Indian and Chinese espionage

India and China both have powerful spy networks; completely different in their approaches to espionage; both effective against their perceived enemies. China focuses first on internal threats, on Taiwan and Hong Kong, and then the US and Japan. India’s defense policy focuses on Pakistan and internal terrorist threats, and then on China. In reality, however, when it comes to spying on each other, both China and India suffer from incompetence and apathy – which endangers both their own security and regional stability. This article looks at how they spy on each other, and asks why and how they need to improve. The narrative also touches upon some of the individuals who are waging the spy war, from India’s wily spymaster Ajit Doval down to junior Chinese agents such as Wang Qing and Pema Tsering. The two countries are not friends. They have the largest territorial dispute in the world on their hands, covering an area the size of North Korea, and they have large armies facing each other along 4000 kilometers of frontier. But they also lay claim to the world’s two oldest and richest civilizations, with a rich history of exchange, and now with a combined population of 2.6 billion people and more than a quarter of the world’s economic output. If they cooperated, they could solve many of the world’s problems; but if they lurch into conflict, the potential consequences are terrifying to contemplate. Unfortunately, despite their geographical closeness, they do not know much about each other. They have few cultural interchanges, little diplomacy, few trade missions. They do not watch each other’s films, read each other’s books or listen to each other’s music. Chinese tourists would rather fly to New Zealand for their holidays than cross the border to India, and Indian students would rather study in Europe than China. China and India are neighbors that barely talk to each other. Most significantly, they do not spy on each competently. For countries that do not interact socially, defensive understanding is important for security – but China prefers the glamor of facing up to its Pacific and other maritime rivals such as the US and Japan. India, for its part, does talk a great deal about the China threat, but its resources and expertise are wrapped up in controlling its security threat from Pakistan and the Islamic world. When China and India do try to spy on each other, it is often without the benefit of a long-term focus or understanding. India has some very skilled operatives within the Research and Analysis Wing, but few that specialize in China. China has an enormous pool of resources spread across several government departments, including the Ministry of Public Security, and also has extensive facilities and manpower in the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission (the JSD) and the new Strategic Support Force (the SSF). However, China’s intelligence services generally behave as if India is not worth spying on. Given that the two countries do not have the cultural or political machinery in place to understand each other, espionage and intelligence gathering is vital to ensure that miscalculations do not take place. This has been apparent over the last few years in stand-offs in the Himalaya, as well as top-level suspicions on each side about a variety of subjects including terrorism, covert operations in Sri Lanka and Burma, and the two countries’ nuclear weapons programs. Both countries do occasionally make efforts in espionage against each other, especially during sensitive periods such as the mountain stand-offs of 2014 and 2013 and during policy developments in nuclear warfare. In this article the author looks at actual spying incidents between the two countries, their methodologies, their staff, their technical capabilities, and how the act of spying, which is usually viewed as intrinsically adversarial, can be a force for good. The article relies on interviews with actual participants in intelligence from both countries as well as extensive use of contemporary online sources, and secondary analysis by both military and academic experts from China, India and NATO countries.