According to analyst Wang Qiang, China had intended to fight both East and West wars at the same time sometime in the second half of 2020, i.e., to defeat India and Taiwan simultaneously in the shortest possible time.
Since May 2020, tensions along the Sino-Indian border increased until the conflict in the Galwan Valley broke out on June 15, after which China and India launched several rounds of negotiations, and although partial consensus was reached and there was some disengagement, overall no substantive progress was made due to mutual non-concessions, with one focal point of whether to restore what India called the “Line of Actual Control before April”, until February 2021, when China and India reached a consensus in the ninth round of military commander-level talks to achieve the withdrawal of both troops at Pangong Tso.
After news of this round of talks broke, the Chinese and Indian media both said their country won, and the two sides achieved a swift withdrawal of troops, while the details of the talks remain unknown to the outside world.
Chinese analysts generally speculate that India was eager to achieve the withdrawal mainly because the new U.S. President Joe Biden is no longer keen to push India into a fierce confrontation with China after coming to power. But anonymous sources also say that India had gradually softened its attitude during the many rounds of Sino-Indian talks as it realized that China’s assertiveness had exceeded their expectations and that China didn’t seem to rule out a medium-sized war on the Sino-Indian border. This shift of altitude was communicated to the Chinese top brass, who decided to go along with it and give India an out, which was overwhelmed by the COVID-19 pandemic and expensive war preparations.
However, the subtle change in India’s attitude wasn’t the main reason for China’s compromise, and in those one or two months late last year when the military tensions were at their peak, China was ready to engage in a war with India, which, if it broke out, would be no less intense than the Sino-Indian border war of 1962, and intended to take advantage of the victory to recover the South Tibet region in one fell swoop. As the Chinese military generally believed that India would be defeated quickly, a comprehensive plan for the war was then sent to the desk of the Chinese top brass, waiting for an order to be given.
One of the factors that made China’s top brass hesitate at the time was the Taiwan issue, although it was not the biggest concern. In 2020, in the face of repeated provocations from Taiwan and the United States, China held several large-scale exercises and continuous patrols around Taiwan, both as a warning to Taiwan’s separatist forces and the United States, and as a combat preparation for the reunification of Taiwan. And as the pandemic in the U.S. continued to worsen, especially with the mass infection of multiple U.S. aircraft carriers with the COVID-19 virus, China’s top brass was increasingly leaning toward the latter intention, which was to take advantage of the opportunity to recover Taiwan.
But if this plan was implemented, China would most likely be in the worst situation of fighting on two fronts. However, after careful analysis, the top brass believed that China was fully capable of winning both wars against India and Taiwan, provided that the U.S. will not be deeply involved, i.e., will not send troops to the war in time to defend Taiwan. And at the time, China’s judgment was that the United States definitely would not.
The main reason for giving up on recovering Taiwan in 2020 is that the Chinese administration judged as early as September, with the help of intelligence information, that Donald Trump would lose the U.S. election and that Sino-U.S. relations would then ease, and it had become increasingly convinced of that judgment since then.
Moreover, as India softened its stance in the Sino-Indian talks, particularly at the eighth round of military chief-level talks between the two armies on Nov. 6, 2020, when Joe Biden almost won the U.S. election, China’s top brass tended to believe that it was not worth opening a war over a minor border dispute against the backdrop of a domestic economic situation that was the best in the world amid the global pandemic, and this helped the two sides hit it off later in the negotiations. At a meeting with provincial and ministerial leaders on January 11, 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping emphasized in his speech that “time and momentum are on our side, and this is where our determination and confidence lie,” confirming that the scales have shifted on war or not, and that he did not intend to engage in war in the short term.
However, although China has temporarily put aside the idea of war, it is unlikely that the Chinese top brass will make too many concessions in the face of rising nationalist sentiment at home and the aggressive nature that India has always shown in territorial disputes. In particular, the Biden administration’s policy toward China remains unclear, even though the U.S. has temporarily relaxed its provocations and persecution of China.
If China’s top brass believes that war is inevitable and that the benefits of war might outweigh the disadvantages, then it still wouldn’t rule out a decisive retrieval of Taiwan, and even if India makes things difficult for China during this period, China would have to “clean India up” together.