Playing defensive is not a losing strategy. But India must display intent that it can also bat on the front foot in emerging domains such as ‘informatised warfare’

If India’s armed forces have undertaken physical counter-offensive manoeuvres against the PLA along the border, why not unleash Indian cyber warriors to deflate China’s inflated hyper-nationalistic self-image and fuel already simmering domestic dissent among Chinese netizens about their government’s non-transparency?

On New Year’s Day, China’s jingoistic State-owned news media outlets released a slickly produced video showing People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers unfurling a giant Chinese national flag in the Himalayan heights, with “never yield an inch of land” inscribed on rocks in the backdrop.

Claiming that these visuals were from the Galwan Valley, where the PLA and the Indian Army engaged in a bloody brawl in June 2020, the intended message was that superior China had defeated inferior India at the disputed border and that no one could dislodge China from territory that it occupies. The idea was to psych out India which dared to stand in China’s way.

A similar exercise in attempted psychological intimidation occurred in November 2021, when Chinese mouthpieces disseminated photographs purportedly showing “surrendered Indian soldiers captured by Chinese PLA” after the Galwan clash, crouching in humiliating postures as their proud Chinese captors looked on.

Neither the video nor the photographs were real. India’s security establishment neutralised the Chinese narrative about who controlled Galwan by publicising believable pictures of the Indian Army performing its New Year flag raising exercise there. Indian defence analysts poked holes in Beijing’s narrative by pointing out that the texture of the mountains in its video did not correspond to the geographic features of Galwan. Also, the glamourous looks of the PLA troops resembling Chinese movie stars suggested that it was staged. Observers also mocked earlier Chinese photos, wondering how Indian Army men could sport long hair and why the faces of the supposedly supplicant Indians seemed photoshopped.

Nonetheless, these episodes did demonstrate that democratic India is vulnerable to “fake news” attacks. Since there are critical voices in India’s competitive electoral arena who pick up and amplify stories which could show the Indian government’s record on national security in a poor light, there is a constituency for the Chinese to exploit.

Open societies are easier to penetrate by sly dictatorships in the digital age, where morphing content and making “deep fakes” to sow doubt about one’s foes is relatively easy. Even though the falsehoods eventually get debunked, some amount of damage is done simply by their circulation in a censorship-free democratic environment.

Western countries have for years been complaining about this phenomenon vis-à-vis Russia’s “hybrid war” and influence operations. China has far greater resources than Russia to carry out such missions. Media or “public opinion warfare” is a central tenet of China’s official doctrine of “three warfares”. Gaining an upper hand over enemies through manipulative means is embedded in Chinese strategic culture. Recognising this dimension of Chinese expansionism and countering it effectively is crucial.

Contrary to perceptions that democracies are inherently on the backfoot in “infowars”, they do have relative strengths that must be harnessed in the fightback. The extremely negative international perception of China as an aggressive power seeking to browbeat weaker neighbours, and widespread mistrust of China’s totalitarian system and whatever it puts out in the public domain, ought to be highlighted more systematically by India’s news media and officials. With China baring its claws through “wolf warrior diplomacy”, remaining diffident or understated in the face of deliberate smear jobs is not an option.

Can democracies like India go beyond reactively exposing the lies and deceit of autocratic China and seize the initiative to produce forged content of their own to embarrass and deter China? If India’s armed forces have undertaken physical counter-offensive manoeuvres against the PLA along the border, why not unleash Indian cyber warriors to deflate China’s inflated hyper-nationalistic self-image and fuel already simmering domestic dissent among Chinese netizens about their government’s non-transparency?

Playing defensive is not a losing strategy. But India must display intent that it can also bat on the front foot in emerging domains such as ‘informatised warfare’. Rolling back Chinese hegemony is not merely a matter of military counterbalancing or lessening the gap in economic capabilities. In an era where data and information determine power, one must think and act sharper.