just because it’s not an ant-like society, or even the super communal maoist system doesn’t mean that the economic system have “almost no vestiges of actual communism”. the economy is still state planned, their currency pegged, and banking system exceptionally rudimentary (probably a good thing).
as far as authoritarian governments go, china is rather mild. yes, they run through executions rather easily, but it’s nowhere near the iron grip that someone like… kim jong il has on korea. the only thing that someone could actually point at as a possible powder keg for revolution is the influx of rural poor into the outskirts of cities, and the abject poverty those migrant workers live in. However, that’s part and parcel with the type of growth that china’s experiencing. The shifting of jobs from 100 guys with water buffalo plows to 1 guy riding a combine, etc.
By “almost no vestiges of actual communism” I mean that the Chinese government no longer shows any signs of pursuing, or even paying credible lip service to the ideals that once made communism look like a good, desirable idea to lots of people: things like egalitarianism (of outcomes as well as of opportunities), a classless society, and “to each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”: a society where everyone would be adequately provided for, and no-one would be better than you. It was through the promise that they were working towards such ideals that leaders like Lenin, Stalin, and Mao were able to get their people to follow them, and to justify the cruelties, injustices and suffering that they imposed upon their people as the price that had to paid to reach that utopian goal. But the Chinese “Communists” are not (in any credible way) holding out the carrot of communist utopia to keep their people in line any more, instead they are holding out the opportunity to get rich, to have a chance to be one of the few who gets to be near the top of the heap in a profoundly and increasingly unequal society - essentially the same carrot that the rulers of America use to keep their people in line (so, for instance, poor Americans will support the idea of keeping taxes on the rich low, because they believe, not entirely wrongly, that there is a remote chance that one day they themselves might become rich). In America, though, there is at least some degree of consistency between the ideological rhetoric and the socio-economic reality: we live in a capitalist system, and we are constantly told that capitalism is the best possible system. In China today, the people live in an increasingly capitalist, unequal socio-economic system, which increase the government is clearly and enthusiastically promoting, but, if only in virtue of the fact that the ruling party is still called the Communist Party, the nominal ideal is still the communist egalitarian utopia. The Chinese leadership calls itself Communist, whilst steering the country as far and as rapidly away from communism as they can. It is working for now, because the country is getting rapidly richer (as newly industrializing capitalist economies always do for a while), but when things start to slow down, as they must, the contradictions between the ideological rhetoric and not just the economic and social reality, but also the deliberate economic and social policy, are bound to become more and more obvious. That looks like a recipe for instability to me. (To a considerable extent, this is what brought down the Soviet Union, when Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika, intended to stimulate the economy, in fact served to reveal the hypocrisy of using communist ideology to legitimize the Soviet state.)
This is supposed to be evidence that the CCP are likely to retain their grip on power? That they are not really as tough as they might be? :dubious:
That “only thing” is a pretty big thing. Indeed, it is precisely the sort of thing that Marx thought would lead to real communist revolution. In fact, countries with relatively open, democratic political systems, like Britain, France, and the United States, were able to get through their periods of rapid industrialization without too much political upheaval. Countries with more authoritarian political structures and traditions, like Germany and Russia, did not cope so well. (Japan also, in a way: although Japan did not fall apart internally, and then descend into totalitarianism, like Germany and Russia, it did wantonly get itself into an essentially unwinnable war with a much larger country with a much stronger economy.) But even Germany and Russia, in their periods of industrialization, did not suffer from the degree of disconnect between professed ideals and actual social and economic policy that modern China does.
Even without Indian attacks on their supply lines I don’t believe that China has anything close to the logistics to support a large attack into India (or vice versa).
And if they could get them there then that would be a good point. The trouble is, they couldn’t, so their numbers are irrelevant IMHO. At best, China could move a couple divisions (maybe) to the border regions (and vice versa), so we are talking about fairly small scale engagements on the ground that haven’t got much of a chance of doing more than a few purely local, tactical victories which will translate into nothing, strategically. Neither side has anything like the logistics support or transport to move the bulks of their own armies outside their borders, even leaving the horrible terrain aside (which I doubt even the US could push a major force through, and we have the preeminent logistics system in the world today).
Tension between India and China will spike when (if?) the military government in Burma cedes power, and a new civilian authority opens the country to development. Both sides will want to rush to establish influence and prevent the other from doing so.
That’s true, but absent an Indian ground assault into Chinese territory (which given the logistics is highly unlikely), the Chinese aren’t going to throw everything they have at the Indians. They’re probably going to keep some of their forces in the east to defend against possible US or Russian movements, regardless of what the Russians and the US say are their intentions.
Which means that most of the fighting is going to take place in Indian territory, and that means the Indians can use ground-based anti-aircraft measures to assist with denying the Chinese air superiority over Indian territory. Without air superiority, I think it’s unlikely that the Chinese will be able to push very far into Indian territory.
My vote is small push into Indian territory, followed by stalemate with eventual cease-fire and return to de-facto borders (perhaps with the loss of some territory in Arunachal Pradesh/Kashmir on the part of the Indians).
I’m not convinced that China could remain politically unified through such a conflict.
Even in the best of times, the massive border regions of Tibet and Xinjiang are not particularly happy being a part of China and basically have to be held under martial law or the immediate threat of martial law to keep them from revolting. If China became occupied with other conflicts in the area, they would no doubt see that as a golden opportunity- and it’s likely India would take advantage of that and give them some help. Suddenly China would find itself in a civil war.
And should they lose control of these areas, they will lose important supply lines. Not to mention that they entire mythology of the “Communist Party as the unifiers of China” would be shattered. If they lost control of Xinjiang or Tibet and were engaged in a massive war, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the money-making coastal cities decided they’d be better off without the baggage from Beijing and stopped taking their orders.
While India has more than it’s share of separatists, it’s my impression that they are mostly smaller movements in less geographically important regions.
India will never make peace with Pakistan. Pakistan was PART of India. The only reason it exists is because the Muslims claim India being majority Hindu would never give Muslims a fair go.
So Pakistan will always be against India.
Now you all are forgetting the mountains. The Himalayas are HUGE. The terrain alone assures any hot war will cool down starting in November and last till March (if not longer) when the passes are impassible.
Supply lines can’t be maintained in such a terrain for long. Any war foght by India and China would be short. If you eliminate Nukes, it will be certainly skirmishes.
China is a big country. It doesn’t need to expand. The population is crowded into the coast. And can easily expand into the vacant west. China looks to be EAST Asia’s leader while India looks to be South/Southeast Asia’s leader.
The goals are different. It would be like Brazil might want to lead South American, but it could care less about North America.
Even during the Vietnam War when the French were fighting, both the Communist Chinese and Nationalist Chinese were offered a free hand in Vietnam, and both Chinese governments said “We don’t want it. Vietnamese will not assimilate into Chinese society and it’s more trouble than it’s woth.”
So if China won’t care about tiny Vietnam, next door, they certainly wouldn’t care about India.
India on the other hand will always have Pakistan waiting to, if not attack, then pick off some spoils in a short Sino-Indian war.
Why? This doesn’t make sense. India is not claiming sovereignty over Pakistan or the territory of Pakistan, besides the dispute about Kashmir and Jammu. If this dispute can be settled, why couldn’t a long-lasting or permanent peace be made between them?
While it was not a war of conquest (though it does appear that negotiations following the war did lead to slight territorial gains by China), the Sino-Vietnamese war of 1979 would seem to suggest that the Chinese are not against invading neighboring states such as Vietnam to prevent or deter them from taking certain actions.
Even sven, Tibet and Xinjiang would be nothing but scorched earth if they rise up. They don’t have the manpower, organization or guns to take on Han China. That’s just real politik talking (and not my own projected hopes).
Even if China was engaged in a presumably pretty ugly war with India?
I’m not envisioning a victory or independence. I’m thinking it’d probably be more like guerrilla warfare, terrorism and sabotage. Lots of IEDs, taking potshots at soldiers, etc. It’d be awfully distracting, and perhaps distracting enough to influence the outcome- especially if India found a way to supply these guys. I mean, America can’t handle this stuff in Iraq, and we don’t have India trying to invade us.
I keep thinking back to the riot police on just about every street corner in Lhasa. I’m sure a certain part of that is just showing whose boss, but surely some of it must be necessary to keep order. Would they be able to keep that tight of security at home when they are fighting such a huge resource consuming war abroad? If that internal security wasn’t there, what would happen? It’d certainly be ugly.
Even Sven, that happened from 1951-1959, and the outcome was pretty horrific for the Tibetans. And the odds are much more lopsided in the Han favor these days. And I’m guessing the Han would just “eliminate” the root of the problem.
I don’t see why it couldn’t; it did during the Korean War. Also, even sven, I think you are overlooking the fact that quite a few Tibetans and Uyghurs have patriotic feelings for China and many of them do serve in the armed forces. Large numbers of them do exist, we just don’t hear about them because they don’t have special interest groups and fanboy Hollywood actors pushing their cause in the West. They’re probably not in the majority, but the insurgents who would rise up to take advantage of China’s moment of weakness and begin terrorist attacks aren’t in the majority, either.
Maybe you’re right. But it’s worth throwing “internal instability might flare up and become an issue” out there. I’m not talking about anything that might actually happen or that I want to happen, only speculating on the extremely unlikely theoretical situation of China and India being in a large-scale full-on battle-of-the-Titans conventional war (a war war, not just a border skirmish) without nukes being a factor.
If this scenario occurred, it’d also open a window for Taiwan to make a move towards independence. With China’s military otherwise engaged, there wouldn’t be a lot they could do about it. If that happened, it’d most likely just ramp up patriotism, but there is a nonzero chance that Taiwan independence could cause a loss of confidence in the government.
I don’t think the Chinese public currently has a huge appetite for territorial expansion beyond areas they feel are historically Chinese. The current regime bases it’s mandate almost entirely on it’s promise of peace, prosperity, unity and national respect… which is very different than the ideology driven days of the Korean war. I don’t think anyone is really all that in love with the current regime, but people mostly put up with it because things are going well. An expansionist war with India would seriously undermine that and I think it might be the point that people start calling for some structural changes, especially if it started to appear that the current regime could not offer even domestic stability. And in turbulent times, any structural change would probably not be a smooth transition.
Of course, India has more than it’s fair share of internal instability, as well. But it seems to me that India’s separatist-leaning regions are less geographically critical and that India is a bit more accustomed to managing them with means other than brute force and threat of brute force- meaning an externally engaged military wouldn’t leave them quite as vulnerable. While stuff would flare up, I don’t think it’d be a threat to the nation as a whole. Presumably the decision to go to war would go through democratic channels in India, meaning the war would probably have enough popular support not to seriously threaten internal stability.
Disclaimer: I am not an expert, but I do read a lot, so everything I write is vaguely informed speculation for the sheer fun of speculation and not any sort of meaningful analysis. I’m just having fun with “what if’s” here and trying to bring new ideas to the table.
I’ve spent some time traveling around the Kashmir and Ladakh in India and can attest to previous posters comments regarding the terrain. One can never truly appreciate the magnitude of the Himalayas until you actual visit them. It would be a war fought by mountain infantry dependent upon unbelievably vulnerable supply lines.
Going off the Indian newspapers I was reading when I was in the region, border intrusions (infantry and aircraft) by the Chinese are common and there is much editorial concern and criticism regarding the state of the Indian military near disputed areas. I generally found Indian newspapers to be quite good (light years above their Chinese counterparts) but they are just as nationalistic and their agenda is fairly clear.
I’ve also traveled quite a bit in Tibet and the Chinese logistical advantage (in terms of disputed areas in Ladakh) is that their forces would be staging off the rather flat and open Tibetan plateau operating into the Himalayas…while their Indian counterparts would be moving non-forward deployed forces and supplies up through mountain range after mountain range (if Ladakh is the conflict area). I can’t speak for the Himalayan geography of Arunachal Pradesh in the East, the more likely conflict zone…but I would hazard that it’s probably similar
I suspect India’s advantage would be in the quality and experience of their front-line soldiers having gone toe-to-toe with Pakistan in the Kashmir numerous times, most recently in 1999 on the Siachen Glacier . China hasn’t fought a war since a border dispute with Vietnam in the late 70’s followed by another in the mid-80’s. Like a previous poster said…it wouldn’t be 1962.
They would probably just end up slugging it out in the mountains. It could broaden into the Indian Ocean though as two emerging blue-water navies have their way with one another…advantage would probably go to India, being able to use land-based forces to assist their navy.
I wouldn’t say the region is a ‘hot-spot’ (when compared to places like the DMZ in Korea) but both countries are very nationalistic and the PLA is known for being rather overconfident and arrogant in it’s perceived abilities (sorry, I can’t cite that…that theme emerges from time to time in various articles and reports about the PLA that I’ve browsed through).
How would China have a numerical advantage, anyway? The Indian and Chinese populations are relatively equal, 19% of the world population for China versus 17% (when you’re that big, a 2% difference doesn’t make much of a difference!) for India, and both have an overabundance of men, with India having the world’s largest army in terms of active soldiers.
Aren’t India’s fighter aircraft also more advanced than China’s, and (most importantly!) the Indian officer corps significantly more experienced?
Probably debatable. Both airforces operate a hodge-podge of airframes and their top-line fighters are essentially the same (Su-30 for the Indians and the J-11/Su-30/Su-27 for the PLAAF). However, the Indians would benefit from their training exercises with Western airforces. The well-publicized COPE-INDIA 04 exercise saw the Indians trashing a USAF “Red-Team” unit of F-15’s and F-16’s.
I suspect you are probably right regarding the officer core as India enjoys considerable cooperation with Western armies in terms of training and is being run by a core with experience fighting Pakistan and local insurgencies…could be some old hands still around who were involved in Sri Lanka. India also participates extensively on UN missions. The PLA is increasing their role, but it is still very, very small. The PLA is hard to compare to any other military…it’s more of a business with an army, operating farms, factories, real-estate development companies, hotels, resorts all mandated toward a defense of the CCP, rather than the nation of China. Their officers largely train and train with counterparts from C-list developing countries.
China invading India to occupy Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim would be a pretty dumb way to fight a war. As others have pointed out the frontier in this region is some of the worst in the world.
The smart thing to do would be to seek an indirect route to their goal. Form an alliance with Pakistan and back them in their claims in Kashmir. Then when India is looking to the west, encourage seperatists in Assam and Nagaland to declare independance. Support the breakaway republics. China already is friendly with Bangladesh, Burma, and Nepal. India would find itself cut off in the east.
But the wouldn’t find themselves cut-off from Western powers, most importantly the USA…and that is what would matter most in a shooting war. Nepal, Bangladesh, Burma…they are all C-list military powers and probably wouldn’t have the logistics (even with Chinese aid) to mount foreign excursions. Pakistan was the first country to diplomatically recognize the PRC, so there are strong ties there, but they seem to have a history of hedging with both China and the USA and I wouldn’t expect them to throw all their eggs in with the PRC.
PLA support of local Indian insurgencies would probably happen. One of the print articles I read in India that had everyone up in arms was a report that a PLA General had released a authorized paper that called for Chinese support of Indian insurgencies to help break-up the country. India is quite nationalistic though…how that would play out…no way to know…but a foreign invasion could galvanize the country, especially against a nation few Indians have connections to (unlike Pakistan).