreter, this ate unnecessarily into the allocated time.