“China’s cold start is very similar to the Indian cold start or a cold start by any other armed forces in the world, which means the ability to conduct rapid, high intensity offensive operations before an adversary can mobilize or intervene.
“So you have to be fast, you have to be rapid and you have to get a quick, easy victory, at least in the initial stage,” says Suyash Desai, China scholar specialising on the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Desai was a guest on The Gist, analysing the implications of the PLA’s cold start doctrine, which means mobilising in 30 minutes. That means from the time the order to mobilise is issued to the time when troops are ready on station, it takes half an hour.
The Chinese military has been taken up with the idea of cold start for some years now. Desai recalls reading Mandarin language publications including those related to the PLA, that refer to the need for getting into action rapidly.
Although they style it as “defensive operation”, Desai argues that it is anything but defensive. This is something the PLA’s top leadership has been pushing hard for and the political brass has also got involved.
“But for various reasons including corruption, demand-supply mismatch between the personnel they want for the tools they are acquiring, those goals couldn’t be achieved,” Desai said. “But they worked on different exercises and be it east or west, north beach or South China Sea, every theater command is going to benefit from cold start.”
He pointed to another significant development. Normally, doctrines of this kind are first tested in the Eastern Theatre Command responsible for Taiwan, and the Southern Theatre Command that oversees the South China Sea.
But in this case, the testing ground was Tibet, meaning the front against India. This goes against the 1993 directive where Taiwan was referred to as the first primary strategic direction and India as the secondary strategic direction.
But since 2020, the Xinjiang and Tibet fronts against India have received some of the best and latest military hardware. It suggests that from secondary strategic direction, India is now got an upgrade where it is virtually on par with the Taiwan front.
Tune in for more in this conversation with Suyash Desai, China scholar specialising on the People’s Liberation Army.