China's Invisible Warfare

The incident of violent clashes in the Galwan Valley on the India-China border and the consequent deaths of soldiers on both sides occurred in June 2020. 14 rounds of negotiations have since then been conducted to find a solution to the border stalemate.

After this tense situation, China on 29.12.21, officially issued standardised names for 15 places in Zangnan, its name for Arunachal Pradesh. Among those 15 places, eight are residential areas, four are mountains, two are rivers and one is a mountain pass.

Earlier in 2017 too, China had issued standardized names of six places in Arunachal Pradesh. Since long China claims that whole of Arunachal Pradesh is theirs. China's hostility towards India has been displayed consistently through its actions. ১

The Middle Kingdom Syndrome

China has turned out to be a headache and a challenge for the whole world. To exactly understand what drives China's aggressive behaviour, it would be pertinent to have to look at its history. In Mandarin (its native language), China is "Zhonggua" which is also a term printed on its currency notes. Zhonggua literally means "Middle Kingdom."

Since ancient times, China has considered itself as the center of the civilized world and holds other countries as its "tributary states" and inferior to itself. Hence the term, "Middle Kingdom."

The Middle Kingdom syndrome has continued to dominate the Chinese psyche in the socio-political sphere and has become stronger in last several years. As a result, China is unlikely to have friendly relations with India and many other countries in the world.

Chinese warfare

As per traditional notions, a war scenario presents a picture of shooting, bombing, massive explosions, violence and bloodshed. But Chinese war strategy is different. China does not recognise that war and peace are different situations.

Its strategy is to constantly fight the enemy until the desired goal is achieved. Violent warfare is the last stage in this long struggle. It would not be wrong to call China's war strategy as an "invisible war."

Sun Tzu was a famous army general and strategist in China In the 5th and 6th centuries BC, and his book, Art of War, is popular even today. His thoughts have heavily influenced Chinese war strategy. According to Tzu, "To win without fighting gis best" and "The wise win before they fight, while the ignorant fight to win".

China's war strategy is to destroy the enemy using invisible tactics without resorting to actual violence. These kind of tactics are not clearly visible but lend a fatal blow, Deceit, subversion and internal strife are freely used as tools to further the objective.

It would be interesting to know what some strategists and security experts have to say about this invisible war strategy. In 1946, during the Cold War, George Kennan, a well-known American political scientist & diplomat had laid out a detailed plan on how to deal with Soviet Russia. He described the alternative type of warfare as "political warfare" which is launched without launching an actual violent war.

This political warfare is especially important in the nuclear era where actual war carries the seeds of all out destruction. Political warfare involves protracted struggle and encompasses all the spheres such as political, administrative, social, financial, industrial, intellectual spheres including media. Today, China has emerged as the no.1 player of such political warfare.

What China seeks to achieve through such political warfare has been succinctly stated by Aaron Friedberg, a professor at Princeton University, as "China now seeks to present itself as providing an alternative model for development to that offered by the West, one that combines market-drive economic growth with authoritarian politics".

According to American strategic studies scholar Kerry Gershaneck, "Its political warfare narrative is that the Chinese approach to governance & development is a far more attractive option to that offered by the Liberal democracies of the Western Countries".

Mao Zedong had stated in the 1940's that the Communist Party of China (the Party) would remain supreme and that the Red Army and the United Front would be the two magic weapons in the hands of the Party. The Red Army would wage direct war and the United Front would unleash the political warfare. Thus both would complement each other in furthering the strategic interests of China. Even today, the United Front Works Department (UFWD) is working to increase China's power & influence in the world.

It would be pertinent to understand a few examples of how UFWD works in its quest to make China the most powerful country in the world by increasing its influence everywhere. However, an important thing to note before this is that during the Cold War, Soviet Russia was relentless in its efforts to spread its influence through the socialist ideology. Unlike Soviet Russia, China simply buys people using money. Some examples highlighting this pattern are discussed here

Political influence:

On 14.01.22, Reuters reported that the British intelligence agency M15 had sent a security alert to all British MPs. The alert warned all MPs that a Chinese origin lawyer, Christine Lee has been bribing MPs for many years, with the aim of increasing China's influence.

MI5's investigation had revealed that she had paid millions of pounds to British MPs so that she could influence their actions. Her aim was to pursue and protect Chinese interests. Her activities threatened British national security which forced the agency to issue the alert.

The New York Post in an article published on 11 May 2021 made a shocking revelation that China has spent $10 million in 2016 and $64 million in 2021 for Influence operations. This highlights how much China is spending to influence the lawmakers and opinion makers in the makers a United States.

University and Academic scholars: China considers the United States as its biggest rival. China spends large sums of money on a number of American universities, scholars and students in order to influence the current and future generations of the United States.

In 2018, Jonas Parello-Plesner and Belinda Li wrote for the Hudson Institute that "In 2017 alone, China donated a total of $56 million to several US universities, with Stanford and Harvard receiving $32,224,828 and, $55,065,261, respectively, in the last six years." In December 2021, the former Head of the Department of Chemistry at Harvard University, Prof. Charles Lieber was convicted by a US court for receiving millions of dollars from China for his research activities and yet not disclosing the receipts anywhere in his total income.

Even in our own neighbourhood, China attempted to spread the reach of Mandarin by initiating a plan to teach Mandarin in all schools in Nepal, with China providing the teachers and even paying their salaries. This effort was aimed with the ulterior motive of sinicizing the Nepalese society.

China seems to be unrelenting in its efforts to influence schools, colleges, universities, scholars, teachers and students so that future generations remain in awe of China.

Media: Influence operations are most important in Political Warfare and Media plays the biggest role in this. China is fully aware of this. China spends huge sums of money to keep media around the world under its influence China Daily is published by the Chinese Government. Interestingly, it also publishes a local edition in the US which caters to projecting Chinese interests. Voice of America on June 26, 2020 reported that between November 2016 and April 2020, China Daily paid $19 million to the American media. Of that, $6 million went to Wall Street Journal, $4.6 million to the Washington Post, and $260,000 to Twitter.

Four-page advertisements were printed and circulated in the form of a special supplement under title "China Watch". It is clear that the purpose of this is to increase the influence of the dictatorial Chinese government and to increase the influence of China in the American society by giving big advertisements in local newspapers.

The Chinese funding of American media was yet again highlighted when Fox News on May 26, 2021 reported that in the six months from November 2020 to April 2021, China Daily paid $700,000 to Time Magazine, $291,000 to Foreign Policy Magazine, and $ 371,577 to the Financial Times and $ 929,523 to the Los Angeles Times for various reasons.

This disclosure was made by China Daily itself in its submissions to the Justice Department of the US Government.

In light of this background, it would be pertinent to see what China is doing in the case of Indian newspapers

A leading English language newspaper in North and West India (Ind. Exp.) published a four page advertisement / supplement on 29th December, 2021 under the same title "China Watch". On 3rd November 2017, another English language newspaper, which is widely circulated in North India and especially in Delhi and again on 30th October 2020, published similar four page advertisement supplements (Hind. Times). The Hindu, a well-known English newspaper of South India, published on 28.9.2018, 02.04.2020, 01.10.2020 and 01.07.2021, a whole page of Chinese promotional advertisements.

China lays claim on the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, infiltrates the border at various points, provides military assistance to Pakistan and protects the terrorists like Masood Azhar. China's stance towards India has clearly been consistently hostile.And yet, despite the wave of anger against China that erupted across the country after the Galwan clash of June 2020, within just 100 days, in October 2020, some of the prominent Indian newspapers published full page advertisements promoting China.

Betraying national interests, those newspapers stooped to new lows just for the sake of money. If readers and advertisers call for non-cooperation tomorrow against newspapers that advertise the interests of the enemy without realizing the public outcry, they cannot be blamed.

If the scope of Chinese warfare is so widespread in countries like the United States and England, then one can only shiver to imagine the level to which China might have infiltrated our political, administrative systems as well as the Media.

The fact that China has unleashed an invisible war on India comes forth in many evident ways. Its main objective is to weaken India and destroy the will and power of the country to fight. Political warfare is being waged against the entire Indian society.

To fight this war, it is necessary to initiate the necessary counter-measures. The entire society will have to be prepared. The government and the administration need to launch a massive public awareness campaign against this danger.

One cannot overcome the danger unless one understands the exact nature of the danger. This article is a small attempt to raise awareness against China's Invisible Political Warfare against India.

Article by

Milind Mahajan
Retired Police Officer