Two Serial Bomb blasts in two days and what is this incompetent and impotent government doing? Write to the PM and demand answers NOW.
According to this IDRW article dated July 4, 2008 China at this stage is ahead in building and deploying Submarines for its navy while India is ahead in building and deploying surface ships and has decades of experience in operating Aircraft carriers compared to the PLA Navy which is still to obtain one.
After 10 years of steady effort, both India and China have made significant qualitative changes in their navies. In terms of submarine capabilities – the construction of SSNs and SSBNs – China is now far ahead of India, however.
China has built two 094 SSBNs and two 093 SSNs, along with JL2 and JL1M submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) that are ready to go into service in the PLA Navy, if they have not already done so.
In contrast, India is only preparing to receive one Russian-made Akura SSN for testing purposes by the end of 2008. In February 2008, the Indian Navy also launched from under water a 700-kilometer-range K-15 ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.
Nonetheless, India’s pace in the construction of large-tonnage surface battleships and an aircraft carrier is faster than China’s. Thanks to the 290-kilometer-range BrahMos supersonic multirole missile jointly developed by India and Russia, the overall technological standard of the Indian Navy’s ship-to-ship missile is superior to that of China’s PLA Navy. India’s surface battleships currently being built will all be fitted with BrahMos SSMs, according to the plan of the Indian Navy.
Ships added to the PLA Navy over the past 10 years include two 051C DDGs, two 052B DDGs, two 052C DDGs, four 956E/EM DDGs and one 051B DDG, all of which have a full-load displacement of over 6,000 tons. Six additional ships, 054 and 054A FFGs, have also been built. These surface battleships are the flagships of the modern Chinese navy.
In the Indian Navy over the past 10 years three Delhi Class DDGs and three 4,000-ton class Type 1135.6 FFGs have been commissioned, with the latter armed with 300-kilomter-range Club-N surface-to-surface missiles. The Indian Navy has also received three Type 16A FFGs with full-load displacement of 4,500 tons and armed with 16 units of H-35 surface-to-surface missiles.
As a result, in terms of the construction of surface battleships above 6,000 tons, China is temporarily ahead of India, while in the building of 4,000-ton class missile frigates, India and China are about equal, with India slightly ahead in technology.
The Indian Navy is also armed with one Hermes aircraft carrier with a full-load displacement of 28,000 tons as well as 12 Sea Harrier FRS Mk 51 fighters. Obviously, the Indian Navy’s experience in the use of an aircraft carrier is surely superior to that of the PLA Navy.
Regarding the surface battleships under construction right now, India seems to be much more ambitious than China. Since 2007, the only large surface battleship China has been building is the 054A FFG. In contrast, the Indian Navy has started to build three P-15A DDGs at its Mazagon Shipyard. This is an upgraded variant of the Delhi Class DDG, with drastic changes. So far one P-15A has already been launched.
A source from the Mazagon Shipyard told the author in New Delhi that the P-15A construction program is now giving way to the Shivalik, or P-17 FFG. The first P-17 will be delivered to the Indian Navy within this year, and the second and third will be delivered in 2009 and 2010 respectively.
The two types of surface battleships mentioned above will all be fitted with a vertical-launched version of the BrahMos SSM. The P-15A will be armed with 16 such missiles. The P15A DDG has a full-load displacement of 7,000 tons, and still uses the Shtil-1 ship-to-air missile. The P-17 is India’s indigenous stealthy FFG and has a full-load displacement of 5,300 tons. It is also armed with Shtil-1 ship-to-air missiles. [link]
The good folks at Bharat-Rakshak are war gaming a war scenario with China on the Tibetan plateau. While a similar exercise is being done by some on the Chinese side too.
Andrei Chang writing in his column Military might on UPIAsiaOnline has this to say about a possible Indo-China conflict after the Beijing Olympics.
Should China-India relations deteriorate to the verge of military confrontation and the riots in Tibet spread extensively, the first combat units of the PLA to be called to action would be the No. 52 and No. 53 Mountain Brigades under the Tibet Military Region.
The No. 52 Brigade, stationed at Linzhi, is highly mechanized and armed with T-92 wheeled armored vehicles and HJ-8/9 anti-tank missiles. National highway 318 directly connects Linzhi and Lhasa; thus it is logical to conclude that the T-92 wheeled armored vehicles on the streets of Lhasa were from this brigade. The No. 52 Mountain Brigade is stationed at Milin and is also the PLA combat unit stationed closest to the city of Lhasa.
National highway 318 is in fact the southern route of the Sichuan-Tibet highway. In the event of war or future large-scale riots in Tibet, the highway will be the key passageway for combat troops from the Chengdu Military Region to enter Tibet.
However, this key highway runs across the Minjiang River and the Daduhe River in a region with an average altitude of 4,250 meters (around 14,000 feet) above sea level, and thus is very susceptible to attack by the Indian Air Force or assault by organized rioters. Most of the highways within the Tibet region will be within striking range of the Su-30MKI fighters soon to be deployed in the No. 30 Squadron of the Indian Air Force at Tezpur.
One another item to add to the long list of inglorious achievements of the UPA regime that will haunt India in the coming decades is helping establish a pro-China regime in neighbouring Nepal which effectively brings the communist sickle right upto India’s heartland endangering its security in ways that will only become apparent as time rolls by.
One of the first acts of the Maoists after seizing power in the recently held elections was to dictate the end of Nepal’s 240 year old monarchy thus removing a sizeable thorn in the way of their ultimate aim of seizing absolute power in Nepal in incremental steps. They haven’t yet disbanded their militia and reports are that they used them extensively to intimidate opposition party candidates and supporters in the recent elections.
In the meanwhile the Maoist leader is on a charm offensive. In an interview with Karan Thapar on Devil’s Advocate he has laid out his vision for the future course of Indo-Nepal relations. It is a very charming interview where Prachanda or Pushpa Kumar Dhamal has tried to make all the right noises and lull his enemies into a false sense of security. In that he has learnt from the example of his predecessors from across the globe ranging from Stalin to Mao to Castro and others on how to charm the gullible left-liberals and use the enemy’s own free media against him. that in itself begs the need to keep an eye out for this hooded serpent.
A little under two years ago on July 6, 2006, the Nathu-La Pass situated on the border between India and now illegally occupied Tibet was opened for border trade between the Indian state of Sikkim and the so called Tibetan Autonomous region.
At that time much of the media and officialdom had gone on an overdrive peddling the line that this was being done because China had finally recognised Sikkim as an integral part of India, in exchange for the India’s unequivocal recognition of Tibet as a part of China.
But since then though countless Indian officials, mediamen and politicians cutting across party lines have many times chanted the mantra that India recognises Tibet as an integral part of China without the slightest provocation, no Chinese leader has ever made a similar statement on Sikkim even when asked pointed questions in that regard. The closest that they ever came was when Chinese premier Wen Jiabao in his April 2005 visit to India in reply to a pointed question tactfully replied “It is well known that the issue of Sikkim is no longer the problem between China and India. This is the common consensus reached by the leaders of both countries.”
The Indian side unfortunately did not push this matter forcefully enough with the Chinese side and extract a unambiguous written statement from the Chinese declaring that they accepted that Sikkim was an integral part of India and chose to be content with the Chinese statement that “Sikkim was no longer a problem between China and India”.
Well now they have decided to make it a problem. A year after they demolished a makeshift bunker on the Indian side comes the news that they have now laid claim to a piece of land in North Sikkim.
China has surprised India by laying claim on a small tract of land in North Sikkim, even threatening this week to demolish existing stone structures there. India has strongly rebutted these claims, lodged an official protest and barred Chinese troops from entering the area.
Referred to as the “Finger Area” by Indian armed forces, this territory falls north of Gyangyong in Sikkim and overlooks a strategically important valley known as the Sora Funnel. It contains several stone cairns, which are essentially heaps of stones that can be used for shelter. The area is in the northernmost tip of Sikkim, north of a place called Gyangyong, and appears like a protruding finger on the map — hence the name Finger Area.[link]
The bottomline is that the Indian side brought this upon itself by not extracting a written and unambiguous statement from the Chinese side that they regarded Sikkim as an integral part of India and lulling themselves into complacency. The Media is not entirely blameless in this episode as it had back then shirked its duty of playing the role of a vigilant watchdog and allowed itself to be taken in by the government line that the absence of an unambiguous statement from the Chinese side was not a big deal at all. so this despairing statement at the end of the article in the Indian express appears quite disingenuous.
But clearly, what was considered a settled issue once China recognized Sikkim as part of India is now making an uncomfortable re-entry into the boundary settlement discourse.
can we hear that collective refrain from the Indian establishment and the media- oh! the wicked Chinese not respecting the “spirit” of that “settlement” .
got news for you guys with Communist China even the letter doesn’t matter. but it would have atleast made you guys look less stupid now if you had only managed to get it.
The Indian Embassy in Beijing seems to be compromised and penetrated to the hilt by Chinese intelligence agencies. According to this report this is the second such occassion in recent years when a top official at the embassy has been caught in the arms of a female Chinese handler.
BEIJING/NEW DELHI: An official posted at the Indian Embassy in Beijing has been sent back to Delhi in the wake of allegations that he had developed some liaison with a Chinese woman.
First Secretary M M Sharma, originally from the RAW, was shifted after his alleged connections with the Chinese language teacher came to light recently, sources said.
Considering the sensitive nature of post held by Sharma, an inquiry is being conducted to ascertain what kind of liaison he had with the Chinese woman and whether or not any sensitive information had been pilfered[link].
Sharma worked as a first secretary dealing with issues relating to science and technology at the Embassy. That it has now been publicly revealed that Sharma was actually a RAW officer throws some light on the government’s ability to keep its own secrets, a source pointed out.
There was no immediate reaction from the Chinese government on the issue. This is the second occasion in recent years that a senior government official serving at the embassy here has been charged with romantic liaison with a local woman.
A source said New Delhi was concerned that the woman in question could have been an informant of the Chinese government. If true, it could mean the Chinese side knew about India’s moves and counter-moves on the border talks over the past one year when Sharma served in the Embassy in Beijing [link].
That the Chinese make extensive use of “honeytraps” and other underhand means to snare senior Indian government officials, politicians, journalists and assorted intellectuals is well known. Even George Fernandes, former defence minister recently in an interview to Karan pointed out this disturbing aspect.
And Considering that the pro-Chinese rhetoric of a certain well known editor from a very famous newspaper published from Chennai and prominent members of a party which provides outside support to keep the UPA afloat becomes more frantic in direct proportion to their frequency of trips to China this phenomenon might be more deep-rooted than ever thought.
This is not an one-off incident but a part of a determined and sustained attempt by Chinese intelligence services to compromise the Indian establishment from within and any complacency on this aspect would prove very costly to Indian interests in the medium to long-term. The Indian security establishment should ruthlessly crush all such attempts at penetrating and compromising Indian security to the point of acting decisively against any and all such Chinese plants and compromised sources regardless of their so called position or status.
Karan Thapar: You always believed that India should stand up to China. How did they receive you when you went to China as defence minister?
George Fernandes: I was well received. The Prime Minister had come to receive me.
Karan Thapar: Breaking protocol?
George Fernandes: I don’t know if it was protocol.
Karan Thapar: I believe he also put his personal plane at your disposal.
George Fernandes: Yes the entire plane was at my disposal.
Karan Thapar: For the full one week.
George Fernandes: For one full week and if I wanted to stay more as long as I stay there.
Karan Thapar: I believe they also tried to make you happy. They put women at your disposal.
George Fernandes: Not in that sense. Some people will think that I had some fun. I didn’t have any fun.
Karan Thapar: But the women were made available. You had three or four women with you all the time – pretty women.
George Fernandes: Yes. When I came back they were waiting at the doors.
Karan Thapar: Whenever you came back they were waiting at the door?
George Fernandes: Yes.
Karan Thapar: So China in other words, despite the fact that you are a critic, went out of its way to make you happy. This is proof that if you stand up to China, China respects you.
George Fernandes:Yes I believe that.
The only problem here is Karan’s Interpretation. He doesn’t seem to have considered the possibility of Honeytrapping. One of the oldest tricks of trade in the spying and subversion profession[link].
Update: An earlier post on Chinese subversive activities targeting important Indian politicians, bureaucrats and business leaders with gifts, bribes and inducements.
The young Mongol knelt “reverently upon the ground” and “with the deepest gratitude”, acknowledged himself “to be a Mongol slave of inferior ability, perfectly unable to repay in the slightest degree the imperial favours of which his family have been the recipients for generations past, he declares his intention of performing his duties to the best of his feeble powers”. He then “turned himself toward the palace and beat his head upon the ground…in grateful acknowledgement of the imperial bounty.”
The above passage is excerpt from an 1878 report in the Peking Gazette and quoted in Jack Weatherford’s book ‘Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World’, giving a glimpse of the ceremony of receiving an Ambassador from a vassal state in the Manchu court of those days.
And this is exactly how future Indian Ambassadors could be sworn in a decade from now at the Chinese court if the recent events are any indication of the path the MEA and its political master the UPA are hell bent on dragging India towards.
The Chinese of course were rude and discourteous enough to summon the Indian ambassador and a lady at that at 2 am in the morning to express their “displeasure” at the scaling of their embassy wall in New Delhi by Tibetan protestors. Now this is something that could have easily been taken up during working hours. And one can easily blame the Chinese for their uncivilized conduct. But what one cannot excuse is the pusillanimous behavior of the MEA in the light of such reprehensible behavior on the part of the Chinese. Not only did the Ambassador meekly turn up at the doorstep of the Chinese foreign ministry to face the music, the MEA did not even lodge a protest at this public humiliation later on!
India was not the only country where the local Chinese embassy was targeted by protestors during the last one week. Protests took place in dozens of countries all over the world. The Chinese embassies were also targeted in New York, Sydney, Paris and Austria. But not one of the Ambassadors of these countries was humiliated in this way. Infact in these cities the incidents were even more violent involving mob violence and in one case protestors scaling the embassy building itself and tearing down the Chinese flag which never happened here.
In all these cases the Chinese expressed “satisfaction” with formal apologies from these countries. Only India was targeted in this manner and this begs an explanation. What is the MEA doing wrong in representing India and its interests abroad?
The Chinese embassy in New Delhi is huge even by the palatial standards of the embassies in the Chanakyapuri enclave. Big enough to host an entire PLA armoured division. There is a huge open ground in front of it and as far as one can tell there are no barricades around the embassy like there is around the US embassy nearby, it is easy for anyone to walk right up to its walls. So the Chinese themselves are not blameless here. To prevent the incident where a small group of Tibetan protestors tried to scale the walls of the embassy the Delhi Police would have had to form a two layer thick human chain all around this huge building 24 hours a day seven days a week in anticipation of such an event which might or might not have happened!
The MEA couldn’t even be trusted to put forth this point forcefully in front of the Chinese and protest the horrible treatment meted out to its envoy and one wonders why? Unfortunately when an incident like the public shaming of the ambassador by a foreign country happens it automatically morphs into an issue of “insult to the country itself” and the people automatically line up behind their man (or woman in this case) .
But in this case this will merely shield the MEA from accountability for its sins which brought about such a situation in the first place. Atleast in this case the Indian public can save their anger and direct it where it should be, not at the Chinese but at their own foreign office. Because the trend since the days of KM Panikkar and going right upto and including the current foreign secretary when he himself was posted there has been for the Indian embassy in Beijing to act as a surrogate for Beijing rather than as a representation of India. No wonder the Chinese, practitioners of realpolitik have developed a healthy disregard for Indian diplomats and treat them as their doormat. This is perhaps what made the difference for an insomniac Chinese foreign office clerk ordered by his masters to find a scape goat among the nearly two dozen countries to trouble early in the morning to pick up the phone and dial the Indian ambassador’s number.
The situation today has many parallels to the situation just before 1962. We have a defence minister AK Antony in the mould of VK Menon, a foreign secretary Shivashankar Menon in the mould of KM Panikker, an Army General Gen Deepak Kapoor, an ignorant and pompous chief in the mould of BM Kaul, and ofcourse the most pusillanimous PM India has ever seen in the shape of Manmohan Singh, a Nehru wannabe to square it up and all this ofcourse in the backdrop of a rapid Chinese military buildup on the Tibetan plateau and increased incursions long the Indo-Tibetan border by Chinese occupation troops just like back in the late 1950s. History repeating itself again as a farce.
The only silver lining is that we have the option of kicking this crowd out anytime within the next one year unlike back in the 1950s when there was no credible opposition party to get rid of that romantic statesman and his rotten core of sycophants.hopefully we get to the polling booth sooner than later.
NEW DELHI: India’s defensive and ultra-cautious mindset towards China has now firmly made its way even to the normally hawkish environs of the Defence Ministry (MoD).
The latest MoD annual report makes it seems that all is hunky-dory as far as the Chinese military threat is concerned, with Beijing even coming in for some glowing mention as an ”important player in global affairs”, proceeding firmly ahead on its ”well chartered out goals”.
It’s not as if the extreme wariness of the armed forces towards China has suddenly vanished into thin air, but the MoD report is yet another indicator of India’s reluctance to say anything to ruffle a prickly Beijing.
China’s hugely aggressive border posture with India is evident from the fact that around 350 cases of intrusions by its troops have been recorded all along the 4,057-km Line of Actual Control - right from east Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh to Joshimath in Uttarakhand and Pangong Tso lake in Ladakh - over the last three years.[link]
This blog had taken strong exception to the statement by General Deepak Kapoor when in an interview to Karan Thapar for CNN-IBN’s Devils Advocate he had said that
“The Chinese have a different perception of the Line Of Actual Control as do we – when they come up to their perception we call it an incursion, likewise they do.”
Now considering the very high status and respect that we in India accord the Armed Forces compared to the rest of the civilian establishment. this shocking statement went unchallenged because it was an Army General who said it. If the same statement had been made by a non-uniformed defence minister or even any bureaucrat one could imagine the furor it would have caused.
Now Karan Thapar the interviewer has broken his journalistic stance of neutrality and has gone over to bat for the General. In his column in Hindustan Times he reiterates that the General was only “setting the record straight” on the Chinese incursions into Indian territory by saying that it was only a matter of “differing perceptions” and that when the Chinese side patrol right upto their claim line we call it a incursion and when the Indian forces patrol right upto our claim line then the Chinese call it a incursion.
It is amazing that a seasoned interviewer like Karan Thapar gave a easy pass to the General on this during the interview. For one he must be well aware that even after more than two decades and 11 rounds of talks the Chinese side have yet to exchange maps clarifying their claim line in the Eastern and Western sectors of the Indo-Tibetan border. All that they have done till date is refute the McMahon Line which India along with formerly independent Tibet accepted as the International border nearly a century ago.
so in the absence of a claim line from the Chinese side how can there be a “differing perception” of where the border actually lies? And where is the flip side of Indian soldiers violating the Chinese claim line if they don’t know where the hell it is in the first place. The Chinese seem to have a habit of protesting everything and anything, including a visit by the PM to Arunachal Pradesh. Or is this General hinting that he is such a hero that he is ordering his men to quietly violate the McMahon line itself and claim more land north of it??!! unlikely he doesn’t seem to like that old Army ad have it in him to do that.
So it is a open and shut case of the General offering a placebo to the Indian public by saying all is well by clearly misrepresenting the truth. Surely if a “dhoti-khurtawallah” or a certain “ex-Army Major” whom Karan is presently miffed with had said such a thing in an interview with Karan would he have given them an easy pass too? perhaps not. But now he wants us to accept nonsense only because it comes from a serving officer. And wants us to disregard wiser counsel from Jaswant Singh atleast in this case because he is only a “dhoti-kurtawallah” now and was a mere Major in his earlier avatar? who is this little guy cum lowly “dhoti-kurtawallah” to chirp against an Army General? Is this the way a clear headed and civilised discussion on facts and figures relating to ground realities to be conducted?
Is this how Karan wants policy to be made? leave it to those who are supposed to know best? We all know how many avoidable disasters this country has faced by such personalised and adhoc policy making as opposed to institutionalised policy making keeping the nation’s interest as supreme. Nehru, himself in the very case with China is a good example. There is a long tail thereafter which reaches out to the likes of Krishna menon, K.M panickker, LB Shastri, IK Gujral, Vajpayee, Manmohan Singh and our current and former foreign secretaries.
Atleast in this case the Army General’s job is to command his Army and do as commanded by the duly elected government of the land even if he and his colleagues hold them in as much contempt as the rest of the Indian public does. His job is not to make policy but give clear, unambiguous and unbiased inputs to the policymakers to do their job and certainly not do a hatchet job for the current central government which appointed him by misleading the Indian public which pays its hard earned money in taxes to fund his military machine in the hope that they will defend the country’s frontiers come what may by saying that all is well on the Chinese front when it most certainly is not.
Update: The Complete transcript and Videos of the Army Chief’s interview .