By: Lt Col JS Sodhi (Retd), Editor, GSDN
In any sport, if a team/player wants to improve and reach international standards, it must compete with teams/players better than it. Competing with teams/player weaker than itself gives a false sense of déjà vu. The same principle applies to nations as well, especially those that are at war-risk or in any competition whatsoever.
Three statements merit attention. One, Air Chief Marshal AP Singh, Chief of Air Staff, Indian Air Force, expressed concern on January 07, 2025, over the increased militarisation by China and Pakistan and the pace at which technology is growing rapidly in China.
Two, on March 17, 2025, General Upendra Dwivedi, Chief of the Army Staff, Indian Army, while delivering the 4th General Bipin Rawat Memorial Lecture in New Delhi, remarked that a two-front war was no longer a possibility; it’s a reality.
Third, on July 09, 2025, General Anil Chauhan, the Chief of Defence Staff of the Indian Armed Forces, stated that the convergence of interests between China, Pakistan & Bangladesh will have serious implications for India’s stability and security dynamics.
The biggest challenge that India faces since independence in 1947 is the three-front war threat from China, Pakistan and Bangladesh, which could happen any time after 2030. Whether Bangladesh opens up militarily against India or not, time will tell. But India will have to be militarily prepared to tackle Bangladesh, which wasn’t the case before August 05, 2024, when the sudden change in power took place in the country, and till then Bangladesh was not seen as a threat to India.
Fighting a war isn’t the responsibility of a nation’s army alone. It has to be a whole-of-the-nation approach. USA’s Annual Report to Congress on “Military & Security Developments involving China” released on December 23, 2025, states that China has become the power it is due to the whole-of-the-nation approach.
China reached its current position where it is today, by comparing itself only with the USA, the world’s sole superpower, during 1991-2010. Reading important Chinese official defence publications, be it China’s Central Military Commission’s Strategic Guidelines issued in 1993 and 2004 or China’s Military Strategy, 2015 or China’s Defence in the New Era, 2019, published by the State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, clearly reveal that China has compared itself only with the USA.
Such has been China’s dramatic rise in every conceivable field that on April 12, 2025, Pete Hegseth, the Defence Secretary of the 47th US President Donald Trump’s administration, shocked the world when, in a candid statement he admitted that China’s hypersonic missiles could destroy the 11 US Navy aircraft carriers in just 20 minutes. He further added that in every war game conducted in the US Military, the Americans always lose to the Chinese. War games are conducted in all militaries the world over to assess the readiness of military strategies and are designed to simulate real-war scenarios.
In 1950, amongst the three nations in Asia- India, Pakistan and China, the economically weakest was China and strongest was Pakistan! The per capita GDP of the three nations was US$ 83.3 for Pakistan, US$ 82.2 for India and US$ 54 for China. Where China stands today needs no further elaboration.
There is no denying the fact that China has arrived as a superpower. This is evident from Pete Hegseth’s statement of April 12, 2025 mentioned above and the statement of Admiral Samuel Paparo, the Commander of the US Pacific Command, on October 28, 2024, who candidly stated that China is carrying out the largest military buildup since World War II, perhaps in world history. Apart from the military might, China has immense economic, diplomatic and technological clout too.
Why would China carry out such a massive military buildup when it knows that no country in the world can dare wage a war on it? The answer is pretty simplistic because China’s military aims include Taiwan and India’s Arunachal Pradesh.
India and Pakistan-centric Thinking
India has 465 news channels comprising English, Hindi and regional language channels and amongst them are 20 news channels which have the maximum viewership. Of India’s 1.46 billion citizens, 1.17 billion watch television.
There are 75 leading social media handles in India which have a combined unique followership of 0.78 billion. In contrast, only 0.4 billion Indians read newspapers. Thus, the mainstream electronic news channels and the leading social media handles are a very powerful medium of conveying information and shaping narratives. Although some Indian print media publications carry articles on China’s threat to India, their lower readership reduces the impact compared with mainstream electronic media.
On Indian mainstream news channels and leading Indian social media channels, the most favoured topic of discussion is Pakistan as it garners TRP (Television Rating Points, which helps fetch revenue from advertisements) apart from having electoral advantages. But the real challenge to India is China, which is rarely discussed on these forums.
In 1998, soon after taking over as the Defence Minister of India, George Fernandes called China India’s No. 1 threat. This remark created a political tsunami in India and overseas as till then Pakistan was seen as India’s biggest threat. George Fernandes retracted his remark in 2003, before Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s visit to China that same year. In hindsight, the remark of George Fernandes had a deep meaning, considering India’s defeat to China in the 1962 War and later the Doklam standoff in 2017 and the Galwan Valley Clash in 2020.
Pakistan has never been a military challenge for India. In all the five military conflicts between India and Pakistan in 1947-1949, 1965, 1971, 1999 and 2025, India has defeated Pakistan, apart from splitting Pakistan in two nations in 1971 which led to the creation of Bangladesh.
However, India has been unable to wrest back one-third of Jammu & Kashmir, called Pakistan-Occupied Jammu & Kashmir (POJK), which has been under the illegal occupation of Pakistan since the first war between the two nations during 1947-49. The reason is China! Just three months after India’s defeat to China in the 1962 War, on March 02, 1963, Pakistan ceded control of 5180 square kilometres of Trans-Karakoram Tract called Shaksgam Valley, part of the illegally occupied POJK, to China. In POJK are also various Chinese investments, part of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor.
Thus, any attempt to military wrest back the control of POJK by India, would inevitably mean the two-front war with Pakistan and China, due to increased Chinese interests in this region.
China also poses grave problems for India, considering its territorial designs on India and its growing proximity to Pakistan and Bangladesh. Since 2007, China has been increasingly assertive for the Indian State of Arunachal Pradesh, as Pakistan has always been over Jammu & Kashmir of India since 1947.
On December 23, 2025, the US Department of War in its Annual Report to the US Congress on “Military & Security Developments involving the People’s Republic of China” stated that China’s “core interests” are Taiwan and Arunachal Pradesh of India. Any area coming under China’s “core interests” implies that China can use any means, including military force, to annex these territories.
A little earlier, on July 04, 2025, Lieutenant General Rahul R Singh, the Deputy Chief of the Army Staff, Indian Army, in a seminar in New Delhi candidly spoke of Pakistan receiving live updates of the Indian Army’s vectors from China, as the two neighbours were embroiled in the 88-hour military confrontation from May 07-10, 2025. The General Officer also mentioned China using Pakistan as a live laboratory for testing its weapons.
Despite all clear indicators of China’s designs on Indian territories and open support to Pakistan and Bangladesh, it is ironic that there is little discussion on China in either the Indian mainstream media or on the leading Indian social media handles.
To add to this discomfiture is that miniscule seminars are held in India that discuss China’s threat to India. In fact, in various forums, including virtual ones, it is common to see Pakistan-bashing and the glee that erupts whenever any discussion of Pakistan takes place, especially pertaining to their fiscal failures or unrest in their provinces like Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, but rarely is China discussed. Rather, whenever China’s rise is discussed, the topic is subdued with statements like China is communist, or China is autocratic.
Why should Pakistan be given so much importance in India? A large majority of Indians blame the West for hyphenating India with Pakistan, but ironically it is the majority of Indians who love discussing Pakistan.
In professional life, does a successful person compare themself with failures or aspire to greater heights of glory by looking at those who have succeeded? The answer is obvious. So why should Indian thinking be Pakistan-centric, which is a failed state and not an inspiration in any field?
China has become the superpower it is by only comparing and competing itself with the USA. Today, China is the global leader in 57 out of the 64 critical global technologies, while the USA leads in balance seven.
China is India’s real Challenge
There is also a thought that China will never wage a war on India, which may be possible. Even if China doesn’t wage war on India, it is already doing enough to keep India bogged down militarily on the Line of Actual Control (LAC), as the border between China and India is called. As of today, India has about four large-sized military formations called Corps, deployed on the LAC, whereas there is scarce military deployment on the Chinese side. But with the vast non-kinetic military capabilities that China possesses apart from enormous air power and missiles, which is worrying even the USA too, the scarce military deployment on the Chinese side is no indicator that China will never go to war with India. It must be remembered that China has enough non-kinetic capabilities to create havoc before committing its boots on ground.
The famous saying “Even if there is one per cent of chance of a war, the nation has to be hundred per cent prepared” must be kept in mind, while underestimating China’s intentions to wage war on India. If India is prepared for the China challenge, there should be no cause for worry. But if India needs to prepare more for the China challenge, then there is a window of just over four years left.
USA is paying a heavy price in underestimating China’s intentions, as not only is China’s rise giving nightmares to the American leadership, but the growing clout of China globally is a cause of concern as very few nations can now afford to speak against China openly, due to China’s control over manufacturing and it weaponising the rare-earth elements, which are essential to almost everything manufactured in any part of the world.
India can ill-afford to ignore the Chinese threat. This has to commence by having a public shift from Pakistan-centric thinking to considering China as a challenge in public forums.
It was indeed comical to witness the Indian mainstream media going gung-ho over President Xi Jinping’s visit to India for the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on September 12-13, 2026, only to be in a rude shock few days later, when on September 16, 2026, China and Pakistan operationalized the Pakistan-China Boundary Joint Commission by holding its first meeting 63 years after Pakistan ceded the Shaksgam Valley to China. Clearly, this meeting was meant to be a strong rebuke to India by making it crystal clear that China and Pakistan’s relations were as strong as ever, as enunciated by President Xi Jinping before embarking on his first-ever two-day visit to Pakistan, in an op-ed he authored in Pakistan’s Daily Times titled “Pak-China Dosti Zindabad” (Long Live the Pakistan-China Friendship), in which he wrote that “I feel as if I am going to visit the home of my own Brother” and also wrote that “the friendship between the two nations was higher than mountains, deeper than oceans and sweeter than honey”.
Beneath the façade of Chinese bonhomie at BRICS, SCO or G20 Summits, China is clear about its military designs on India. To underestimate their intentions will have grave consequences for India. To prepare for this eventuality under strict timelines will benefit India. The outcomes will decide the choices made, as the clock is already ticking and 2030 is on the horizon.
History should always be remembered and lessons learnt from it. In January 1959, Colonel (later Lieutenant General) PS Bhagat, posted as Director in the Directorate General of Military Intelligence at Indian Army Headquarters, warned of Chinese intentions, but his report was ignored. So were the findings of the wargame “Exercise Lal Quila” conducted by Lieutenant General SPP Thorat, the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Eastern Command (then headquartered in Lucknow) on March 17, 1960, ignored, who had warned of the Chinese attack in October 1962.
India paid a heavy price for ignoring the warnings by the military leaders. This time too, adequate warnings have been sounded by Indian military officers. Ignoring China’s military intentions will again prove perilous for India.
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