Abstract
China, already the largest power in Asia, is gradually emerging as a major global power and will acquire formidable economic and military capabilities in the first few decades of the 21st century. Its growing economy is expected to overtake the US economy between 2020 and 2050. Its strategy of “four modernisations”, formally adopted in 1978, is bearing fruit and is leading to fairly rapid, though regionally skewed, development and modernisation, including of the armed forces. In recent years, the Chinese have stressed the need for “comprehensive national strength” in determining the country’s role in international affairs. The Chinese concept of national defence is no longer limited merely to the defence of territory but has been expanded to include the seaboard and outer space. The erstwhile strategy of coastal defence has been converted to a strategy of “Oceanic Offensive”. The emphasis on bolstering naval and air forces stems from a desire to project power well away from China’s shores.
Russia and China have recently entered into a new strategic partnership for peace, ending three decades of bitterness and distrust fostered by ideological confrontation and the Sino-Soviet border war. While Russia advocates a new multi-polar world order based on a Russia-China-India triangle for peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region and to counter United States (US) domination of the emerging world order, the Chinese view is that only the US, Russia and China are real global powers and that in the Asia-Pacific region, security and stability should be based on a China-India-Japan triangle [1]. Exhibiting Russian determination to play a greater geo-strategic role and to counter what it perceives as increasing US hegemony, the then Russian Prime Minister, Mr Yevgeny Primakov had offered to form a “strategic triangle” along with India and China during his talks with the Indian Prime Minister at New Delhi in December 1998. While India responded in a luke warm manner to the proposal, China dismissed it out of hand [2]. However, the US-led NATO offensive in Yugoslavia in 1999 and the adoption by NATO of a new doctrine emphasising ‘out of area’ intervention, have resulted in the renewal of thinking about a Russia-China-India triangle as a counterweight to the US and NATO.
