Adhiraaj Anand
The Diplomat, Oct. 2, 2021
“While the PLA sees India as behaving in an increasingly aggressive and expansionist manner in South Asia and the Indian Ocean, it downplays how far India’s actions in these latter theaters could go.”
The Indian military sees China as its biggest threat, as Chief of Defense Staff Bipin Rawat made clear in an interview in June 2021. The Indian Army has moved 50,000 troops to its border with China in 2021, with about 20,000 troops in the Ladakh sector. So how does the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) view India? The PLA’s media, including the newspaper PLA Daily and the TV program “Defense Review,” offer some insights. It views India’s growing military cooperation with the United States with some concern but generally does not consider India a major threat.
Since 2018, in its articles and videos about India, the PLA’s online media have focused mainly on India’s partnership with the U.S., discussing the topic 23 times. It has featured India’s defense industry and arms purchases, discussed 21 times. India’s growing ties with the U.S. have often been juxtaposed with its relations with Russia, which have been discussed 13 times. By contrast, there were surprisingly few in-depth analyses or opinion pieces about the Sino-Indian border dispute, even during the Ladakh skirmish in 2020, with most articles about the issue being brief press releases about meetings to resolve the issue and using language such as “easing tensions,” “maintaining communication,” and “avoiding misunderstandings.”
Adhiraaj Anand is a master of international affairs candidate at the National University of Singapore, studying the role of perceptions in Sino-Indian relations.
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