Bhartendu Kumar Singh
A major national security challenge that the government would face in this tenure is the momentous developments in Chinese military preparedness affecting the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and the Indo-Pacific area. While China’s military modernisation has been an ongoing process for the last few decades (and so has been India’s defensive response), its pace has accelerated in recent times. The LAC that was ‘relatively peaceful’ until a decade ago, has metamorphosed into an active front with looming war threats. Unless deftly handled, the bilateral military power balance would soon become too asymmetrical and may critically imperil the LAC sanctity.
Much of the current modernisation goals for the PLA were finalised in the 20th Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in October 2022. The military dimension of the Report to the Congress focused on ‘intensifying and accelerating the PLA’s modernisation goals’. Accordingly, by 2027, the Chinese Peoples’ Liberation Army (PLA) is to aim towards finishing its first phase of modernisation process. This is the time when the PLA would have completed 100 years of its foundation. The second phase of military modernisation would complete by 2035. By 2049, China aims to metamorphose its PLA into a world-class armed force capable of out rightly taking on the US military muscle in the Indo-Pacific region.
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