Beijing is preparing for a high-intensity conflict with the USA, but India is mistaken if it believes it stands on the sidelines. The new Chinese military strategy directly touches the Indian borders, the Indian Ocean, and the very stability of South Asia. The 2025 Annual Report of the United States Department of Defense to Congress, regarding military and security developments involving the People's Republic of China, is primarily addressed to an American audience. However, its implications extend deep into India as well. The report functions simultaneously as a warning and a strategic mirror for the Indian security system, highlighting how the rapid modernization of the Chinese armed forces, integrated warfare concepts, and China's global defense networks directly shape India's security environment, from the Line of Actual Control to the Indian Ocean. At the core of the report lies the clear assessment that China is reshaping the People's Liberation Army for high-intensity, multi-domain wars against a "strong enemy"—the United States.
Why India should worry
India, however, cannot derive security from the assumption that it constitutes a secondary theater. The Chinese strategic analyses themselves, cited in the report, treat future great power conflicts as a single continuum: gray zones, hybrid warfare, and high-tech combat operations that can, if required, escalate into "total national war." In this context, war is not just a confrontation of armies but a clash of national systems. Cyberspace, space, sanctions, naval pressure, and influence operations function in combination to paralyze decision-making. Even if Taiwan remains the most pressing scenario, the report points out that the capabilities and exercises of the People's Liberation Army include long-range strike options, up to 1,500–2,000 nautical miles, designed to control escalation and deter multiple actors. To this is added the broad Chinese perception of "nuclear interests," which includes Arunachal Pradesh. Thus, preparations typically targeting the United States produce coercion tools and escalation paths that can also be turned against India.
Of particular importance for India is the rapid maturation of the Chinese C4ISR architecture, which is changing the way crises unfold at a regional level. Although the People's Liberation Army's capacity for long-range kinetic strikes is oriented toward the Western Pacific, the expansion of space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities, low-orbit satellite constellations, and long-range sensors drastically enhance the Chinese perspective both in the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean. This blurs the boundaries between a local border tension and a broader, multi-sectoral confrontation involving space, cyberspace, and information warfare.
This dynamic became visible during the India–Pakistan crisis of 2025. China's leadership in the Asia–Pacific Space Cooperation Organization, with members such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka, offers an institutional framework for space coordination, including the sharing of data from Chinese remote sensing satellites. Reports that China redeployed satellites near the India–Pakistan border before the attack on Pahalgam and shared real-time information with the Pakistan Air Force do not necessarily prove prior knowledge of the crisis, but they demonstrate a deeper pattern of Sino-Pakistani C4ISR interconnection, which Pakistan's Defense Minister Khawaja Asif also publicly confirmed. The report says little explicitly about China–Pakistan defense relations, but the message to India is clear. Beijing's readiness to continue transfers of dual-use technologies to Russia, despite international pressure, reveals a broader pattern of strategic determination. In South Asia, this reinforces Indian fears that Chinese military aid to Pakistan in sectors such as missiles, submarines, space, and cyberspace will further intensify, complicating Indian deterrent planning and reviving the specter of a two-front scenario.
Indian Ocean
Developments in the Indian Ocean require equally increased attention. The report highlights the steady Chinese effort to create an overseas network of bases and logistics infrastructure, from official bases to access agreements and People's Liberation Army facilities that coexist with commercial infrastructure. The base in Djibouti, the new facilities at the Ream naval base in Cambodia, and Chinese interest in access points in Africa and the Indo-Pacific, including Sri Lanka and Pakistan, reinforce India's fears of "dual-use" infrastructure and the gradual normalization of the Chinese naval presence. China's aircraft carrier program, with the third ship, Fujian, having begun sea trials, further compresses the strategic distance between the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean.
Of particular importance is Chinese self-confidence in escalation control. Revised strategic guidelines accept the early and selective use of long-range precision strikes, supported by cyber and space capabilities, to paralyze the opponent's decision-making. For India, this increases the risk that future border crises will escape local land conflicts and expand into critical infrastructure, communication networks, and even political systems. The report, however, is not only a list of threats. It also highlights opportunities. China's internal problems, corruption within the People's Liberation Army, lack of recent combat experience, and concerns about alliances under the United States point to a military power still in transition. India does not need to compete with China in scale but to exploit asymmetries: geography, resilience, partnerships, and strategic clarity.
Finally, the report reinforces a diplomatic reality that New Delhi knows well: de-escalation with China does not equate to normalization. Chinese interest in stabilization at the Line of Actual Control appears to stem less from goodwill and more from the desire to prevent further convergence of India with American strategic frameworks. In conclusion, the American assessment of the rise of Chinese military power should not be read in India as an external analysis of great power competition. It is a strategic X-ray of the environment in which India already lives. The goal for New Delhi is not simply to react, but to anticipate.
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