This is the last part of the series of articles on this subject. This one analyses aspects related to China’s vulnerabilities, her policy and attitude towards India and present day behavior.
Dealing with China
China’s Achilles Heel. China has a few vulnerabilities and insecurities. Her reaction becomes aggressive when these red lines get threatened or crossed. Some of these are:
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- Hunger for Natural Resources and Energy. China is a growing country needing a large amount of natural resources. China also has a very high demand for energy, making it heavily dependent on oil imports.
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- Extended Supply and Communication lines. China’s extended supply and communication lines, both on land and sea could become vulnerable to interdiction, disrupting her supplies. China has been working towards creating redundancy by developing alternate supply routes.
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- Belt and Road Initiative. This project has been initiated by China to revive the old silk route. Her endeavor is to create alternate trade and supply routes connecting various countries. A lot is riding for China on this project, which is already running into some rough weather in a couple of places.
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- Three Ts & Hong Kong. China is very touchy about Trade, Taiwan and Tibet. Even Hong Kong can be added to this list now.
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- Food Security. Recent pandemic and floods in the country have revealed the fault line of food security of the country. The food production is inadequate to meet the demand. Fishing in waters of other countries and leasing of land from other countries for cultivation are efforts towards mitigation of this problem.
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- Age Demography. To control the growing population, China had adopted one child policy. This policy was implemented very forcefully and was successful, however it has created an adverse age demography. The median age of the country is high with a large number of aged population. Each young person has to support two to three aged relatives. As a result it tries to avoid contact warfare, where loss of life would be high. Investment in long range weapons and unmanned platforms corroborates this observation.
Continue reading “13: DRAGON’S BRAIN: DIFFERENTLY WIRED (PART 3: DEALING WITH CHINA)”