Chinese general and military strategist Sun Tzu believes that, ‘all warfare is based on deception’, and China actively pursues this strategy. It has resulted in growing uneasiness about the hardening Chinese stance in the long-festering border talks, coupled with stepped up incursions by People’s Liberation Army across the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Indian Prime Minister is planning to hold talks, but the all-important issue of the still unresolved 4,057-km LAC will continue to be a source of irritation between the two countries. Earlier it was agreed that an early boundary settlement will advance the basic interests of the two countries and must therefore be pursued as a strategic objective. But there has been little evidence of it till now. India and China did hold their first-ever joint Army exercise, somewhat ambitiously at Kunming last month.

But that does not detract from the fact that the Indian security establishment continues to be worried about China's massive build-up of military infrastructure all along the LAC. The strategic implications of the up gradation of the road network by China and Pakistan along the Karakoram highway, which is expected to be completed by 2016, for instance, will be huge for Indian forces.

Over the last two years, there have been around 300 cases of intrusions by Chinese troops across the LAC, right from east Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh to Joshimath in Uttarakhand and Pangong Lake in Ladakh. Chinese forces, in fact, have even introduced into Bhutanese territory at the tri junction with India a couple of times in recent months. Chinese moves as a deliberate strategy to put pressure on India and strengthen China’s claims on disputed areas along the LAC.

In view of the impending security threats from China the government constituted a high profile study group, which included the foreign secretary, defense secretary and heads of intelligence agencies. This was prompted after the Army revised its estimate on how soon China can move troops along the LAC, particularly across Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim. India had carried out a detailed exercise two decades ago on the Chinese threat and categorized threat levels into low, medium and high depending on the number of troops Beijing could move given the difficult terrain.

The revised threat assess¬ment has questioned the Indian position as Indian border posts are not well connected either by motor able roads, and are not well defended. Reaching a border post takes anywhere between 7 to 10 days. Since China has resolved its border dispute with Russia, it can easily deploy 5, 00,000 troops along the Sino-Indian border. Besides, PLA has built a number of airfields in Tibet for deployment of fighters against Indian positions all along the border. On the contrary India has ignored its defense preparedness.

Though India is trying to have friendly relations with China, but it needs to be prepared at the front too.