New Delhi, Aug 11 - Even as Indian Navy chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta raised eyebrows with his comments that India cannot match China in military capability, former armed forces chiefs and defence analysts say that while Beijing was certainly more powerful, one need not be 'overly concerned'.

'China is more powerful nation but it is not that our capability is what it used to be earlier. We are much more capable now. It is difficult to match force by force,' former Indian Air Force chief, Air Chief Marshal Fali Homi Major, told IANS.

The same opinion was echoed by former Indian Army chief, General V.P. Malik, who led the army during the 1999 Kargil conflict with Pakistan.

'There is a sealing now on the scale of conflict between the two countries as both are nuclear armed nations. So the maximum we would see in terms would be a threshold of a full-fledged war. But there is nothing alarming,' Malik added.

'What the navy chief has projected is that our military asymmetry to China is similar to our asymmetry vis-a-vis our economies. Instead of matching China force by force we should harness technology more innovatively. It is not alarmist at all but a prudent suggestion that money allocated is spent and spent wisely,' National Maritime Foundation director Commodore (retd.) C. Uday Bhaskar said.

Terming China one of India's primary challenges, Mehta said at a lecture Monday that 'it would be foolhardy to compare India and China as equals'.

'Whether in terms of GDP, defence spending or any other economic, social or development parameter, the gap between the two is just too wide to bridge (and 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,' Mehta told an elite audience at the India Habitat Centre.

Earlier IAF chief Major, who retired May 31, had said that China was a bigger challenge for India as little was known about its capability.