With its land borders secure and in a world of declining defence expenditures, China’s spending on its armed forces has been seeing a sustained 15%-20% annual increase over the past decade. The acquisition, by China, of significant offensive capabilities for waging space and cyber warfare, apart from the continuing accretion of ICBMs, nuclear submarines and now stealthbombers and aircraft carriers, seem to belie its protestations of ‘peaceful intent’. As far as India is concerned, despite burgeoning bilateral trade, its strategic rivalry with China is rapidly spilling over into the maritime domain. This could be aggravated by an emerging overlap of interests because as China looks towards the Indian Ocean, India too is finding ‘interests’ in the South China Sea.

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