India not a security threat, unlikely to catch up in defence sector: China

According to a PLA delegation at Shangri-La Dialogues, Beijing believed that India would not be a 'loyal partner' of the American Indo-Pacific Strategy because of its independent diplomatic policy

Currently, India is incapable of challenging China in defence manufacturing and military modernisation and thus poses no security threat to the country, Chinese delegates told the media on the sidelines of Shangri-La Dialogues in Singapore, as reported by the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

The delegates of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) said India is still far from catching China's military. This, they added, was especially true in the defence industry.

The SCMP report quoted Zhao Xiaozhuo, a senior colonel at the PLA Academy of Military Sciences, saying, "India is unlikely to catch up to China in the coming decades because of its weak industrial infrastructure, while China has built complex and systematic defence industrial platforms."

According to data released by the Stockholm International Peace Research (Sipri), India was the world's biggest arms importer between 2018 and 2022. Moreover, 31 per cent of its total weapons during the period came from Russia alone.

Zhao added that India's cooperation with Japan, the USA and Australia in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) would not impact the relations between New Delhi and Beijing at multilateral platforms like Brics and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).

The relations between China and India have been strained since the clashes between the two countries' armed forces in Galwan in 2020. Zhao added that despite the clashes, India is unlikely to be a "loyal partner" of the American Indo-Pacific strategy, mainly due to its independent diplomatic policy. 

The PLA delegation said that China and its neighbours would prefer the "Asian model" to solve their territorial disputes, signalling that the Western countries must not mingle in these disagreements.

The report also added that China had set a deadline of 2027 to convert the PLA into a modern fighting force. Another expert, senior Colonel Cao Yanzhong, a research fellow at the PLA Academy of Military Sciences, said that China's other goals include building a blue-water navy by 2035 and having a first-class military on par with the US by 2049.