China very recently playing host to US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in the space of just four days is a commentary of the importance Beijing has assumed in the global geopolitics of the day. Notably, the fact that Trump and Putin have both come to Beijing on Chinese terms and conditions underlines the growth of China as a nation and the emergence of a new superpower on the ascendant.
In that context, strategist and former Indian foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale’s book China’s Wars is a very timely write in order to understand and decipher the vastly complex Chinese way of strategic thinking. Of course, Gokhale’s book focusses primarily on Chinese strategic military thinking.
At the outset itself, the writer raises some fundamental questions on the nature of China as a military power. Is China a pacifist and a defensive force or is it an expansionist power with military coercion as one of the key tools? To what extent does the idea of a ‘just war’ or ‘yi zhan’ guide its military doctrine? What guides China to initiate conflict or coercion and when and in what circumstances does it actually begin a war?
China’s Wars studies four wars—The Taiwan Strait crisis of 1958, the India-China border war of 1962, the China-Russia war of 1969 and finally the war with Vietnam in 1979 to analyse the strategy.
The aims of the book are two-fold—first, to identify the objectives China may have pursued and the strategy and tactics it may have adopted in the wars. Second, the lessons that it has for India.
That it is of supreme importance to India is based on two facts—China’s very rapid rise as a modernised military and economic power and its frequent references to the business of an ‘unfinished territorial agenda’ which obviously concerns and would bother India.
Chinese military strategy is deeply steeped in its politics. Mao Tse Tung’s dictum that ‘war is politics with bloodshed’ will find strong resonance here.
Gokhale points out that China’s India policy is considerably influenced by New Delhi’s relationship with Moscow and Washington and that even the 1962 conflict was sparked off by India’s warming relationship with the US and reconciliation with Russia.
Hence, Gokhale writes: “It is necessary for India to carefully and consistently monitor China’s relations with the US and Russia, as well as dynamics within the triangular balance of power between the US, China and Russia, and not focus simply on the state-of-play in its bilateral relationship with China, if it is to correctly assess China’s intentions during times of bilateral discord and tension”.
“Steering India towards keeping a neutral stance in superpower competition so that it did not take sides with other major powers against Chinese interests became the overriding political objective of the PRC’s India policy,” the writer concludes.
The value of the book lies in the structured manner in which China’s complex geopolitical history is dissected, keenly analysed from the military standpoint and conclusions presented. A good book for anyone enthused by military history and strategic developments. And a must-read book to understand how the Chinese mind works.