India–China and Their War-making Capacities

Much has been said about how China’s rapidly growing economy has led to increasing power disparity between India and China over the last two decades. China’s economic growth in this period has been spectacular, but it is not clear whether that gives a good sense of how effective its military capabilities are against India. In the context of the escalating Sino-Indian rivalry, this article asks the question: what is the nature of India’s power disparity vis-à-vis China? And does the existing power disparity between India and China give China a clear and uncontestable advantage? We argue that while there is significant asymmetry between India and China, the asymmetry is not as overwhelming when we consider certain facets of war-making capacity such as capital intensiveness of the military, military mobilisation, extractive capacity of the state and the institutional capacities to mobilise forces on a large scale, should the occasion demand. Moreover, India, with a more defensive posture against China, is in a better position to counter it because it mitigates the effects of power disparity. Therefore, we seek to understand the variation in asymmetries across different parameters of war-making capacity and force structure to better assess where the two countries may have advantages and disadvantages in the months and years to come. This article’s main contribution is to demonstrate through publicly available data the various levels of asymmetry between India and China. It also contributes to the security studies, rising powers and conflict literature.