Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

On 25 April, we sent out a Special Alert on the cross-border incursion by Chinese troops into Indian Ladakh.  We noted that India was seeking to downplay the incident in public, and that remains the case.  However, behind the scenes experts are highly perplexed by this development.

It is now over two weeks since the initial Chinese incursion by 30 soldiers on 15 April into the Daulat Beg Oldi (DBO) area of Ladakh.  The Chinese troops are believed to have crossed 18km over the Line of Actual Control (LAC) into Indian territory, where they remain.

What is so perplexing is that the incident has occurred just ahead of a planned visit to India by Premier Li Keqiang, and at a time when economic relations are burgeoning.  Bilateral trade amounted to only about $3bn as recently as 2000.  Now it is $80bn and heading towards $100bn by 2015.  Li’s visit to India will be his first overseas trip since becoming premier, which suggests how important relations with India are seen to be in Beijing.  China’s new president, Xi Jinping, has also indicated the importance of India, describing relations with India as “one of the most important for China”.

On top of all that, China is engaged in serious confrontations with its neighbours in the East and South China Seas (particularly Japan and the Philippines); it is trying to counter the US’s pivot to Asia; and, only this week, it has seen renewed efforts by Japan to court Russia as a balance to China.  For all these reasons it is a strange moment to pick a fight with India.

The most likely explanation is that the Chinese military is not entirely at one with the political echelon.  President Xi has emphasized the army’s need to defend China’s territorial integrity, but the army (or, at the very least, localized elements of it) may be taking up this challenge more enthusiastically than Xi contemplated.  It may also be responding to a recent reversal in Indian policy towards the border regions.  Until recently India has not built up the infrastructure along the border, but more recently it has been building roads and air bases in border regions.

The question of the PLA’s hawkishness has come to the fore this week in another context, with the commander of the Chongqing garrison, General Zhu Heping, writing an article in the Guangming Daily on 29 April which warned about “Western cultural infiltration”.  Zhu is a former secretary to ex-chief of staff Zhong Wannian.  He warned, in the context of “cultural colonialism”, that “the young generation can easily lose its will to resist without knowing”.  He wrote: “Western hostile forces seize every opportunity to sneak attacks against us, and they are pressing harder and harder.”

Zhu also warned against “depoliticisation of the armed forces”, and local sources have said the general’s article may well have been aimed more at heading off any attempt by Xi to rein in the military than at Western cultural imperialism.

Meanwhile, back in India, the problem for China is that there are always elements in India willing to see the worst in Beijing.  Former defence minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, chief of the Samajwadi Party, told parliament that China is India’s “biggest enemy”.  Yadav said: “I have been raising this issue for the past eight years.  I had warned that that there will be a repeat of [the war of] 1962.  I even went and met the Prime Minister [Manmohan Singh] in his chamber, yet there was no response. Now, [External Affairs Minister] Salman Khursid is going to China.  To do what?  Beg before them?”  Yadav, whose party gives important external support to the government, accused the government of being “cowardly, incompetent, and good for nothing”.

Despite Yadav’s urgings, however, the Indian government remains keen to play down the incident, with Defence Minister AK Antony saying that India “remains committed to a peaceful resolution of the situation through dialogue within the framework of agreements for maintaining peace and tranquillity.”

NOTE: Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made the first official visit to Russia by a Japanese premier for 10 years.  He met with President Vladimir Putin on 29 April with the heavily trailed intention of “building personal trust with Putin” and pushing to restart talks for a peace treaty to formally end World War II hostilities and to resolve the dispute over the Russian-occupied Kurile Islands – taken from Japan at the end of the war.