China has used multidimensional strategy to dominate its opponents and constantly looks for opportunities to take bits of territory without taking overt warlike actions, according to a report published in the Foreign Affairs magazine.
Strategic thinker Brahma Chellaney in an opinion piece for the American magazine said that Beijing uses multidimensional strategy to attain its geopolitical and strategic objectives.
"The CCP pays lip service to equality and reciprocity in international relations, but in fact, China under Xi seeks to subordinate small nations. Nowhere is this truer than in Southeast Asia, where China has used a two-pronged, unconventional strategy to help it both dominate the South China Sea and control the transboundary flow of the Mekong River, the region's lifeline," Chellaney said.
The strategic thinker said that Beijing has focused on an escalating campaign of deception, stealth, and concealment to achieve the target of territorial revisionism, adding that the indirect-war elements are conspicuous in China's actions against India.
Talking about the unconventional means being used by Beijing against its rivals, Chellaney said that China has steadily brought Indian security under pressure through unconventional instruments, including cyberattacks, it's re-engineering of the cross-border flows of rivers, and its nibbling away at disputed Himalayan territories.
The foreign policy expert said that China employs all available means short of open war to curtail Indian ambitions and strike at core Indian interests.
"China relishes plausible deniability in its involvement in cyberwarfare against its rivals. India claims that state-sponsored Chinese hackers have repeatedly targeted its critical infrastructure, including power grids."
In his article, Chellaney also recalled how a US-based cybersecurity company recently found that a China-linked group called RedEcho was behind a surge in attacks on India's power infrastructure in 2020.
"The cyber-tactics run parallel to more traditional conflicts. Last May, a shocked India discovered that Chinese forces had stealthily occupied mountain tops and other strategic vantage points in the northern border region of Ladakh... And as frontier skirmishes intensified, China ramped up its cyberwar on Indian power grids," he said.
This writer also argued that China may not want to risk outright war with India or its other rivals, but it remains absolutely willing to flout its legal obligations, adding that many of the Chinese Communist Party's external actions may appear small in isolation, but they are significant when taken together.
"No country has been able to figure out how to counter the CCP's aggressive behavior under Xi--not even the United States, as China's cost-free expansion in the South China Sea illustrates," he added.
Over New Delhi's possible response against Beijing, Chellaney concluded that "unless India is willing to turn the tables on the CCP with its own hybrid warfare that targets China's weak spots, including in Tibet, and unless the world's democratic powers form a united front against Xi's expansionism, China's unrestricted war will continue to destabilize Asia and undermine international security."
( With inputs from ANI )
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