Galwan did not merely raise tensions on the Line of Actual Control. It closed the chapter on episodic management of China. What followed was not a crisis, but a permanent strategic condition. Six years on, this reality will only harden. The question before New Delhi is not whether China can be managed, but whether India can manage itself with consistency, patience, and a long-term China strategic focus.
China’s approach has been steady and predictable. China probes incrementally, absorbs responses, and consolidates advantage. Patrol clashes and infrastructure expansion are not precursors to war; they are instruments to normalise friction and lower India’s escalation thresholds over time. They are meant to normalise tension and make friction routine.
Beijing is not looking for conflict with India. It is looking for leverage. Sustained pressure on the frontier keeps India tied down, forces resource diversion, and tests political attention spans. Dialogue mechanisms and disengagement talks help manage risk, but they should not be mistaken for progress. They serve China’s interest in time, not resolution.
The military balance reflects this intent. The PLA’s Western Theatre Command is structured to compress decision-to-action timelines, allowing pressure and adding to deterrence. Improved roads, railheads, and logistics nodes across Aksai Chin allow rapid concentration without visible mobilisation. The terrain has not changed. The tempo has.
Yet with many friction points, China looks less like a power on the ascent and more like one conserving energy. Local governments are boxed in by debt, the property sector has lost its old role as a shock absorber, and households remain careful with spending. Jobs exist, but security feels thinner, especially for youth unemployment. The political control remains a central theme, and any friction is dealt with an iron fist. Military purges continue as rampant corruption plagues the PLA hierarchy. Technology and trade are no longer neutral spaces; they are screened through security first. China is not facing a cliff, it is navigating narrow ground, relying on control and caution to maintain balance rather than opening new engines of growth. These pressures do not signal collapse, but they do raise the temptation for controlled external assertiveness.
India has responded since 2020 with seriousness. Forward deployments are stronger, connectivity has improved, and air support is more responsive. This has narrowed gaps and raised thresholds. But attempting to mirror China’s scale would be a mistake. Yet deterrence in the Himalayas is not about parity. It is about denying China confidence in success.
India needs to focus on the new geometry of warfare. C5ISR, unmanned precision warfare, non-kinetic vectors, responsive logistics and forward infrastructure will matter more than mass. Similarly, the deterrence needs a revisit from reactive defence to pre-emptive denial and proactive domination. The critical shift India still needs to make is doctrinal rather than numerical. Holding every feature is less important than ensuring that any attempt to alter the status quo carries a cost. The shift India still needs to make is mental. Border defence cannot remain reactive. It must become anticipatory, integrated, and designed for friction rather than crisis.
China’s sharper edge, however, lies outside the military domain. It uses economic dependence as an instrument of power. Despite restrictions and political signalling, Chinese components remain embedded across India’s industrial base. Electronics, telecom hardware, pharmaceuticals, and automotive supply chains all carry this exposure. This is not the result of recent policy failure. It is the legacy of two decades where price mattered more than resilience.
Total decoupling is unrealistic. Strategic insulation is not. India needs to focus on where Chinese imports create vulnerability and trade imbalance. India’s most acute exposure lies in electronics and pharmaceutical APIs; other sectors carry risk, but these two create direct strategic vulnerability. Incentives alone will not solve this. Unless manufacturing policy builds full ecosystems rather than assembly lines, dependence will simply shift form. Make in India cannot depend on Made in China. An Indian manufacturing base dependent on Chinese inputs is not strategic autonomy.
Japan and Taiwan are logical partners, but progress has been slow. Semiconductors, precision manufacturing, and joint technology development require regulatory urgency and political backing. India must exploit this opportunity of diplomatic affinity for its strategic delinking from Chinese dependency. This window will not remain open if the regulatory pace continues to trail strategic intent.
Diplomatically, China avoids confrontation and prefers quiet dilution. Across South Asia, it has expanded influence through infrastructure financing, elite engagement, and debt leverage. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) remains a strategic pillar in spite of the realisation that it is a debt trap for recipient states. The ports of Gwadar, Hambantota and Kyaukpyu are not unilateral developments; they endorse an expanding Chinese maritime presence under a commercial cloak. These projects collectively expand China’s ability to monitor, service, and sustain naval presence across India’s maritime approaches.
India’s response has too often been defensive. Warning neighbours about Chinese risks has a limited effect if alternatives are slow or incomplete. Influence in South Asia follows delivery, not warning. Roads finished on time, power supplied reliably, and services that work shape choices more than strategic arguments.
India’s advantage lies in capacity building rather than counter-projects. Health systems, digital training, disaster response, coastal monitoring, and climate resilience offer long-term influence without confrontation. Quiet competence builds influence more durably than overt counter-positioning.
Indo-Pacific balancing and power play remain dynamic to India’s strategic security calculus. Beijing regards the region as hostile, and it has reacted through strategic coercion and strengthening counter-alliances, especially with Russia and Iran. India cannot afford rigid blocs. Strategic autonomy is not passivity. It is selective cooperation driven by interest.
The Quad improves awareness and signalling, but it is not a warfighting alliance. India must plan accordingly. It improves maritime awareness, technology access, and signalling. But the decisive theatre will be the Indian Ocean. China’s naval footprint will expand from the Horn of Africa to the Arabian Sea. Geography remains India’s strongest asymmetric asset if operationalised decisively.
The Andaman-Nicobar Islands are located on the maritime highway of the Chinese. Their value lies not in symbolism but in speed of development, infrastructure depth, and command integration. They hold the potential for development to further India’s rising economic, political, and military interests in the Asia-Pacific, especially as China becomes increasingly active in the Indian Ocean Region. Symbolism will not suffice, and development must be expedited.
For India, this calls for restraint. Restraint does not mean accommodation. It means firmness without volatility. At the same time, China’s economic fatigue creates space. Many states are reassessing the costs of Chinese financing. India does not need to replace China as a lender. It needs to be predictable, credible, and present.
The information domain remains underused. China invests heavily in its three warfare doctrine, using Public Opinion Warfare, Psychological Warfare, and Legal Warfare (Lawfare) to achieve strategic goals. India lacks a unified strategic narrative during crises, allowing Chinese framing to travel faster. A democracy that functions at scale is not a liability. It is an asset. But narrative must be treated as a strategy, not publicity.
Looking ahead, India’s China approach must rest on continuity rather than improvisation. Institutional memory, economic insulation in sensitive sectors, maritime depth, technology sovereignty, and steady regional reassurance are not optional. They are the minimum entry price for managing this rivalry.
The competition with China will not disappear this decade. It will harden into managed hostility. Neither side wants war, but both will keep testing limits. India’s goal is not to outmatch China everywhere, but to ensure that coercion delivers diminishing returns. Power ultimately respects resilience. In this contest, the side that stays patient will shape Asia’s future.