India has no intention to compete with China: Navy chief

New Delhi: Navy chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta on Monday warned that Beijing was likely to be more assertive in its claims on the neighbourhood and called for countering its space and cyber-warfare capabilities.

"China is in the process of consolidating its comprehensive national power and creating formidable military capabilities. Once that is done, China is likely to be more assertive on its claims, especially in the immediate neighbourhood," Mehta said at the National Maritime Foundation.

"China's known propensity for intervention in space- and cyber-warfare will be major planning considerations in our strategic and operational thinking," Mehta said during a lecture on 'National Security Challenges: An Overview'.

Commenting on the widening gaps between China's military might and India, Mehta said it would be foolhardy to compare India and China as equals, considering that Beijing was in the process of "consolidating" its comprehensive national power and creating formidable military capabilities.

"It is quite evident that coping with China will certainly be one of our primary challenges in the years ahead. Our trust deficit with China can never be liquidated unless our boundary problems are resolved," the Navy chief said.

India and China, which fought a war in 1962, are yet to resolve their 4,500-km-long boundary issues. After the war, Beijing seized 36,000 sq km area in Jammu and Kashmir, while Pakistan unilaterally ceded 5,120 sq km area in Kashmir, occupied by it in 1947, to China under a pact in 1963.

""The gap between the two is too wide to bridge and is getting wider by the day…In military terms, both conventional and non-conventional, we neither have the capability nor the intention to match China force for force. These are indeed sobering thoughts and our strategy to deal with China would need to be in consonance with these realities. The economic penalties resulting from military conflict would have grave consequences for both nations. It would therefore be in both our interests to cooperate with reach other in mutually beneficial endeavours and ensure that potential for conflict is minimised" — Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Sureesh Mehta tells CNN-IBN