China will never for WAR like 1962 with India ! They will only arm all neighbors of India and make their relation with India unstable. At the most they will show up their Army on East at the major conflict with PAK.
They know very well that any direct confrontation with India will have huge collateral damage to them and their position in world platform will shake.
China does have a viable angle to persue war with india.
The clear-cut thinking Chinese have- from CCP to the rank and file, is similar to how we view Pakistan- that they can easily crush us. For them its not a debate, as they will throw million trillion stats of chinese paper superiority - both technological and quantitative. yeilding 'decisive' superiority in their eyes.
This is why, Chinese DO NOT percieve war with India as viable unless it can capture significant territory. Without Chinku being confident they WILL conquer significant territory from us, they wont persue a war with us. However, if chinku is confident it WILL conquer territory permanently from us, they WILL attack, no if and or buts. Pakistan or no pakistan. However, a Chinese 'operation sindoor' will be decisive failure in Chinese minds, as they are extremely land oriented or 'ideology' oriented in their PRC state- to justify war.
In Chinese eyes, there is three scenarios to satisfy this war goal:
a) Pernamently screw over India in tibetan plateau by pushing India out of DBO,Shyok valley and making Karakoram-Zanskar range the hard boundary between India and China
b) Take significant chunk/all of Arunachal Pradesh
c) Take Tawang.
Of all the 3 scenarios, their most achievable scenario is option c) in terms of logistics/action if we are not vigilant and well defended and of all 3, option c) is also the greatest political mileage for PRC, because it completes the Tibetan buddhism puzzle and puts ALL the monasteries that elect the Dalai Llama under Chinese jurisdiction- something they historically claim.
THIS is the only plausible angle in Chinese spheres and they basically see it more or less as 'when the current Dalai Llama dies, we elect new puppet and if India even does choo-chaa, we take Tawang and India's temporal/theological capaity to be kabaab-mein-haddi.
Option c) is also by far the most attractive to them, since it is also the most limited in scope of actual war- as its a blitzkreig against one location in their minds- thus they have the greatest confidence in controlling option c) amongst all the other options.
Incase anyone is wondering 'why wouldnt china want to take a war of scope like Vietnam-China war, where Chinese goal was to teach Vietnam a lesson, not hold land in significant amounts', the answer is simple - China got its nose bloodied in vietnam and thousands of PLA troops killed or captured, with minimal land gains- like they literally gained a quarter of Goa over the entire Vietnam-China border at the expense of 2000+ troops. Thats why China is loathe to attempt anything more than salami slicing, unless it can achieve one of above 3 options against India.
This i know, because i have plenty of contact with direct Chinese in the last quarter century of my life as i lived in a city for this duration that has like 100s of thousands of chinese people living in it and they are not 100 years ago diaspora chinese like Frisco, but recent arrival Chinese for most part.
