The PLA at Home and Abroad - Strategic Studies Institute - U.S. Army

India does not match China in economic strength,
national infrastructure, or military spending. Nor, he
declared, does India plan to match China’s military
capabilities in either conventional or nonconventional
arms. 33
The suspicions contaminating Sino-Indian relations
derive from the competing territorial claims that
led to a brief war in 1962. That war created the tensions
that continue despite a steady improvement of
relations set in motion in the 1980s, particularly with
Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to Beijing
in 1988. Sino-Indian border disputes show no sign of
resolution today despite the confidence-building measures
agreed to in 1996 and ratified in 1997 together
with high-level meetings on border questions that
have served to keep the frontier quiet despite frequent
charges from New Delhi that Chinese forces violate
Indian territory by crossing the Line of Actual Control
(LAC). Relations suffered a setback in 1998 when
India’s nuclear weapons programs were defined as a
deterrent against China following the tests of nuclear
devices. PLA Daily responded by declaring that the
nuclear tests exposed India’s ambition to become the
region’s hegemon. 34 No doubt India’s nuclear weapons
programs continue as a source of concern for
China as China’s do for India, thereby adding to their
mutual suspicions.
Pakistan has been India’s bête noir since the day
of its founding and the brutal transition period separating
the two sovereignties, and China has been
Pakistan’s steadfast supporter for decades. Until the
early 1990s, Beijing’s strategic objective was to keep
India occupied with a threat that would distract India’s
military from the northern border with China.
China was crucial to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons 35 and
67