Chapter 18 - Dragon’s Teeth and Dragon’s Brain begins...

There is no greater calamity than to under-estimatethe strength of your enemy.

For to under-estimate the strength of your enemy Is to lose your treasure.

(Lao Tzu, ‘Warring States’ period, ca 480-221 B.C.E.)

While India, broadly speaking, tries to equip and train armed forces

that can maintain the status quo, China has been preparing and training

armed forces that can achieve their desired political objectives.

The Chinese armed forces, the PLA, are presently in a constant of

development and evolution, with the primary agenda being to catch up

by 2030 in military effectiveness, if not in total military power, with the

current world No. 1, the USA.

Structuring towards this 2030 goal, there had been significant down-sizing since 1985 in the PLA in terms of manpower, and the military organizational structures have been changed accordingly. This

down-sizing has been simultaneously with the introduction of greater

modernization in two functional areas: in the area of mechanization and

in the ‘cyber-war capability’ or ‘informationalization’ area.

For example, Chinese border patrols which nowadays ‘intrude’ into disputed Sino Indian border areas are equipped with digital cameras and lap-tops in

addition to the usually expected personal arms and communication

equipment. These ‘border patrols’ are connected to communication

nodes by satellites and also by the new optical fibre layout, of which

there are actually two parallel layouts, running together throughout

China, one civil and the other of the PLA.

To be continued...