How China Chooses War – And Why India Should Worry About What Comes Before It |
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In the first three decades after 1949, the People’s Republic of China went to war five times – against the United States in Korea and the Taiwan Strait, against India in 1962, against the Soviet Union in 1969, and against Vietnam in 1979. Since then, it has not fought a major war.
This absence of war is often mistaken for restraint. It is not.
China’s Wars: The Politics and Diplomacy Behind its Military Coercion, Vijay Gokhale, S&S India, 2026.
What has changed is not China’s willingness to use force, but its preferred methods. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has steadily moved from overt war to what strategists call grey-zone coercion: calibrated, limited uses of military pressure designed to achieve political objectives without triggering full-scale conflict. The Himalayas, the South China Sea, and the Taiwan Strait are all theatres where this approach is now visible.
To understand how China might act in the future – particularly towards India – it is necessary to revisit its past conflicts. These wars were not accidents. Nor were they aberrations. They were instruments of statecraft, deployed at moments when political objectives could not be achieved by other means.
As Mao Zedong famously put it: “When politics develops to a certain stage beyond which it cannot proceed by the usual means, war breaks out to sweep away the obstacles in the way.”
This is not a rhetorical flourish. It is a governing principle.
The myth of defensive China
Chinese strategic doctrine insists that the country is inherently defensive, that it fights only in response to aggression, and that its actions are designed to restore the status quo. This narrative has been repeated in official white papers, diplomatic statements, and scholarly writings.
Yet the historical record tells a different story.
With the limited opening of Chinese........