Where the assessment can provide interesting insights regarding China is on the regional front. Beijing continues to ratchet up its military capability to exert its influence in the South China Sea and beyond. Last Sunday, it hiked its defence budget by 7.2%, marking eight years of back-to-back increase in military spending, even as Beijing notched up its 2023 growth projection to 5% from the earlier 4.1%. Instead of getting sucked into a veritable arms race, India must step up its multilateral engagements with its allies to be in ‘ever-pushback’ mode. China’s plans to further increase global supply-chain dependencies can provide a strong push for supply-chain diversification for the US and its allies. India could certainly benefit from this.
India continues to engage bilaterally with China on the border front. New Delhi needs to build up its capacities, work with its partners to create economic and supply-chain alternatives, as well as address global challenges in the developing world. The observations made by the US intelligence community more or less matches India’s own expectations. Which is a good sign confirming that liberal, open democracies are on the same page.
