Ladakh Flash Point

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Sardaukar20

Captain
Registered Member
Couldn't agree with you more.
Yes, India's fascists are pale counterparts of their Nazi progenitors.
They are also far more corrupt. The Germans were able to achieve successes such as building the Autobahn and a robust telecommunications network because
of very accountable and financially ethical Ministries. For all his faults Albert Speer was a great minister and an outstanding engineer.
Would like to know your views on the following situations and the state of mind and delusions being propagated by the Indian media.
1. The politicization of India's military top brass. Not entirely at the Nazi level but certainly far more than previously known. Military decisions can now be taken over and above professional advice by competent military experts. This is another similarity with Nazi Germany where later in the war competent generals like Rommel and Von Paulus were sidelined in favor of SS party stalwarts. Strategic and military decisions were taken which ultimately proved disastrous to Germany. Similarly the ideological wing of the BJP which is the RSS has a large membership of ex-service personnel. So far the Indian laws ban direct membership by serving officials but that is merely a fig leaf. RSS sympathizers are numerous abd deeply embedded in the defense apparatus though they are currently balanced somewhat by the secular legacy officials.,
2. The propagation and assumptions of myths about China and its fighting capabilities.Some of these have been discussed in earlier posts. The latest being propagated by Indian media are the following:
2.1 China will never engage in ground war like in 1962 because two generations of Chinese have had a one child policy and China has a low military manpower resource unable to take casualties.
2.2. Countries high on the prosperity and quality of living index avoid ground combat for fear of casualties and China has a higher per capita income as compared to India. So China will not risk casualties whereas India can, The analogy being made is with Afghanistan where the USA was unwilling to sustain further casualties and withdrew. In short India has more manpower resources and can take casualties to fight and defeat China.,
2.3 China has no experience supporting troops at altitude and in cold weather. It cannot sustain its logistics for long. China desperately wants a border settlement with India because it cannot sustain the stand off.
In short: Now that China is on the backfoot India should press home and seize all the territories it claims. China won't fight because it can neither sustain casualties nor can it support its troops in cold weather conditions. A Chinese retreat to the Indian defined borders is inevitable.
2.4. India should press home its advantage and advance to "liberate" Tibet and advance further to "liberate " Xinjiang. Shades of 1971 East Pakistan.,
Well India have filled up their military ranks with 'yesmen'. There are all currying favour with the Modi and the BJP to get bigger budgets. One such fool is General Rawat. He champions the two-front war strategy with Pakistan and China. A highly dangerous strategy considering the limitations of India. Maybe its just for show to get bigger budgets, or maybe its just plain old is stupidity.

All the points you have mentioned are typical Indian Bakht delusions. Saner Indians do not have such delusions. China may be 'soft' today compared to the Cold War era. But make no mistake, China is prepared for war.

I had observed the way China responded to Covid-19. When it was still a brand new, relatively unknown virus. China mobilized everyone, the government, military, medical personnel, and the people themselves. They fought the virus in Total War mode. So much sacrifices were made, from Lunar New Year celebrations, to the country's economy itself. And China decisively defeated the 1st wave of Covid-19. This is like a rehearsal of a wartime situation in China. So if China were to be attacked by a foreign enemy, they look more than ready to stand up to the challenge.

As for those Indians, still thinking of an easy war with China. I say just let them continue getting high in their delusions. As Napoleon once said: "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
 

plawolf

Lieutenant General
How do you loose something that was never yours to begin with?

The whole dispute centres around different and overlapping claims. What has changed was that in the past, there as an effective buffer between the two which both patrolled but neither set up permanent outposts in. That way both sides can maintain their respective claims without too much drama.

But India has been gradually doing salami slicing to encroach into the buffer zone and edging forwards. China’s response is to push back and no is preventing India from patrolling as far into the buffer zone as before, thereby effectively jeopardising a portion of India’s claim.

The reason the two have not been able to reach a peaceful, mutually acceptable, negotiated settlement is down entirely to Indian hubris, arrogance and stupidity.

China was extremely keen initially to settle the dispute with a very pragmatic proposal. The Indians didn’t want to hear about it because some British aristocrat draw a line on a piece of paper once that no one other than the Indians cared or accepted even at the time.

Back in 62 they tried to forcefully push the PLA back, which breached a fundamental founding principle and vow of the PRC in that it will never again let Chinese sovereign territory be seized by foreign powers through force of arms.

That principle has not changed in the nearly 60 years since, nor will it ever change as long as the PRC exists, but what has changed, and changed drastically, is the absolute and comparative power different between India and China. Where once India was, on paper at least, comparable if not ahead of China in most metrics, now they are not even in the same league or even playing the same game.
 

Bright Sword

Junior Member
Registered Member
What is the current state of play, as in what line is China willing to accept. Would China accept the current line (or thereabouts) if India have up its claim in Aksai Chin?
Don't know. India hasn't given up its claim to Aksai Chin and a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman claimed Arunachal as "South Tibet". A popular Indian news anchor has a report on this based on discussions with retired military personnel.But even he claims he is hallucinating about a settlement.
Significantly the recent 5 point agreement between the two foreign ministers referred to a border not LAC.
 

[witty username]

New Member
Registered Member
Well India have filled up their military ranks with 'yesmen'. There are all currying favour with the Modi and the BJP to get bigger budgets. One such fool is General Rawat. He champions the two-front war strategy with Pakistan and China. A highly dangerous strategy considering the limitations of India. Maybe its just for show to get bigger budgets, or maybe its just plain old is stupidity.

All the points you have mentioned are typical Indian Bakht delusions. Saner Indians do not have such delusions. China may be 'soft' today compared to the Cold War era. But make no mistake, China is prepared for war.

I had observed the way China responded to Covid-19. When it was still a brand new, relatively unknown virus. China mobilized everyone, the government, military, medical personnel, and the people themselves. They fought the virus in Total War mode. So much sacrifices were made, from Lunar New Year celebrations, to the country's economy itself. And China decisively defeated the 1st wave of Covid-19. This is like a rehearsal of a wartime situation in China. So if China were to be attacked by a foreign enemy, they look more than ready to stand up to the challenge.

As for those Indians, still thinking of an easy war with China. I say just let them continue getting high in their delusions. As Napoleon once said: "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

Too many of us Indian educated at WhatsApp university, the ridicule heaped upon such belligerent Indians on the internet might actually be good for our people, to get a good dose of reality.
 

Gatekeeper

Brigadier
Registered Member
It's absurd that Brazil and Bulgaria are in front of China. I am very familiar with Brazil and just recently went to Bulgaria. Both countries are much poor than China and their food in terms of how expensive to locals are way less affordable comparing to China. People made up this list had no idea how people eat in China.

It maybe China's hunger index is poorer as compared to the two countries you mentioned.

But that's not really the point. The point is China is still in the green zone on the chart meaning it's safe and good, the risk is low. So its like saying China didn't come first, but it's still a medal winner.

Look at India, they are in the yellow zone, meaning it is serious! So nstead of looking at specific. Just look at where they are. I'm happy China has achieved food security. Which zone you rather be in?
 

Bright Sword

Junior Member
Registered Member
Too many of us Indian educated at WhatsApp university, the ridicule heaped upon such belligerent Indians on the internet might actually be good for our people, to get a good dose of reality.
Confused.
Isn't the Whatsapp University swamped with a 500 million RSS IT cell contingent spewing abuse? The ruiing clique has invested tens of billions in social media based Information warfare which is primarily aimed at suppression of dissent among its own population. No country in the world has invested so heavily in social, and electronic news media information warfare. If China's cyberspace and cyber-warfare strengths are significant as compared to India it is far behind India in English language social media warfare. Pakistan has faced the brunt of the Indian social media apparatus for at least two and half decades right from the days of primitive monochrome CRT terminals on primitive land telephone audio modem linked networks. Today if India dominates anywhere it is in the English language social media networks, from Twitter, You Tube ( particularly You Tube) , news paper article reaction comments.
As an example newspapers such as Dawn of Pakistan and Global Times are flooded with abuse spewed from India, with religious slogans in bold print.
All the keyboard activity doesn't help on the actual front when bullets fly but it is impressive how much India has invested in propaganda warfare.
 

[witty username]

New Member
Registered Member
Confused.
Isn't the Whatsapp University swamped with a 500 million RSS IT cell contingent spewing abuse? The ruiing clique has invested tens of billions in social media based Information warfare which is primarily aimed at suppression of dissent among its own population. No country in the world has invested so heavily in social, and electronic news media information warfare. If China's cyberspace and cyber-warfare strengths are significant as compared to India it is far behind India in English language social media warfare. Pakistan has faced the brunt of the Indian social media apparatus for at least two and half decades right from the days of primitive monochrome CRT terminals on primitive land telephone audio modem linked networks. Today if India dominates anywhere it is in the English language social media networks, from Twitter, You Tube ( particularly You Tube) , news paper article reaction comments.
As an example newspapers such as Dawn of Pakistan and Global Times are flooded with abuse spewed from India, with religious slogans in bold print.
All the keyboard activity doesn't help on the actual front when bullets fly but it is impressive how much India has invested in propaganda warfare.

Still, it is not good to believe one's own propaganda.
 

Gatekeeper

Brigadier
Registered Member
China economically, as I've said before, is a 3:1 disparity between the richest provinces (Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian) and the poorest (Gansu, Heilongjiang, Jilin).

Shanghai isn't actually the richest single city in the China; Beijing is.

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As for Indian adventurism, the better example is Fascism, wherein economically unsustainable policies (good economic growth driven by debt) resulted in the necessity of military adventurism to simply prop the political economy up.

When you look at both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, they were both stuck in a time trap; i.e, if the Nazis had attacked the Soviet Union at a later time, the Soviets would have had powerful T-34 tank fleets ready to engage the Nazis. If the EoJ had hit China later, the RoC military modernization would have been in a stronger position and instead of Chiang's elite divisions getting wiped out at Shanghai the RoC would have had more elite divisions ready to further slow the Japanese advance, or even repel them altogether.

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Applied to the Sino-Indian situation, Indian senior policymakers are well aware that they need more time in order to "deal with" the Chinese; i.e, China is already a newly developed country and its growth rate is going to slow, between the trade war and the marked Chinese preference for social development as opposed to economic development in the next decade. India, on the other hand, if it can get out of this recession, will likely have around 2-3% real growth advantages over China over the next decade.

China, on the other hand, can't move, because it can't occupy Kashmir without Pakistani Army assistance and the Pakistanis need a lot more anti-tank gear and possibly 5th generation planes to hold off the Indians without resorting to nuclear weapons. The move into Kashmir, likewise, needs the preparation of a Kashmiri insurgency and independence movement before a sudden strike is feasible. Ideally, PLA action against the Indians in Ladakh will be in support of a native insurgency seeking an independent or Pakistani Kashmir. The recent Pakistani provincialization of Gilgit-Baltistan is not a positive move in this scenario because the most promising way to de-Indianize Kashmir is with an independent Kashmir.

Likewise, China's border infrastructure in Tibet, while much better than that of India's, is not sufficient for a full scale war with India. India happens to be a nice compact body, with logistics, despite being deprived of infrastructure, having a low transit time from the Indian core (Uttar Pradesh, despite its low per capita GDP, is the most populous single Indian state). China, on the other hand, has to get everything into the mountains beforehand. This will take years to develop, a period of 5-10 years before Tibet, in logistics terms, is comparable to Xinjiang.

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So in general, while the Chinese situation will decline over the 10-20 year period in terms of relative power, in terms of infrastructure it will improve. The Chinese, like Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, can't actually strike effectively in the short-term due to the infrastructure gap, but in the long-term the relative force balance will make a Second Sino-Indian War too costly to be worthwhile.

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The obvious moves on both sides would be the upgrading of infrastructure for the Chinese, and the expansion of nuclear arsenals for India and the abandonment of no-first use to provide a credible nuclear deterrent over the border.

On the latter side, the problem is that India wants an aggressive posture and NFU is incompatible with an aggressive posture; the Chinese can only use their ballistic missiles because they have an NFU policy and the Indian side knows the nuclear taboo won't be violated unless they decide to violate it first, but once India itself doesn't have NFU, India is now entitled to use nuclear retaliation against any border transgression. At the same time, the moment NFU is dropped, countries like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, etc, are all going to be scampering to get underneath, primarily, either a Chinese or Pakistani nuclear umbrella, or the nuclear umbrella of other powers (US, European, Russian). Then India has more or less contained itself.

On the former side, preparation of Kashmiri insurgency and Pakistani conventional warfare capabilities can allow a potential Second Sino-Indian War / Third, or is it Fourth, Fifth? Kashmiri War to tip into China's favor provided that India doesn't nuke up fast enough. Infrastructure and logistics would also be a priority; even half of China's strategic potential, focused and aimed at India, would be enough to decimate the InAF and make sure that Kashmir switches hands. This logistical preparation, likewise, is strategically useful in the event that India eventually decides to grow up and join BRI.

Reading this is a waste 5 minutes of my life that I'll never get back. It's unbelievable naive.

The highlights being comparing provincial China poorest and richest nonsense. In geopolitics it's nothing to do with riches or poorest provinces. China's military strength comes from the aggregate of the nation's wealth.

And as for the growth rates of China and India comparison, you do realised China is 4 times bigger that India's. Right? Even using you figures that India Is going to grow 3% more than China's. At that rate, it would take them at least 40 years to catch up!
 
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plawolf

Lieutenant General
It maybe China's hunger index is poorer as compared to the two countries you mentioned.

But that's not really the point. The point is China is still in the green zone on the chart meaning it's safe and good, the risk is low. So its like saying China didn't come first, but it's still a medal winner.

Look at India, they are in the yellow zone, meaning it is serious! So nstead of looking at specific. Just look at where they are. I'm happy China has achieved food security. Which zone you rather be in?

Whenever you see a big global ranking piece, odds are they are just using very very basic nominal dollar per head comparisons, with little or no attempt to correct for PPP/local pricing differences.

So essentially, it’s a flawed comparison as it is not looking at how well people can actually eat in the real world, but rather how well they might be able to eat if they all got paid in dollars and bought all their food in America.

That’s just issues on the pure paper analysis side of things, so of course other more nuanced but arguably more important factors like growing your own food isn’t even considered.

This is an especially important omission for places like China that doesn’t have city slums. Because the overwhelming majority of China’s poorest population live in rural areas and rely on agriculture for their basic income. That means their monetary actual income is effectively net of a huge chunk of their basic annual food consumption. Because if you are a farmer, you are not going to sell all your crops at wholesale prices and then buy those same crops back at retail prices from shops are you? You keep back a proportion of your crops that you are expected to consume and sell what is left. Which means you don’t really need to buy as much food with the money you earned from selling your harvest as someone who lives in a city and rely on shops for nearly 100% of all the food they will consume.

That’s just an obvious major problem with such reports, there are many many others, like benefits in kind, indirect subsidies, positive externalities from infrastructure etc.

As such, even on a best case scenario instance, such reports are at best rough estimates rather than true reflections of reality. But of course, in the real world these reports are often further tainted by the prejudices and biases of authors, or even outright manipulated to suit political, ideological and/or financial motivations and needs.

Personally, I don’t waste my time with them to be honest.
 
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