In the aftermath of the 4-day war between Bharat and Pakistan, we, in Bharat, must sit down and carefully analyse the adversary’s strengths, weaknesses, supporters, and collaborators in future conflicts, as well as the roles that major international powers may play.
China has emerged as the single largest exporter of military hardware to Pakistan as far as the details of weapon systems used by Pakistan during our Operation Sindoor are concerned. This is an open secret that apart from bailing out financially, whenever Pakistan is on the verge of defaulting on international payments, China also renders unconditional diplomatic support to the former on all the international forums where it is cornered on the question of perpetration of terrorism.
From China’s point of view, Pakistan’s geographical location and its ideological moorings are a boon for it concerning its sinister designs of cutting Bharat down to size, are concerned. China perceives Bharat as its formidable rival on the global stage; this perception is not the outcome of Bharat’s recent emergence as one of the global powers but rather a part of Mao’s imperialistic designs. Mao Tse Tung, the first chairman of the People’s Republic of China, aimed to recapture the areas once held by the Qing rulers. In 2-3 years, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and Manchuria were incorporated, and Tibet was invaded in 1950. Bharat’s indecisive leadership remained a mute spectator, and we lost a buffer state that separated us from the dragon.
After consolidating its geographical gains, China set its eyes on Bharat, which it considered a significant stumbling block on its way to realising its westward expansion. In 1962, it stabbed Bharat in the back, blasted the Panchsheel Agreement signed by the then PM Nehru and Chinese premier Zhou Enlai, ridiculed the slogan “Hindi Chini bhai bhai”, and mounted an invasion on us. Yes, we were caught napping. Following that, the camaraderie between China and Pakistan developed. The first thing Pakistan did was cede 5180 square kilometres of Shaksgam Valley, a part of the Bharatn state of Jammu & Kashmir, illegally occupied by the former, to China in the year 1963.
Pakistan wanted China to intervene in its favour in the two wars, namely those of 1965 and 1971, fought between the former and Bharat; however, due to prevailing geopolitical reasons, China dragged its feet. In 1965, during the post-Nehruvian era, both the USSR and the USA sought to consolidate their respective presence in Bharat. Both of them wanted China not to intervene militarily in the war. However, by the time 1971 came, the USSR had already solidified its relations with Bharat, and in retrospect, Smt. Gandhi made a wise decision in signing the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation with the Soviets before going to war with Pakistan. Not only did the USSR thwart American attempts to prevent the surrender of the Pakistani forces, but it also initiated troop movements along its border with China to discourage it from intervening in the ongoing war between Bharat and Pakistan.
The beginning of the 1970s had a lasting impact on global political alignments in general and for Bharat in particular. The then Pakistani Foreign Minister Z. A. Bhutto facilitated the secret visit of his American counterpart, Henry Kissinger, to China in August 1971, paving the way for the subsequent visit of American President Richard Nixon to Beijing in 1972. Time only will tell how much the USA will repent for that visit; the plan which was conceived to contain the USSR resulted in the creation of an economic and military behemoth, China, which will keep on tormenting the West till when nobody knows.
The US sought to accomplish multiple objectives with one move; firstly, it aimed to transition its workforce from manufacturing to technology-driven sectors, such as IT and Biotech and was in search of a country to which it could outsource low-cost manufacturing activities. China fitted perfectly into the scheme of things; secondly, it needed the said country to serve as a counterweight against the USSR, and thirdly, it thought that while pursuing its economic goals, China would shift away from Communism to the Capitalist model. That thought was the biggest blunder committed by the USA in the twentieth century. China had its cake and ate it, too; it progressed to the point of challenging the USA by adopting a capitalist economic model, but its political power remains firmly in the hands of the all-powerful Chinese Communist Party.
Hua Guofeng inherited power after Mao died in 1976. Still, due to the model promoted by the USA and its support, Deng Xiaoping assumed control and should be considered the father of the country’s post-1980 growth model. He famously said whether the cat is white or black, it does not matter so long as it catches the mice; it was to buttress his argument in favour of a capitalist model for economic growth. Another of his famous dictums, diligently followed by the CCP, is ‘Hide your power and bide your time.’
In the context of Bharat, China does not recognise the McMahon Line Line as the international border between the two countries. It has illegally occupied our 38,000 square kilometres territory of Aksai Chin in the UT of Ladakh. It also lays its claim on our northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh. In its scheme of containing and countering Bharat, it has found more than a willing partner in Pakistan. From a cost-benefit perspective, China is incurring negligible costs but benefiting immensely by pitting Pakistan against us.
Today, Pakistan’s military complex is predominantly equipped with Chinese hardware and technology. It has ceded control of its Gwadar port to China, which connects it to the CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) that starts from the Kashgar area of the Chinese province of Xinjiang. It is noteworthy that not only has Gwadar allowed China to enter the warm waters of the Arabian Sea, but it has also enabled it to encircle Bharat from the western direction.
During Operation Sindoor, notwithstanding the TRP-boosting reportage by news channels and subscriber-hunting YouTubers, it has been amply established that the Chinese military hardware and technology used by Pakistan, if not superior to Western equipment, are not inferior to it either. It was due to our superior planning, better anti-projectile mechanisms, and state-of-the-art, indigenously developed Akash and Brahmos missiles that we could overwhelm the Pakistan Air Force bases and its air defence system. China and Pakistan are currently jointly manufacturing the 4th-generation JF-17 fighter jets; the former has also provided the latter with J-10C aircraft. Currently, the entire Pakistani air defence, comprising HQ-9 SAM systems, is of Chinese origin. According to the latest available data, over the past 10 years, China has supplied 81 per cent of the defence equipment imported by Pakistan, which includes main battle tanks (MBTs), artillery guns, and submarines and frigates for its navy.
Pakistan’s nuclear programme, too, clandestinely, has been supported by China. Though Pakistan officially became a nuclear power in the year 1998, it tested its device way back in the year 1983 in China. AQ Khan, the nuclear architect of Pakistan, who had stolen centrifuge blueprints from a Dutch laboratory and surreptitiously collected the required materials from the global black market, told the then-military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq that he was ready with the device and wanted to test it. Fearing an international backlash, General Zia did not want
To test it in Pakistan, China was instead requested to conduct the necessary tests, and a cold start test was conducted there. There is ample proof that Pakistan had developed an atomic bomb in the early eighties because when Bharat launched Operation Brasstacks in the year 1987 to counter the former’s involvement in promoting terrorism in Punjab, General Zia had conveyed to Rajiv Gandhi that owing to the conventional superiority of Bharat, his country will launch a nuclear attack.
All the missiles, ballistic as well cruise, of Pakistan either have been supplied by China or have been facilitated by it. Benazir Bhutto has said on record that she swapped the nuclear technology of Pakistan with missile blueprints from North Korea, the protege state of China.
Today, in the aftermath of Operation Sindoor, both China and Pakistan are sitting together and assessing and evaluating the successes and failures of the Chinese weapon systems deployed by Pakistan. It can be safely hypothesised that the entire gamut of weapon systems developed by China to establish itself as a superpower will be given to Pakistan. After all, from a cost-benefit analysis, it is less costly and hugely beneficial for China to have Pakistan fight with Bharat instead of engaging with the latter directly. Soon, its stealth fighter J-35 and Jiutian SS-UAV, which can simultaneously eject 100 drones, will become part of the Pakistani arsenal; nobody should be surprised if tomorrow news breaks out that China has supplied nuclear-powered submarines also to complete the nuclear attack triad of Pakistan.
Under the circumstances and emerging geopolitical scenario, Bharat is left with no choice but to equip its armed forces with superior weapons than those of its adversaries’ weapon systems. In the short term, they can be acquired from global sources, but in the long term, it must produce them indigenously. “Make in Bharat” is the answer to all the questions posed by our rivals; it has to be implemented with maddening speed. The 5-M plan (Motivation, Management, Money, Men, and Materials) must be harnessed to achieve time-bound results. There is no reason why we cannot produce the required engine for our AMCA stealth fighter ourselves.
The Mahabharata guides us that the path to peace transcends battlefields.
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