A borrowed knife
Lt Gen Singh also highlighted China's ancient military strategy of '36 stratagems' and killing the adversary with a 'borrowed knife' to buttress the point that Beijing extended all possible support to Pakistan to harm India. India was actually dealing with three adversaries, he said, suggesting that besides Pakistan and China, Turkiye was also playing a major role in supplying military hardware to Islamabad. The Deputy Chief of Army Staff, who looks after the Indian Army's capability development and sustenance vertical, said Beijing's support to Islamabad was not surprising as 81% of the military hardware of the Pakistani armed forces are from China.
'He (China) would rather use the neighbour to cause pain (to India) than getting involved in a mudslinging match on the northern border,' Lt Gen Singh said. 'Pakistan was the front face. We had China providing all possible support. And there was no surprise because, if you look at the statistics in the last five years, 81 per cent of the military hardware that Pakistan is getting is all Chinese,' he said. Lt Gen Singh said Turkiye also played an important role in providing support to Pakistan. 'We saw numerous drones coming and landing in the face of war, during the war, along with the individuals who were there,' he said.
The Deputy Chief of Army Staff said the 'strategic messaging' by the Indian leadership was unambiguous, adding that the planning and selection of targets in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) was based on a lot of data.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New Indian Express
25 minutes ago
- New Indian Express
BRICS Summit: Focus on India-Brazil strategic partnership for a multipolar world
With the arrival of Prime Minister Modi in Rio de Janeiro to take part in the 2025 BRICS Summit & Brasilia for a bilateral State visit, a first by an Indian PM in nearly six decades, the gaze is now on the India-Brazil Strategic Partnership. Far too long viewed essentially as South-South solidarity or symbolic multilateralism, this axis of rising power has in recent years achieved bolder geopolitical recognition. While India enhances its international footprint and Brazil restores its regional leadership, the convergences between the two democracies are no longer rhetorical; they increasingly become strategic driven by the shared vision of an equitable multipolar world order. In the midst of an expanded BRICS and rising challenges to the international system, Brazil has proved an invaluable interlocutor of India in the BRICS and the UN and in voicing the hopes and ambitions of the Global South. Brazil today matters to India not only as the largest economy of Latin America but also as a like-minded democratic country with whom India wishes to 'co-write' the rules of international governance. This convergence has been reflected also in the growing frequency and intensity of high-level interaction between the two countries. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Prime Minister Modi have also been spotted several times since Lula's 2023 re-election as the two leaders have committed to upgrading the Strategic Partnership to the next level. But the current era of geopolitics gives special meaning to their convergence. The Rio BRICS Summit, its first since the grouping expanded in 2024, occurs against the backdrop of a fracturing international order where the return of multilateralism is increasingly questioned. Western institutions increasingly appear self-absorbed and the global South is speaking out more vocally than before. In this fluid world, India and Brazil offer the world a development-focused and democratic alternative. Their collaboration in BRICS seeks to turn the grouping into more than the symbol of rising power solidarity that it is today. India and Brazil aim to make it the forum for offering tangible deliverables for the Global South in the form of alternate sources of finance like the New Development Bank or new models of trade, digital connectivity, and climate finance. Indeed, the current Brazilian presidency of BRICS this year and the upcoming Indian chairmanship in 2026 is a rare diplomatic relay. Under Lula's administration, Brazil has emphasized a more politically integrated BRICS, one advocating for democratic values and challenging the imbalances of the current world order. Modi has echoed this priority, arguing that BRICS must induce international institutional change. The two leaders ratify the idea that the Global South should no longer only be the target of international decision, but the co-author of international rules. This convergence is not limited to BRICS. The two countries are equally committed to restructuring the UN Security Council and are the most vocal members of the G4 grouping (India, Brazil, Germany, Japan) pushing for permanent representation for emergent powers. Both find the present configuration of the UNSC as archaic and unrepresentative. In their latest bilateral, Modi and Lula renewed their backing for each other's candidacies and called for time-bound negotiations in the UN. Brazil has used its presidency of the G20 in 2024 to showcase global governance reform and India has been forthright in its support of this agenda. Together, they have been able to give new impulse to what has thus been an extremely stalled process of reform. Another area of great geopolitical convergence is in their approach towards the Global South. India and Brazil have been voices of Southern solidarity, with one difference: they offer pragmatic implementable solutions. India's 2023 and Brazil's 2024 G20 presidencies were built around development agendas, of inclusive finance and food security to digital public goods and climate justice. Lula openly acknowledged the reality of the fact several of Brazil's G20 agendas borrowed from India's G20 Presidency. Modi himself has praised Brazil for continuing the momentum and ensuring continuity in the upholding of voices of the developed world. As the baton comes up to South Africa to preside over the G20 presidency next year, the IBSA trio (India-Brazil-South Africa) would have achieved the rare distinction of back-to-back leadership of the world's most powerful economic forum and offer a unique moment of Southern convergence. The bilateral is also expanding with new content. Commerce between India and Brazil has exceeded $12 billion, and complementarities in energy, agro-products, and pharma are driving the push. Indian companies like UPL, Wipro, and Tata Motors have increasingly expanded operations in Brazil, and Brazilian enterprises in mining and airlines are considering Indian marketplaces. Modi's visit is expected to deliver new deals in green energy, food processing, and defence cooperation. These steps are the bigger picture: India no longer regards Latin America as the faraway theatre of power politics and Brazil increasingly regards India as the gateway to the Indo-Pacific and the hub of the economic rise of Asia. In the coming years, India and Brazil could really transcend being co-passengers of the multilateral system and turn out to be co-designers of a new equilibrium of power internationally. As bridge-builders between the Global South and the North, between the world of the democracies and the world of the developing nations, between development and growth, their bilateral ties are now a global good. For India, Brazil is as big of a partner of BRICS as it is a center-piece of a larger diplomatic offensive aimed at democratizing international institutions and transferring normative power. When PM Modi and President Lula get together side by side at the Rio Summit, the conversation must be bold: the India-Brazil relationship is no longer peripheral but at the very core of the way the two countries see the future of world order. The strength of the relationship will be less in terms of common desire and more in terms of collaborative action, from G4 to BRICS, from the UN to the G20. In a world as desperately in need of new coalitions for reform as for peace and inclusive growth, the coming together of Delhi and Brasilia gives the world a strong, democratic, and developmental vision of the multipolar world to come. (Manish Dabhade is an Associate Professor of Diplomacy in the School of International Studies, JNU& founded The Indian Futures, an independent think tank in New Delhi; X: @imanishdabhade)
&w=3840&q=100)
Business Standard
30 minutes ago
- Business Standard
Mines, magnets and Mao: How China built its global rare earth dominance
Rare earth metals were an afterthought for most world leaders until China temporarily suspended most exports of them a couple of months ago. But for almost half a century, they have received attention from the very top of the Chinese government. During his 27-year rule in China, Mao Zedong focused often on increasing how much iron and steel China produced, but seldom on its quality. The result was high production of weak iron and steel that could not meet the needs of the industry. In the late 1940s, metallurgists in Britain and the United States had developed a fairly low-tech way to improve the quality of ductile iron, which is widely used for pipelines, car parts and other applications. The secret? Add a dash of the rare earth cerium to the metal while it is still molten. It was one of the early industrial uses of rare earths. And unlike most kinds of rare earths, cerium was fairly easy to chemically separate from ore. When Deng Xiaoping emerged as China's paramount leader in 1978, he moved quickly to fix the country's iron and steel industry. Deng named a top technocrat, Fang Yi, as a vice premier and also as the director of the powerful State Science and Technology Commission. Fang immediately took top geologists and scientists to Baotou, a city in China's Inner Mongolia that had vast steel mills and the country's largest iron ore mine nearby. Baotou had already made much of the iron and steel for China's tanks and artillery under Mao, but Fang's team made an important decision to extract more than iron from the mine. The city's iron ore deposit was laced with large quantities of so-called light rare earths. These included not just cerium, for ductile iron and for glass manufacturing, but also lanthanum, used in refining oil. The iron ore deposit also held medium rare earths, like samarium. The United States had started using samarium in the 1970s to make the heat-resistant magnets needed for electric motors inside supersonic fighter jets and missiles. 'Rare earths have important application value in steel, ductile iron, glass and ceramics, military industry, electronics and new materials,' Fang declared during his visit to Baotou in 1978, according to an exhibit at the city's museum. At the time, Sino-American relations were improving. Soon after his Baotou visit, Fang took top Chinese engineers to visit America's most advanced factories, including Lockheed Martin and McDonnell Douglas assembly plants near Los Angeles. Rare earth metals are tightly bound together in nature. Prying them apart, particularly the heavier rare earths, requires many rounds of chemical processes and huge quantities of acid. During the 1950s and 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union had each developed similar ways to separate rare earths. But their techniques were costly, requiring stainless steel vats and piping as well as expensive nitric acid. China ordered government research institutes to devise a cheaper approach, said Constantine Karayannopoulos, a chemical engineer and former chief executive of several of the largest North American rare earth companies. The Chinese engineers figured out how to separate rare earths using inexpensive plastic and hydrochloric acid instead. The cost advantage, together with weak enforcement of environmental standards, allowed China's rare earth refineries to undercut competitors in the West. Facing increasingly stiff environmental regulations, almost all of the West's refineries closed. Separately, China's geologists discovered that their country held nearly half the world's deposits of rare earths, including rich deposits of heavy rare earths in south-central China, valuable for magnets in cars as well as for medical imaging and other applications. In the 1990s and 2000s, Chinese refinery engineers mastered the task of prying apart heavy rare earths. That gave China an almost total monopoly on heavy rare earth production. 'The Middle East has oil,' Deng said in 1992. 'China has rare earths.' By then, he and Fang had already trained the next leader to guide the country's rare earth industry: a geologist named Wen Jiabao. He had earned a master's degree in rare earth sciences in the late 1960s at the Beijing Institute of Geology, when most of the rest of China was paralyzed during the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution. Wen went on to become a vice premier in 1998 and then China's premier from 2003 to 2013. During a visit to Europe in 2010, he declared that little happened on rare earth policy in China without his personal involvement.
Time of India
31 minutes ago
- Time of India
Evening news wrap: Thackeray brothers unite after 20 years; Bilawal Bhutto says Pak open to extraditing terrorists; and more
In a rare show of unity, Uddhav and Raj Thackeray shared a stage after 20 years, vowing to 'stay together' and accusing the BJP-led Maharashtra government of undermining Marathi culture and shifting businesses to Gujarat. Meanwhile, Pakistan's Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said Islamabad may extradite terror accused like Hafiz Saeed and Masood Azhar if India cooperates, but India maintains it has already provided sufficient evidence post-26/11. In other news, Nehal Modi, brother of fugitive Nirav Modi, was arrested in the US in the PNB scam case, with a status hearing set for July 2025. The Calcutta high court ordered cricketer Mohammed Shami to pay Rs 4 lakh monthly alimony to his estranged wife Hasin Jahan. And PM Modi, on a five-nation tour, landed in Argentina after 57 years, focusing on lithium, energy, and defence cooperation, with a visit planned to the Boca Juniors Stadium. Thackeray cousins reunite: Uddhav and Raj vow to 'stay together' Raj praised the unity of Marathi people and took a swipe at CM Devendra Fadnavis, crediting him for reuniting the brothers — something even Balasaheb couldn't achieve. Both leaders accused the BJP-led government of sidelining Marathi identity and shifting key businesses to Gujarat, calling the move an attack on Maharashtra's backbone and culture. Read full story 'No hurdle if India cooperates': Bilawal open to extraditing Hafiz, Azhar Speaking to Al Jazeera, Bilawal stressed the need for a comprehensive dialogue on terrorism. He claimed India hasn't fulfilled procedural requirements, including producing witnesses in Pakistani courts. India, however, maintains it submitted ample evidence after the 26/11 attacks, which Pakistan ignored. He warned against India's 'new abnormal' stance. Read full story Nehal Modi arrested in US: Nirav's brother held in PNB scam case Nehal faces charges of money laundering and criminal conspiracy. Authorities allege Nehal helped launder funds, destroyed evidence, and shifted gold and cash from Dubai. The ED claims he directed dummy directors to hide his identity and moved illicit funds via shell firms. He is also accused of aiding Nirav's illegal activities. A status hearing is set for July 17, 2025. Read full story Shami ordered to pay Rs 4 lakh monthly alimony: Calcutta HC overturns lower court relief for Hasin Jahan The case, under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, must be resolved within six months. The previous lower court award of Rs 50,000 and Rs 80,000 was overturned. Following the order, Jahan criticised Shami on Instagram, accusing him of pride and neglect. The court clarified Shami may voluntarily support his daughter's additional expenses if he wishes. Read full story PM Modi in Argentina after 57 years; lithium, energy, and defence on agenda PM Modi's agenda also includes a visit to Boca Juniors Stadium. This is the third stop on his five-nation tour, after Trinidad and Tobago, where he received the country's highest civilian honour. His next destinations include Brazil for the BRICS Summit and Namibia. Argentina, part of the Lithium Triangle, is vital for India's clean energy goals. Read full story
