750 { China’s Quest
The most unnerving aspect of Beijing’s pressure campaign was an eruption
of commentary on Chinese websites, including some linked to the PLA, about
a possible war between China and India. One article posted on the website of
the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Beijing, a PLA-linked think
tank, for example, warning that India could respond to China’s planned
damning of the upper Brahmaputra River with a military strike that could
lead to a war larger than that of 1962. In this war, India would have “much
support,” while China would face a two-front war, since the United States
was likely to make a move regarding Taiwan in order to “contain China.”^29
Many inventive scenarios of PRC-Indian war were posted online during the
2005–2009 period. This effort was probably a type of psychological operation
intended to make India think about how heavy the costs to India might be if
New Delhi continued to display such an unfriendly approach to China. Cyber
threats of war dovetailed with increased forward-leaning patrolling on the
border.India-Japan Relations: Inception of a Countervailing CoalitionBeijing’s mix of reassurance and pressure toward Japan and India was not
sufficient to keep those two Asian powers from pulling together and hewing
more closely to the United States out of common concern over how China had
used and would use its growing power. Step by step, a loose coalition of Japan
and India formed to balance China’s growing strength. Washington quietly
encouraged this emerging Asian coalition as well as the efforts of Tokyo and
New Delhi to expand dialogue with other like-minded countries: Australia,
Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Rather than becoming comfort-
able with China’s rapidly growing power, Japan and India drew closer to one
another, and to the United States, out of common concern about China’s
growing power and assertive behavior.
According to Richard Samuels, by the mid-1990s Japan began incremen-
tally to embrace the practice of de facto collective security. Apprehension
over China’s growing strength was central to this course.^30 China’s actions
helped create a deep congruence of Indian and Japanese views regarding
China’s rise. Both Tokyo and New Delhi aspired to play a greater role in Asia
and saw China as attempting to prevent that: by blocking permanent Security
Council membership for both, by emphasizing the history issue with Japan
and by arming Pakistan in the case of India, by taking hard lines on territo-
rial disputes. The history issue that weighed so heavily in Sino-Japan relations
did not exist in Indo-Japan ties. In fact, the anti-European colonial aspect
of World War II in Asia produced a feeling of kinship between India and
Japan. Both worried that China’s growing naval strength and activity astride
vital sea lines of communication with the Persian Gulf and the Suez Canal,