“Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake up the world.”
Napoleon’s prophecy is about two centuries old. It is coming true now. The man who has awakened it is Xi Jinping, China’s paramount leader (Zuigao Lingdaorén), General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, and its powerful nationalist president since 2013. His Made in China 2025 policy seeks to realise the Chinese dream of world hegemony. His instrument is self-reliance: reducing China’s dependence on foreign technology to become a fully capable military manufacturing power in its own right.
That technology is what Napoleon warned the world about. The warning is echoed by a capable officer who knows the India-China frontier not as a line on a map but as a difficult, unforgiving stretch of mountains where weather, altitude, distance and the smallest movement of troops can have strategic consequences. On October 22, the Director General of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), Shatrujeet Kapur, warned: “To face China through traditional ways would be tough now. Because China has invested heavily in the modernisation of its forces and has moved ahead. But through drones, small nations can fight bigger nations, as we have seen in the Russia-Ukraine and Iran-US conflicts. Russia is sacrificing 10,000-15,000 soldiers every month.”
The warning came a week before the Fifth Plenum. Past sessions have reaffirmed Xi’s position as the “core” of the Party. The abolition of presidential term limits in 2018 opened the way for him to remain in power indefinitely. His personal philosophy, known as “Xi Jinping Thought”, is being elevated to a status comparable to that of Mao Zedong’s ideological doctrine. Xi has unleashed a wave of purges of Party and government officials for “moral corruption”—a term often used as shorthand for those perceived as insufficiently loyal to the 73-year-old strongman. Estimates from the Asia Society Policy Institute suggest that only two of the 44 military members of the Central Committee in 2022 have survived the purge. The number is the same in the seven-member Central Military Commission, which oversees China’s armed forces: only Xi Jinping and one other general remain.
What does this mean for Xi, China, India and the world? Following the Fifth Plenum, Xi is set to consolidate his position as the most powerful man in China and one of the most powerful leaders in the world. Under his leadership, China has taken a quantum leap across the vectors that determine global power: technology, military strength, the economy, diplomacy, and development.
SUPERTECH SULTAN: Xi, to strengthen China’s position against its top competitor United States, has ordered investments in billions in advanced chips, artificial intelligence, and renewable energy. China now dominates global supplies of several industrial, automotive, and defence micro controllers, and is integrating AI into national security, and pursuing its “AI Plus” strategy to expand Chinese software across Global South markets.
Its “Big Three”—electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries and solar energy—have become major export engines, replacing the traditional “Old Three” of clothing, furniture and home appliances. A “New New Three”, comprising AI software, industrial and humanoid robotics, and biotechnology, is emerging. Dr Srikanth Kondapalli, Professor of China Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, traces this rise to science and technology initiatives launched in the 1980s, including the 863 Programme, which targeted robotics, telecommunications, space technology and biotechnology. “Today, China is a major player in 5G, solar manufacturing, electric vehicles, batteries and critical-mineral refining, and is advancing towards 6G. However, technological dominance does not mean complete self-reliance. Semiconductors remain a key weakness.” Although China has advanced in seven-nanometre chip technology, it still trails the US in aspects of semiconductor manufacturing. Nevertheless, Dr Kondapalli argues, sustained technological investment remains central to Xi’s ambitions to create economic assets and China-centric global influence.
DEFENCE DRAGON: This is where the maximum growth is, since China is the world’s second largest defence spender: its official defence budget 2025 was about $245 billion—up by 7.2 per cent the previous year. The real spending is substantially higher, because R&D and the People’s Armed Police are partly excluded. The PLA’s 13 group armies spread across the five theatre commands has 4,500-5,000 main battle tanks including several hundred Type 15 light tanks built for high-altitude areas like Tibet and Ladakh; thousands of armoured personnel and infantry fighting vehicles, self-propelled howitzers PCL-181, and long-range rocket systems PHL-03 and PHL-16; Z-10 attack helicopters and Z-20 utility helicopters. China has the world’s largest navy: roughly 370 ships and submarines. It has three aircraft carriers with electromagnetic catapults, 8 -10 Destroyers, innumerable frigates, amphibious ship helicopter assault ships, 6 ballistic-missile subs, 6 nuclear attack subs, 48 diesel-electric subs, a naval aviation arm with J-15 carrier fighters, with the J-35 and the KJ-600 early-warning aircraft for aircraft carrier use. Air Force (PLAAF) and naval aviation together operate about 3,000 aircraft, including over 2,400 combat aircraft, making this the largest air force in Asia: J-20 stealth fighters, J-16, J-10C, J-11, Su-30 and Su-35, and now J-35 stealth fighter entering service. Stealth bomber H-20 is under development. China’s huge drone fleet is fast-growing, and includes the WZ-7 high-altitude surveillance drone, the WZ-8 supersonic reconnaissance drone and the GJ-11 stealth combat drone. Dramatic growth has been in rocket force and nuclear arsenal: over 600 operational nuclear warheads as of mid-2024, up by 400 in 2019, with more than 1,000 projected by 2030. Its missile inventory includes ICBMs DF-41, DF-31AG and silo-based DF-5 variants, the DF-26 intermediate-range missile (nicknamed the “Guam killer”), the DF-21D anti-ship missile (“carrier killer”), and the DF-17 hypersonic glide missile. It has estimated the world’s largest inventory of land-based ballistic and cruise missiles. Chinese space and cyber forces operate over 1,000 satellites, of which 359 are ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) systems, triple the 2018 figure. Since April 2024, space, cyber and information warfare have been handled by three dedicated forces: Aerospace, Cyberspace and Information Support. Dr Saibal Dasgupta points out, military modernisation is about more than acquiring advanced weapons. “China’s priority is to establish global leadership in the eyes of its own people, counter American influence in its neighbourhood and achieve reunification with Taiwan. China has strengthened its Rocket Force and integrated AI, drones and robotics into military operations. However, technological superiority alone does not guarantee the ability to win wars.”
ECONOMIC SUPERMAN: Xi’s relentless drive for economic hegemony makes China the world’s second-largest economy, with a nominal GDP of approximately $21.5 trillion; it ranks first in purchasing power parity. Its research and development expenditure has grown and is now estimated at approximately $584-588 billion, making it the world’s second-largest spender in absolute terms. China ranks 12th globally in R&D intensity. Xi, by controlling Chinese businesses, has forced private corporations to bear the vast majority of the research costs, which are approximately 77.4 per cent of China’s R&D expenditure. This integration of government priorities, corporate investment and technological development is Xi’s brainchild to give Beijing the advantage in directing resources towards strategically important sectors. However, China’s economic and technological ascent has vulnerabilities. It is dependent on certain advanced semiconductor technologies. The PLA’s ability to translate technological superiority into battlefield success is yet to be proved in real-time action.
DIPLOMACY DARING: Xi Jinping’s defining diplomatic formula is “building a community with a shared future for mankind”—read helmed by China. The Communist country’s diplomatic clout has grown alongside its economic and military power. Its share of the UN’s regular budget is up from approximately 2.05 per cent in 2006 to around 20 per cent today. China is the second-largest contributor to UN peacekeeping operations and sends the largest contingent of peacekeepers among the Security Council’s permanent members. Through infrastructural investments, diplomatic partnerships and defence cooperation, Beijing continues to expand its strategic reach, particularly across the developing world.
Dr Kondapalli places these ambitions in historical context. “When Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, he advanced three key concepts: the China Dream, national rejuvenation and a community of shared destiny.” The China Dream seeks global leadership in technology and the economy, while national rejuvenation involves reclaiming territories Beijing considers historically Chinese, including Taiwan and parts of the South and East China Seas. Together, these ambitions reflect China’s goal to become the world’s dominant power.
Yet India is far from incapable of challenging China. Its defence budget for FY 2026-27 is $ 7.85 lakh crore, approximately $86-93.5 billion, as the world’s fourth-largest military spender. China has around 2.035 million active-duty military personnel against India’s roughly 1.435 million. India’s challenge is not to simply match China tank for tank, aircraft for aircraft or ship for ship. Its ability to detect threats, process intelligence, make decisions without hesitation and coordinate military operations quicker and more effectively than its adversary is what matters.
STRATEGY WIZ: Counting tanks isn’t enough. In modern warfare, the side that sees first, thinks fastest and connects best has the advantage. Operation Sindoor underscored this lesson, placing C4ISR—Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance—at the centre of the confrontation. China has sought to exploit its capabilities through Pakistan, whose Chinese-made J-10C fighters reportedly targeted Indian Rafales with PL-15 missiles. Justin Bronk, an air-warfare specialist at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told Reuters: “The Indians were not expecting to be shot at.” Lieutenant General Rahul R Singh described the China-Pakistan partnership through an ancient Chinese dictum: “killed by a borrowed knife.” Beijing, he suggested, could weaken India through its partner without directly confronting it on the border.
Singh revealed how Pakistan received real-time intelligence from China during the operation. “When the DGMO-level talks were going on, Pakistan was mentioning that we know that your such and such vector is primed and is ready for action,” he said. “So, they were getting live inputs from China, which is comparatively far from the theatre of action.” Retired British Air Marshal Greg Bagwell, a RUSI fellow, distilled the lesson: “The winner in this was the side that had the best situational awareness.”
Singh described India’s northern frontier as a “live lab” for China, which can assess its military technology through its Pakistan partnership. Operation Sindoor offered Beijing the opportunity to demonstrate its equipment power against Western systems. It had potential commercial consequences for the West. Indonesia, which has ordered Rafale fighters from France, is reportedly weighing the Chinese J-10.
Former ambassador and author Rajiv Dogra says, “China and Pakistan are virtually Siamese twins in military cooperation and defence technology.” Their joint Karakoram 2026 exercise in Xinjiang, held from October 14 to 23, highlights their union. China supports Pakistan’s nuclear technology, satellite capabilities, military aviation and telecommunications, and has emerged as Pakistan’s major defence supplier by upstaging the United States.
China and Pakistan are virtually Siamese twins in military cooperation and defence technology.Rajiv Dogra, former ambassador and author
Dogra warns that the partnership has wider implications for India. His statistical model identifies an India–China or India-China-Pakistan conflict as a potential flashpoint for a major war. “Whether we look at our western or northern neighbour, India remains the common strategic consideration shaping their military cooperation,” he says.
Therefore, India’s challenge goes beyond disputed borders and touches satellite intelligence, cyber capabilities, defence manufacturing and the growing military coordination between Beijing and Islamabad.
MASTER OF SYMBOLS: Xi Jinping’s global strategy must be understood through China’s growing military and economic power. Sun Tzu’s maxim that “great results can be achieved with small forces” resonates in Xi’s philosophy. During his September 2014 visit to India, Xi took a riverside stroll with Prime Minister Modi and tried his hand at a charkha at Sabarmati Ashram. At the same time, approximately 1,000 Chinese troops entered Ladakh, withdrawing after Xi left. During his September visit to the BRICS summit, satellite images showed Chinese troops advancing into disputed territory along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). The lesson for New Delhi: summit selfies do not stop soldiers. There is no evidence he personally directed every military move, but China demonstrated its willingness to deploy substantial military resources to a border confrontation, using territorial claims and sustained pressure to influence negotiations. The pattern is striking: diplomatic warmth accompanied by conspicuous military manoeuvres. Chinese emperors understood symbolism; sometimes, a circle drawn by an emperor conveyed approval more powerfully than a direct command. So, Xi’s message is both subtle and clear: China is willing to negotiate, but on its own terms. Contrary to earlier American expectations that Beijing would accept the liberal international order and defer to Washington, its military moves in the South China Sea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and along the Indian border suggest otherwise. Xi’s global strategy is simple in its duality: expand Chinese regional influence while preparing to challenge American global leadership. Xi no longer wants merely to rule China. Whether he intends to extend that influence over India remains the million-dollar question along the border. But ambition does not guarantee success.
THE ONE AND ONLY RULER: The West is waking up to Xi’s China only now, having overlooked a crucial history lesson. For much of recorded history, China was a global centre of wealth, culture and technology. From the Xia, Shang and Zhou to the Qin and Han dynasties, successive emperors pursued the idea of a bigger, stronger and more unified China. Constraints of geography and internal divisions limited the reach.
While the West built the liberal international order after the Second World War, Xi’s “Chinese Dream” draws on a much older legacy, epitomised by Qin Shi Huang. In 221 BC, Qin became the First Emperor of a unified China by consolidating political, economic and cultural systems while expanding fortifications that laid the foundation for the Great Wall. He commissioned the Lingqu Canal, an extensive road network and a vast mausoleum guarded by the Terracotta Army. His achievements came at a terrible human cost. Through Legalism, an ancient Chinese authoritarian system, Qin Shi Huang enforced strict laws, harsh punishments and intellectual repression. Yet his vision of unity, stability and national strength continues to echo in Beijing’s gilded halls of power.
Xi Jinping appears to draw on a similar playbook. Before succeeding Hu Jintao, he remained relatively unknown to the world. His formative years as a “sent-down youth” living in a cave and doing arduous labour in rural Shaanxi, may have shaped his political resilience and appetite for risk. The province lies in the ancient Qin heartland, near Xianyang, the emperor’s former capital. The connection may be coincidental, but the parallels are striking. By 2017–18, Xi had consolidated personal power, dismantling collective leadership and benefiting from the abolition of presidential term limits in 2018. The post-Mao safeguards against one-man rule weakened, placing him at the centre of China’s political system more firmly than any leader in decades.
Today, China is a major player in 5G, solar manufacturing, electric vehicles, batteries and critical-mineral refining, and is advancing towards 6G. However, technological dominance does not mean complete self-reliance. Semiconductors remain a key weakness.Dr Srikanth Kondapalli, Professor of China Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University
More than 2,200 years after Qin Shi Huang, China once again has a powerful leader whose ambitions invited comparisons with its imperial past. Xi’s supporters portray his anti-corruption campaign as necessary reform, while affectionate nicknames such as “Xi Dada” (Uncle Xi or Daddy Xi) helped cultivate a paternal public image. His wife, Peng Liyuan, became “Auntie Peng” or “Mother Peng”, while the viral 2014 music video Xi Dada Loves Peng presented the couple as approachable and relatable. But beneath this carefully cultivated image lies the central reality of Xi’s rule: concentration of power in one man’s hands, justified by the promise of national rejuvenation through strong, centralised leadership.
ECONOMIC ENGINEER: Geopolitical experts, presidents and tycoons all want to know what Xi Jinping is thinking. But guessing his psychological impulses is like guessing where a dragon will breathe fire next. The smarter approach is to follow the paper trail: the priorities Xi has hard-wired into the Chinese state. The picture that emerges is of a leader who sees China’s rise as his historical mission, treats security and economics as two sides of the same coin, builds global clout using every available instrument, and believes the project will succeed only if power remains firmly at the centre—preferably with him. The real story lies in how these pieces fit together. Weeks after becoming Party chief in November 2012, Xi toured a historical exhibition at Beijing’s National Museum and popularised the phrase that would define his era: the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”. A decade later, at the 20th Party Congress, the slogan remained central to his political vision. Its significance lies in the way it combines economic growth, military strength and diplomatic reach into a single historical narrative. China is not simply a developing country seeking prosperity; it is an ancient civilisation reclaiming what Beijing considers its rightful place after a century of humiliation.
Dr Kondapalli explains how this historical narrative forges China’s technological and strategic priorities. For Beijing, technological development is not an isolated economic objective but an instrument of national power. China’s investments in semiconductors, AI, robotics and advanced computing serves both its domestic development goals and its ambition to reduce dependence on foreign suppliers. The integration of civilian industrial innovation into military modernisation is particularly important. Technologies developed for commercial applications can be used to strengthen surveillance, communications, intelligence gathering and battlefield coordination as well.
This civil-military integration is central to Xi’s ambition to make China technologically self-reliant and militarily formidable. But the ability to innovate, coordinate forces, respond to uncertainty and sustain operations under pressure remains just as important. As Dasgupta notes, is the PLA’s advances in AI, drones and robotics that give China technological strength alone sufficient to ensure victory in war? The answer matters enormously for India, which faces China not only across a contested mountain frontier but also through a growing network of Chinese strategic partnerships, technological capabilities and military investments.
MYSTERY MAN: A significant talking point in diplomatic circles is the health of the 73-year-old Xi. After he skipped the official dinner at Rashtrapati Bhavan immediately after the BRICS Summit got over, the Delhi grapevine murmured Xi had a sudden stroke to exhaustion after a packed schedule. ThinkChina, a Singapore-based publication under Lianhe Zaobao, used proprietary algorithmic analysis to examine Xi’s movements after he left. It reported “no significant anomalies were observed in Xi’s movements when he boarded the plane on September 13 for the return journey; and at the meeting the day before”. His measured step-length asymmetry was 0.33 per cent, while his left-right auto correlation was 0.6910. The analysis concluded that “this suggests that Xi’s cardiopulmonary function is quite good”. When Modi reportedly asked Xi twice whether everything was okay, the algorithm found predominantly positive emotional responses, with a confidence level of 93 per cent. However, such readings must be treated cautiously: movement and body-language analysis alone cannot reliably diagnose a medical condition.
If the algorithm is right, guessing what it means for Indo-Sino relations is playing the 2,500-year-old Weiqi, one of the most complex strategy games in human history despite its simple rules. The players must surround more territory than the opponent while capturing enemy stones by fully surrounding them. The game reflects Taoist concepts of balance, flow, yin and yang, and strategic patience rather than immediate aggressive annihilation. Xi Jinping is an emperor-leader who methodically rebuilt the Chinese state around clear national priorities. The shatranj equivalent to Weiqi is sente: the ultimate form of initiative or tempo. Hence, India cannot afford to play passive moves just because its opponent threatened something small. Instead, it must ask: “Do I really need to answer that, or can I play a bigger move elsewhere?” Retaining sente will dictate the pace of the entire match.