plawolf
Lieutenant General
India made actual attempts to take control there? News to me! Maybe a more appropriate name would be Line of Aspirational Control? Or would that line need to drawn right down the middle of Beijing?
Ladakh Flash Point
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Definitely the Kailash range and the associated holy sites.India made actual attempts to take control there? News to me! Maybe a more appropriate name would be Line of Aspirational Control? Or would that line need to drawn right down the middle of Beijing?
India will never let go off its aspirations regarding those parts of Himalayas due to religio-cultural reasons.
Another reason is the the water catchment areas of Himalayas and associated water security concerns.
Sad thing is, with certain Indo-nats that's actually viable.India made actual attempts to take control there? News to me! Maybe a more appropriate name would be Line of Aspirational Control? Or would that line need to drawn right down the middle of Beijing?
Some thoughts following on from this.
Given such an awful economic performance, Modi may be happy to continue the standoff because Nationalism will divert people's attention from the awful effects of COVID and Modi's policies.
So that would be a good way for Modi and the BJP to remain in power.
But for India, a hostile relationship with neighbouring China is bad.
China is 5x bigger in terms of GDP and military spending.
Unfortunately, China 2020 GDP (+2.3%) --> 15.7 Trillion USD (based on Current CNY to USD ratio)
Indian 2020 GDP estimated (IMF est.) --> 2.6 Trillion
So the GDP gap is already 6x... Though the military expenditure (2019), China is only 2.5x bigger.
One thing you have to keep in mind regarding military expenditure is the expenditure breakdown, or where the money goes. As stated many times in this thread, a fairly significant portion of the Indian military budget goes towards pensions and since most of their arms are imported, they have to pay more for foreign acquisition.
China is an under militarized nation relative to its economic size, even with its modernization and buildup.
2020 military budget is 1.268 trillion yuan while the 2020 GDP is 101.6 trillion yuan. Military budget is 1.25% of GDP, it's been consistently around 1.3% since military reforms in the 1990s. Its similar to under militarized nations like Germany and Canada.
If China spent 2.5% of GDP like India, the 2020 military budget would be 2.54 trillion yuan ($390 billion USD at current exchange rate). Unlike the Soviet Union, China isn't directly engaging in an arms race with the US. It's main strategic focus is still economic development. Its overall economic size enables it to not be stretched thin like Russia and Turkey when pursuing geopolitical goals. I would expect China to gradually increase military budget as a percentage of gdp once the main developmental goals are achieved but still nowhere near the gdp percentage of other nations with strong military forces.
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