India's ambitious plans for its navy

I have said this before: very often, you have to look to western media for serious news about India.

FT has a fascinating story on how India's plans to beef up the navy to cope with China's expansion in the Indian ocean.

The statistics are impressive. About  66 per cent of the world's oil supply of 50 per cent of container traffic passes. An estimated 95 per cent of India's own trade happens via the Indian Ocean. For China, 95 per cent of its $6 trillion trade is sea borne and most of its passes through the Indian Ocean.

India wants a powerful navy that will safeguard its maritime interests and act as a powerful level in the event of tensions with China.

Thus far, India has fallen behind on plans for the navy:

Few things capture India’s sluggish modernisation of its navy better than its vacillating plan to build up its submarine fleet. In 1999 New Delhi laid out a blueprint for building 24 new submarines over 30 years, to add to its existing fleet.  But 25 years later, only six have been built, meaning India has less than half the planned number of new conventional submarines. It has two nuclear ballistic submarines, though two more are under construction, and last year it decided to build two nuclear attack submarines, and will lease one from Russia. Of the 17 conventional submarines, 11 are over 25 years old.   

It is now making up for lost time:

India has 55 ships under construction at an approximate cost of Rs1tn ($11bn). The navy has got the government’s nod to build another 64 and hopes to get a third aircraft carrier — the second to be built within the country — but has not got a green light from the government yet. 

There is now way India can match China's naval capability: China boasts of some 250 ships at the moment and is still building frantically.

India's naval strategy, the article indicates, hinges on a few key elements.

First, China can deploy only 35 per cent of its naval assets in the Indian Ocean, so India needs to have only 1 ship for every three that China has. Secondly, India will use airbases in Mauritius and Seychelles as a counterweight to China. Thirdly, India is fortifying its position in the Nicobar islands which is close to the Malacca Straits through which 80 per cent of China's sea traffic passes.

Experts are clear about one thing. The Indian navy will strictly defend Indian interest, it will not be drawn into the conflicts of others, such as a confrontation between China and the West over Taiwan.

Is China's political system an obstacle to its rise?

There is one refrain that is comment to forecasts on China: the Chinese political system is incompatible with growing standards of living. There is a corollary to this: as soon as China's growth rate slows perceptibly, the strains on the political system will begin to show. Turbulence will set in. Some even forecast that the Chinese system will implode.

One thing that strikes me is that this hasn't happened in the last two decades of China's rise. Okay, you could say, that's because the Chinese people were bought off with goodies. However, that's only part of the story. What's missed, as an article in FT points out, is that the Chinese state has shown itself highly competent, able to adapt and responsive to popular aspirations. In short, it does everything that a democratic government is expected to do- except that many democracies, including the US, are showing themselves to be increasingly dysfunctional.The author writes:

There is a tendency to see Chinese government as unchanging. This is because in the west the only reforms that we really count are those that appear to move the country towards the western model. In fact, government has been through huge and constant reform since 1978, far greater than anything that has taken place in the US or the UK. It is inconceivable that the Chinese state could have masterminded such a huge economic transformation if it too had not been the subject of profound reform. This process will continue, probably even more dramatically.

The Chinese communist party is seen as monolithic and intolerant. In fact, it contains within itself diversity of views and there is no reason to suppose that tolerance of dissent is a great deal less than in western democracies (where views outside a certain mainstream can be filtered out quickly or even actively suppressed). Voters in the US may have a theoretical choice between two parties but, on a wide range of issues, you have to think very hard to tell the difference between George Bush and Barrack Obama. This applies to the UK and many other democracies as well. The choices open to voters are within a rather narrow bandwidth.

The odds are that, instead of China going into decline because of its one-party system, it is the west that may suffer decline the years to come:

The west is in decline, Europe rampantly so. Some estimates suggest that by 2030 China could account for a third of global output and be twice the size of the US economy. American power would then be a pale shadow of what it is today. This is bound to affect how the American people regard their political elite and political system. Furthermore, with strong evidence that living standards have been static for many people in the US and western Europe, the outlook is uncertain.

Gloomy views of China go hand in hand with western attempts to undermine the Chinese system in many ways, as an article in Atimes points out. These attempts take various forms: support for separatist groups, talk of the high level of corruption in China, criticism of crackdown on dissidents and a constant glorification of western cultural and political values:

The hierarchy of China experts is this: At the top we find the philosophers and statesmen who set the stage and agenda for the universal ideology - exclusively serving Western interests. They always reside in the West, know little or nothing about China, and discuss China solely on Western terms......Next we have the journalists and editors, most of them white or accessory white, in key positions at the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Economist, and so on. Thanks to the Western planetary media monopoly, they have become the new global fascist elite.....They also prominently decide who - Chinese or foreigner- gets praised and who gets defamed, and - most importantly- what gets omitted in their China reports. Their own corrupt ways get omitted. Ask yourself, when was the last time you read a piece by a prominent Chinese (other than a dissident) in your nation's newspaper? You haven't. It is a tight Orwellian grip. 

It's not just China that is at the receiving end of western propaganda. Today, even greater venom is directed at Russia.