Tuesday, January 10, 2017

INDO- PAK NUKE WAR GAME ;Worst-Case Scenarios: What Would Happen if Indo-Pak War Breaks Out?

SOURCE:
http://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/indo-pak-tensions-a-fictional-nuclear-war-scenario/story-gundIhC1iC0amJjMFYo3AN.html

Oct 08, 2015

PS: The views expressed herein though are personal. But Uri episode & its reaction being converted to INDIAN SURGICAL STRIKES goes a long way to prove that appreciations carried out by Professionals cannot be wished away. Ignoring the professional apprehensions is like digging own Graves

WORD OF WARNING

Three Nuclear explosions
of
Hiroshima & Nagasaki size
will render the complete area between
Rivers Yamana to Indus
non-habitable for the next fifty years
-Vasundhra

Terrorism from Pakistan must end ... India and Pakistan must institute genuine nuclear risk reduction measures. It must be recognised that de-escalation during conflict requires strategic communications and trustworthy back channel interlocutors. (Reuters Photo)

Worst-Case Scenarios: What Would Happen if Indo-Pak War Breaks Out? By

Gurmeet Kanwal

Hindustan Times

Pakistan’s former foreign minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri said during an interview on India Today TV a few days ago that “all hell would have broken loose” if India had bombed Muridke after the 26/11 terror strikes in Mumbai.

A week ago, responding to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s four-point peace initiative, the external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj told the United Nations General Assembly that only a single-point peace plan was needed and that was for Pakistan to stop sponsoring terrorism into India.

India has shown immense strategic restraint in the face of grave provocation from Pakistan. However, in the future, a major trans-border terrorist strike sponsored by Pakistan will almost certainly trigger Indian military retaliation. While it will be carefully calibrated, it could spin out of control. The fictional scenario described below could be actually played out, though the probability of its occurrence is low.

The Trigger:

Day 1

Dussehra-Diwali holidays, 2017. Tensions between India and Pakistan have escalated. At 1900 hours a day before Diwali (Day 1), serial bomb blasts on multiple targets in crowded markets in New Delhi result in approximately 300 casualties, including 12 foreign tourists.

A captured terrorist is found to be a former Major of the Pakistan army. Cutting across party lines, political leaders demand immediate military retaliation against Pakistan. TV anchors join in; passions are inflamed, the voices are shrill.

The Response:

Day 2.

The Indian Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) calls his Pakistani counterpart on the hotline and asks him to hand over the perpetrators of the terrorist strikes within 48 hours or face military action. The Pakistan DGMO expresses sympathy, but denies that the Pakistan army or the ISI played any role in the attacks. Strategic partners share evidence with India.

Day 3.

Based on multi-source intelligence inputs, the Indian government determines that the attack was launched by the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT); and, there is incontrovertible evidence of ISI involvement in the planning and conduct of the strikes. The Indian Foreign Secretary speaks with his Pakistani counterpart, but Pakistan remains in denial mode.

Chaired by the Prime Minister, the cabinet committee on security (CCS) meets at 1800 hours and approves military retaliation according to pre-planned contingencies to inflict punishment on the Pakistan army.

Day 4.

At 0600 hours, Indian Air Force fighter aircraft launch air-to-ground strikes against military targets in POK; artillery strikes are directed against Pakistan army’s forward posts; border action teams initiate offensive action; and, two Special Forces (SF) raids are launched on objectives in depth; collateral damage is carefully avoided.

The Indian armed forces and the nuclear forces are ordered to mobilise for war; Pakistan follows suit.

Days 5-6.

The Pakistani response is similar to Indian military action, though on a smaller scale. PAF aircraft do not cross the LoC. Pakistan expels the Indian High Commissioner and asks the High Commission to close down as its security can no longer be assured. India expels the Pakistan High Commissioner.

Conventional Conflict

: Days 7-8.

India continues its military strikes on the LoC and on military targets in POK, causing substantive damage. F-16 aircraft of the PAF cross the international boundary in the plains and strike three Indian airfields in the Jammu and Punjab sectors. Six IAF aircraft are destroyed. The Indian Cabinet Committee for Security(CCS) approves trans-border offensive operations.

Day 9.

IAF launches counter-air operations across the full length of the international boundary. At dusk, the Indian army launches several multi-pronged offensive operations into Pakistan in the Sialkot, Lahore (north and south), Cholistan and Thar Desert sectors. The Indian Strike Corps begin reaching their concentration and assembly areas. The Indian Navy enforces a Maritime Exclusion Zone off the Makran Coast of Pakistan; war at sea ensues.

The UN Security Council calls for the immediate cessation of hostilities by both sides.

Days 10-11.

The PAF retaliates, but with decreasing vigour. The IAF causes substantial damage to Pakistan’s corps and army reserves; Indian surface-to-surface missile (SSMs), multi-barrel rocket launchers (MBRLs) and medium-range artillery take a heavy toll of Pakistan army troops in contact and tactical reserves. India’s IBGs (integrated battle groups) make good progress, especially in the area south-east of Kasur (Lahore sector) and in the Cholistan Desert.

Pakistan launches a limited offensive with a division plus an armoured brigade from Chhamb towards Akhnur in the Jammu Sector.

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister flies to China.

Nuclear Strikes:

Day 12.

At noon, Pakistan’s army Chief warns India through a radio and TV broadcast to pull back immediately or face the wrath of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Several of India’s IBGs have succeeded in capturing territory to a depth ranging from 8-10 km in Punjab to 20 km in desert terrain and have caused sizable material damage.

Day 13.

Pakistan orders the civilian population in Cholistan Desert to be evacuated. The PAF launches a large-scale strike against Indian Strike Corps South that is in the process of moving forward on easy-to-spot, relatively unprotected railway lines; substantial damage is caused.

Day 14.

Ignoring the advice of his Prime Minister, Pakistan’s army Chief approves nuclear strikes. At 1800 hours, the Army Strategic Forces Command launches two nuclear strikes on the Indian division advancing in the Cholistan Desert, one on each forward brigade. As the Indian columns are advancing in buttoned-down mode and have NBC protection, casualties are limited: 60 soldiers killed or wounded, 32 tanks and infantry combat vehicles destroyed or damaged.

The Indian offensive in the Cholistan Desert comes to a temporary halt.

The GOC-in-C, Southern Command orders Strike Corps South to be prepared to launch offensive operations according to planned contingencies.

At 1830 hours, the US President calls the Indian Prime Minister and appeals to him to desist from retaliating with nuclear strikes; he also offers to mediate and says the US Secretary of Defence is already on his way to Islamabad. Several other world leaders also call the PM. At 2200 hours, the UNSC asks India to show restraint and calls on both the countries once again to cease all hostilities forthwith.

As the Indian PM walks in at 1900 hours to chair a meeting of the political council of the Nuclear Command Authority, the mood in the National Command Post is grim. The army chief gives his assessment of the situation and his recommendations; the naval and air chiefs follow. The National Security Adviser begins by saying that the time for restraint is over. He recommends multiple nuclear strikes in retaliation. After a brief discussion, the political council approves the recommendations made by the NSA.

Day 15.

At 0700 hours, India launches four nuclear strikes of appropriate yield on the reserve forces of the Pakistan army. Two strikes are launched on 4 Corps reserves south-east of Kasur in the Lahore sector and two on 2 Corps (Army Reserve South) near Bahawalpur. Pakistani casualties: 660 civilians killed or wounded, 345 troops killed or wounded, 56 tanks, infantry combat vehicles and missile launchers destroyed or damaged.

De-escalation:

At 1000 hours, the Indian PM makes a radio and TV broadcast to the people of Pakistan and its leadership and warns of nuclear annihilation if even one more nuclear warhead is exploded on Indian troops or on any target in India. He also offers a cease-fire, to come into effect at 1800 hours the same day. Pakistan promptly rejects the cease-fire offer unless India agrees to vacate all Pakistani territory within 48 hours of the cease-fire.

At 1430 hours, with the PM’s approval, India’s COAS authorises offensive operations by two Strike Corps. At 1830 hours, the spearheads of the Strike Corps begin rolling across the international boundary.

At 2000 hours, the US President speaks with the Pakistani PM who is at GHQ, Rawalpindi. Pakistan’s army chief, the chief of the general staff, the DGMO and the director general, Strategic Plans Division are listening in. At 2100 hours, Pakistan accepts India’s cease-fire offer effective 2200 hours.

Epilogue:

For 70 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, some basic human survival instinct has held the hand that could have pulled the nuclear trigger.

India and Pakistan must ensure that this record is not broken in South Asia.

State-sponsored terrorism emanating from Pakistani soil must end immediately if the scenario described above is to remain fictional. India and Pakistan must go beyond the cosmetic nuclear confidence building measures (CBMs) now in place and institute genuine nuclear risk reduction measures (NRRMs). De-escalation during conflict will be possible only if strategic communications are in place and there are trustworthy back channel interlocutors. Finally, third party mediation has its limitations, but can often be useful during conflict.

Gurmeet Kanwal is former director, Centre for Land Warfare Studies, New Delhi.

India’s Foreign Policy Challenges For 2017 – Analysis

SOURCE
file:///C:/Users/ADMIN/Desktop/India%E2%80%99s%20Foreign%20Policy%20Challenges%20For%202017%20%E2%80%93%20Analysis%20%E2%80%93%20Eurasia%20Review.html

India’s Foreign Policy Challenges For 2017 – Analysis

By

Dr Subhash Kapila*

Fluidity in global geopolitical dynamics on verge of 2017 centring on USA, Russia and China with consequent impact on Indian foreign policy is already evident with the initial posturing of US President-elect Trump.

India’s foreign policy management since May 2014 has notched appreciable and dynamic successes under the leadership and personal diplomacy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. India’s diplomatic profile has gone up and the regrettable ‘strategic deficit’ of the previous ten years of governance in conceptualising Indian foreign policy formulations stands erased. India today figures substantially in the geopolitical calculus of the Major Powers as never before.

In the unfolding geopolitical dynamics as the world heads towards 2017 India has emerged as the ‘Swing State”, something which can be lucratively capitalised by the Indian foreign policy establishment. Yet, attendant on all this is the crucial imperative for Indian foreign policy planners to estimate and predict the responses and reactive strategies of China and Russia to the forthcominglikely aggressiveness and lesser restraint in the foreign policy of the new US President.

India under the above contextual unfolding of global strategies of USA, Russia and China can no longer operate on the trajectory of its existing foreign policy template. In the ensuing melee, the strategic determinants of India’s foreign policy would tend to dominate the economic determinants. As far as the latter is concerned, India is already an established economic power and an attractive destination for Foreign Direct Investments. India would therefore be well advised to concentrate on the strategic content of its foreign policy formulations to meet the challenges unfolding in 2017 and which would go beyond 2017.

Indian foreign policy can never be crafted in a vacuum or delusionary Non-Alignment-ism or the much hackneyed “Strategic Restraint” mantra of yesteryears. Geopolitical dynamics would force India to exercise strategic alignment options with no luxury of hedging strategies or preaching multilateralism like China which while sermonising on the same behaves autocratically with its neighbours including India.

Imperceptibly and incrementally, but surely, India seems to have already exercised its strategic alignment preference in favour of the United States. India being designated as a ‘Major Defence Partner’ by USA and the various logistics access and interoperability agreements agreed upon testify to the enhanced strategic partnership between USA and India.

Both in India and the United States bipartisan strong support exists for the US-India Strategic Partnership. With that is as a given, India should expect that the same would continue even under the Trump Administration. Any contrary rhetoric during the Trump campaign trail needs to be discounted including his recent laudatory reverences in his telephonic conversation with Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif.

The challenge for Indian foreign policy establishment in 2017 as regards the United States will rest more on higher strategic expectations and call that the Trump Administration would have on India as the United States gets tough with China and the resultant strategic fall-out from the same.

India may not be a full military alliance partner of the United States but the attendant circumstances which impelled the evolution of the US-India Strategic Partnership was the ‘China Threat’ factor and there is no point in being in denial on it. As a major ‘Strategic Partner’, the military expectations are the same as those from a military alliance partner. India’s challenge therefore in 2017 is not only to reinforce its strategic links with the United States but also prepare its diplomatic contingency plans to deal with the fall-out of the new ‘China Policy’ of the United States in the offing. Concomitant with the foregoing is the military imperative for India to upgrade its war=preparedness and fill the voids in its military inventories.

There is no point in India pretending that it can continue to be a neutral observer when the chips are down between USA and China. China can be expected to use India as a pressure point against the United States even without any military provocations by India. China has not forgiven India for moving into the American strategic orbit.

China will present the biggest foreign policy challenge in 2017 and the ensuing years basically arising from the more assertive policies of the United States in the Asia Pacific specifically and Indo Pacific Asia in general. China has fumed in various ways at the growing strategic proximity of India with the United States. This will intensify as the Trump Administration is unlikely to exercise strategic restraint with China in face of growing Chinese military brinkmanship in East Asia and on its peripheries, including India.

The China challenge to India’s foreign policy establishment gets magnified additionally with the China - Pakistan Axis getting substantially reinforced as a result of geopolitical changes adverse to China. Pakistan with China’s military encouragement would tend to adopt more provocative and adversarial postures against India. India should expect a surge in terrorist attacks emanating from [ CHINESE PROTECTORATE OF ] Pakistan.

The inescapable conclusion rising from the above is that the propensity of the Indian foreign policy establishment to initiate unilateral political reach out to both China and Pakistan will no longer be valid. India needs to realise that the ‘Pakistan Threat’ to India in recent years is being fuelled more by China. China is the major, potent and long-range threat to India.

No scope exists for Indian diplomacy to dilute the ‘China Threat’ and the now China-added ‘Pakistan Threat’ to India.

The challenge for India’s foreign policy and diplomacy in 2017 and beyond is to sensitise world opinion on the imminence of the ‘China Threat’ both in terms of military capabilities and intentions, not only to India but also to larger parts of Asia. This arises because in Chinese perceptions where the United States figures as the prime threat, China feels it best to first target countries close to USA like Japan and India.

Russia used to be the traditional counterweight to the ‘China Threat’ and ‘Pakistan Threat’ to India. But with Russia not even pretending to be neutral between China and India after having moved into China’s orbit, and under Chinese influence Russia openly allying with Pakistan, India is left with no strategic counterweight to the dual China-Pakistan Axis Threats, but for the United States and its allies.

Russia has in the last two years has openly reversed its strategic preferences in South Asia by openly siding with Pakistan on issues like the Afghan Taliban to furtherance of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

India’s foreign policy challenge is 2017 is to devise diplomatic initiatives to offset Russia’s tilt to Pakistan and creating a complex strategic challenge for India in South Asia. In short Russia’s present moves in South Asia can no longer be viewed as India-friendly. India must forthwith reset its Russia-policy.

One would be glad to accept a cogent rebuttal to the above from the many China-apologists and Russia-apologists that thrive in India. India must not hope and be in a state of denial about Russia’s strategic commitments to India enshrined in the Russia-India Strategic Partnership or that the China-India Strategic Partnership was an insurance against China’s adversarial stances against India or that would ensure peace and tranquillity on the Indian borders with Tibet, presently under Chinese military occupation.

One does not foresee any major complications arising from the advent of Trump Administration in India’s ‘Neighbours First’ foreign policy, barring Pakistan. China however will continues to muscle-in on to India’s turf and the future challenges are to ensure that Indian foreign policy gaze is not lifted from its neighbourhood while it wrestles with the challenges of the geopolitical churning involving the Major Powers.

While dwelling on India’s foreign policy challenges in 2017 the biggest challenge that has surfaced in years is that India’s political Opposition’s failure to present a united bipartisan front on India’s foreign policy and India’s national security challenges. It affects India’s national image which is an important foreign policy input for Major Powers as they devise their Indian policies.

Concluding, one would like to re-emphasise that India is at strategic crossroads where India in the pursuit of its national aspiration to emerge as a global player would be called upon to exercise its strategic preferences in terms of preferred partners with which it enjoys major convergences. On the verge of 2017, the United States, Japan, Australia, Indonesia and Vietnam should be the major focus of India’s foreign policy in 2017.

Sunday, January 8, 2017

Agni Trials: By Threatening India over test-firing of ICBMs, China has revealed its Insecurity (R)

SOURCE:
http://www.firstpost.com/world/agni-trials-by-threatening-india-over-test-firing-of-icbms-china-has-revealed-its-insecurity-3193010.html

Agni Trials: By Threatening India over test-firing of ICBMs, China has revealed its Insecurity

#Agni IV #AgniV #China #ConnectTheDots #Defence #Deng Xiaoping #ICBM #India #LAC #Pakistan #Rafale fighter jets #Shivshankar Menon #Sukhoi-30MKI fighters #T-72 tanks #UN Security Council #Xi Jinping

Jan 7, 2017

There is something curious about the latest round of confrontation between India and China on the former's final testing of an intercontinental ballistic missile. It's not as if that by testing one ICBM, albeit with a capacity to carry a nuclear warhead into Chinese mainland, India has caught up with China's military might and drew parity with their vastly superior strategic nuclear weaponry.

With a GDP five times that of India's and a defence budget that at $150 billion outstrips India's by four times, China is bent upon world domination and dreams of replacing US as the next global superpower.

It therefore sounded a little jarring when Chinese media on Thursday in.dulged in nakedly aggressive posturing over India's final test-firing of Agni-IV and played its Pakistan card rather openly, warning India that more missile testing will develop into an arms race in south Asia because it won't shy away from arming Islamabad to match India's arsenal

This represents an interesting new deviation in Chinese policy. Though this wasn't an "official response" to India's flight-testing of Agni-IV that carries a strike range of 4,000km, the country's state-run media is traditionally used to convey messages that are considered too incendiary for official conduits. The diplomatic reaction, transmitted through China's foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying, wasn't too staid either as Beijing accused India of breaking UNSC resolutions through the testing of ballistic missile.

Under President Xi Jinping, China has long given Deng Xiaoping's '24-character strategy' a quiet burial in favour of a muscular, assertive foreign policy but that geopolitical aggression is usually masked by plausible deniability or an exaggerated show of humility. Not exactly Gandhian principle of "true power speaks softly" but China rarely indulges in sabre-rattling even as under Jinping it goes about pursuing the 'Chinese Dream' and translating aggressively its might as world's second-largest economy into hard military power.

Its revisionist policies under the new "core leader" and leveraging of economic prowess into geostrategic depth and political weight-throwing has always gone hand in hand with a perverse modesty.

Not this time.

India's test-firing of DRDO-developed long-range weaponry that may carry nuclear weaponry deep into Chinese territory seems to have touched a raw nerve that prompted Beijing to launch an open threat and use the one card that it prefers to hide beneath its sleeves — Pakistan.

The Global Times editorial wrote: "In general, it is not difficult for India to produce intercontinental ballistic missiles which can cover the whole world. If the UN Security Council has no objection over this, let it be. The range of Pakistan's nuclear missiles will also see an increase."

Beijing's use of Pakistan to contain India is nothing new. It has exploited the animosity between the neighbours to great effect. Whereas on one hand, it has built strategic depth inside Pakistan by almost-colonising the economically bankrupt nation, it has also propped up the warmonger Rawalpindi generals by supplying arms and military technology so that they may remain up to scratch in an arms race and keep India within their crosshairs. But in every step of the way, China has maintained a façade of neutrality.

What explains the departure?

In his book Choices, former national security adviser Shivshankar Menon provides some valuable insights. According to Menon, who served as India's foreign secretary and was instrumental in engineering the 1993 Border Peace Agreement with China during the Narasimha Rao regime, the balance of power between India and China is of great importance to the latter. Though Beijing never shies away from pointing out the difference between India and China in terms of economic and military might, it is perennially worried about India inching towards some sort of parity.

The shades of this were evident in the border dispute between the two countries. While China had vastly improved its military and civilian infrastructure along the Sino-Indian border in the 1980s and 1990s, it became — according to Menon who served as India's envoy to China from 2000-03 — extremely annoyed when New Delhi tried to close the infrastructure gap and enhance military deployments and capabilities along the LAC. The Chinese, says the author, has been pressing hard of late for an agreement that would "freeze the existing imbalance" along the border.

Not surprisingly, this has become the latest flashpoint of conflicting interests and Chinese irritation has been further exacerbated by Indian steps along the 120,000 square-mile long LAC. As a Times of India report points out, New Delhi has decided to base

[A] the first squadron of Rafale fighter jets at Bengal's Hashimara base from 2019 as part of "conventional deterrence against China".

[B] Other steps include

( i ) additional Sukhoi-30MKI fighters,
(ii) spy drones & helicopters in the North East, (iii)deployment of T-72 tanks in eastern Ladakh and Sikkim, (iv)new infantry divisions, Mountain Strike Corps, Super Hercules Aircraft and the works, according to the report.

The Chinese threats, therefore, are an expression of insecurity that should help India gain strategic leverage against the Dragon.

RELATED:

Eye on China, India to base first squadron of Rafale fighter jets in Bengal

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/eye-on-china-india-to-base-first-squadron-of-rafale-fighter-jets-in-bengal/articleshow/56384484.cms

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Deng Xiaoping’s "24-Character Strategy"

SOURCE: [ http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/china/24-character.htm&gws_rd=cr&ei=az5yWMm8IYPavAS8tLfABg]

Deng Xiaoping’s "24-Character Strategy" first emerged in 1990 in response both to the global backlash from the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown and to the CCP’s sense of alarm following the collapse of the communist states of Eastern Europe.49 The strategy provided basic principles on how China should protect its national interests while increasing its interactions with the world. The "24-Character Strategy’’ has been roughly translated as:

"Observe calmly; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership."

As stated in a 2010 essay posted on an official CCP website, "Hide our capabilities and bide our time, make some contributions" and related thoughts were put forward by Deng Xiaoping for the ‘special period’ of the late 1980s and early 1990s, in the midst of sudden changes in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the socialist camp. . . . Currently, there are people in other countries who have produced misunderstandings and distortions of ‘hide our capabilities and bide our time.’ These people believe that China’s foreign policy strategy has a long-term, undeclared content and purpose:

This is that China believes that its current strength is insufficient, and the time has not yet come to announce and implement this great strategy, and consequently must ‘Hide our capabilities and bide our time,’ concealing the true situation and waiting for the right time of opportunity. . . . However, this is . . . a serious misunderstanding and distortion of the ‘hide our capabilities and bide our time’ idea stated by Comrade Deng Xiaoping . . . the original idea of using the expression ‘hide our capabilities and bide our time’ was the strategy of ‘developing ourselves,’ and not at all to ‘seek revenge on others’ after we have developed."

CCP General Secretary Jiang Zemin continued this policy throughout the 1990s, making it a central tenet of Chinese foreign policy for more than ten years. The result was that China’s strategic orientation ‘‘demonstrate[d] unusual consistency from the 1980s through the 2000s,’’ with China’s leaders "insisting on the importance of sticking to Deng Xiaoping’s realist legacy."

The phrase tao guang yang hui, “keep a low profile” was used by Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s as part of a famous description of China’s foreign policy. Zhao Qizheng, dean of the School of Journalism of Renmin University of China and formal head of State Council Information Office, argues that some foreigners misunderstand the real meaning of Deng Xiaoping’s proposal.

But some foreigners read it as advocating deception about China’s true strength. Zhao maintains that “keep a low profile” is not a trick, but an expression of a particular approach. Yet other scholars point out that in a classical context, the phrase is used to indicate a strategic ruse. But the key problem is not in which dynasty or in which book the term first appeared or whether the ancients used it in reference to strategic trickery. The core is how to understand the context in which Deng used the term.

Chinese civilization is always developing and the context of the same word or idiom is changing, and our understanding of an idiom should follow its own development and changes. No matter how scholars of various dynasties understood the term “tao guang yang hui,” in the 1990s, Chinese used it to express the meaning of “maintaining a low profile,” focusing on developing China.

The Chinese people have traditionally valued “enduring humiliation in order to carry out an important task, self-reliance, hard work and plain living.” The Chinese like to believe they aren’t expansionist, colonial, or imperial, and don’t hit out in all directions to grab and keep territory.

The idiom tao guang yang hui could be translated as “to keep a low profile” in modern times and it could even be translated as “to be self-effacing.” However, it could never be translated as “to hide one’s ability and pretend to be weak” or “hide one’s capabilities and bide one’s time” in a modern context.

After 30 years of reforming and opening-up, China experienced rapid developments in all aspects and grew into the world’s second largest economy. The building up of national defense began to be modernized and the society is more diverse. A brief study of the background of Deng's 24-character principle will give people a better understand as to the meaning of "hide our capacities and bide our time". Deng made the remarks after the drastic changes in Eastern Europe, when people in foreign countries and in China hoped China to shoulder up the great banner of socialism.

In the 24-character principle, Deng stressed "never claim leadership". He said China will never claim the leadership, never seek hegemony, never seek sphere of influence, never practice group politics, and never interfere with internal affairs of other countries even if it becomes a strong nation one day. Understanding the sentence completely, one will see "never claim leadership" is the core of China's strategy for development. Based on the strategy, the Chinese leaders of new generation set forth the concept to build a harmonious world.