The Himalayan Border Dispute and the 1962 Sino-Indian War
By 1962, barely a
decade after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China,
China had fought a war with the United States in Korea and engaged
in two military confrontations involving the United States over the
offshore islands of Taiwan. It had restored Chinese authority to
imperial China’s historic frontiers (with the exception of Mongolia
and Taiwan) by reoccupying Xinjiang and Tibet. The famine triggered
by the Great Leap Forward had barely been overcome. Nevertheless,
Mao did not shrink from another military conflict when he
considered China’s definition of its historic borders was being
challenged by India.
The Sino-Indian
border crisis concerned two territories located in the high
Himalayas in the trackless and largely uninhabitable region of
plateaus amidst forbidding mountains between Tibet and India.
Fundamentally, the issue arose over the interpretation of colonial
history.
China claimed the
imperial boundaries along the southern foothills of the Himalayas,
encompassing what China considered “South Tibet” but which India
administered as the state of Arunachal Pradesh. The Indian
perception was of relatively recent vintage. It had evolved out of
the British effort to demarcate a dividing line with the Russian
Empire advancing toward Tibet. The final relevant document was
between Britain and Tibet, signed in 1914, that delineated the
border in the eastern sector, called the McMahon Line after the
principal British negotiator.
China had a long
relationship with Tibet. The Mongols had conquered both Tibet and
the Chinese agricultural heartland in the same wave of conquest in
the thirteenth century, bringing them into close political contact.
Later the Qing Dynasty had regularly intervened in Tibet to expel
the forces of other non-Han peoples making incursions into Tibet
from the north and west. Eventually Beijing settled into a form of
suzerainty exercised by “imperial residents” in Lhasa. Beijing,
since the Qing Dynasty, treated Tibet as part of the All Under
Heaven ruled by the Chinese Emperor and reserved the right to eject
hostile interlopers; but distance and the Tibetans’ nomadic culture
made full Sinicization impractical. In this manner, Tibetans were
afforded a substantial degree of autonomy over their day-to-day
life.
By the end of the
Qing Dynasty in 1912, with China’s governance severely strained,
the Chinese governmental presence in Tibet had shrunk. Shortly
after the collapse of the dynasty, British authorities in India
convened a conference in the hill station of Simla with Chinese and
Tibetan representatives, with the goal of demarcating the borders
between India and Tibet. The Chinese government, having no
effective force with which to contest these developments, objected
on principle to the cession of any territory to which China had a
historic claim. Beijing’s attitude to the conference was reflected
by its representative in Calcutta—then the seat of Britain’s Indian
administration—Lu Hsing-chi: “Our country is at present in an
enfeebled condition; our external relations are involved and
difficult and our finances embarrassed. Nevertheless, Tibet is of
paramount importance to both [Sichuan and Yunnan, provinces in
southwest China] and we must exert ourselves to the utmost during
this conference.”7
The Chinese delegate
at the conference solved their dilemma by initialing, but not
signing, the resulting document. Tibetan and British delegates
signed the document. In diplomatic practice, initialing freezes the
text; it signifies that the negotiations have been concluded.
Signing the document puts it into force. China maintained that the
Tibetan representatives lacked the legal standing to sign the
border agreement, since Tibet was part of China and not entitled to
the exercise of sovereignty. It refused to recognize the validity
of Indian administration of the territory south of the McMahon
Line, although it initially made no overt attempt to contest
it.
In the western
sector, the disputed territory was known as Aksai Chin. It is
nearly inaccessible from India, which is why it took some months
for India to realize, in 1955, that China was building a road
across it linking Xinjiang and Tibet. The historical provenance of
the region was also problematic. Britain claimed it on most
official maps, though never seems to have administered it. When
India proclaimed its independence from Britain, it did not proclaim
its independence from British territorial claims. It included the
Aksai Chin territory as well as the line demarcated by McMahon on
all of its maps.
Both demarcation
lines were of strategic consequence. In the 1950s, a certain
balance existed between the positions of the two sides. China
viewed the McMahon Line as a symbol of British plans to loosen
China’s control over Tibet or perhaps to dominate it. Indian Prime
Minister Jawaharlal Nehru claimed a cultural and sentimental
interest in Tibet based on historical links between India’s
classical Buddhist culture and Tibetan Buddhism. But he was
prepared to acknowledge Chinese sovereignty in Tibet so long as
substantial autonomy was maintained. In pursuit of this policy,
Nehru declined to support petitions to table the issue of Tibet’s
political status at the U.N.
But when the Dalai
Lama fled in 1959 and was granted asylum in India, China began to
treat the issue of demarcation lines increasingly in strategic
terms. Zhou offered a deal trading Chinese claims in the eastern
part of the line for Indian claims in the west, in other words,
acceptance of the McMahon Line as a basis for negotiations in
return for recognition of Chinese claims to Aksai
Chin.
Almost all
postcolonial countries have insisted on the borders within which
they achieved independence. To throw them open to negotiations
invites unending controversies and domestic pressure. On the
principle that he was not elected to bargain away territory that he
considered indisputably Indian, Nehru rejected the Chinese proposal
by not answering it.
In 1961, India
adopted what it called the Forward Policy. To overcome the
impression that it was not contesting the disputed territory, India
moved its outposts forward, close to Chinese outposts previously
established across the existing line of demarcation. Indian
commanders were given the authority to fire on Chinese forces at
their discretion, on the theory that the Chinese were intruders on
Indian territory. They were reinforced in that policy after the
first clashes in 1959 when Mao, in order to avoid a crisis, ordered
Chinese forces to withdraw some twenty kilometers. Indian planners
drew the conclusion that Chinese forces would not resist a forward
movement by India; rather they would use it as an excuse to
disengage. Indian forces were ordered to, in the words of the
official Indian history of the war, “patrol as far forward as
possible from our [India’s] present position toward the
International Border as recognized by us . . . [and] prevent the
Chinese from advancing further and also to dominate any Chinese
posts already established on our territory.”8
It proved a
miscalculation. Mao at once canceled the previous withdrawal
orders. But he was still cautious, telling a meeting of the Central
Military Commission in Beijing: “Lack of forbearance in small
matters upsets great plans. We must pay attention to the
situation.”9 It was not yet an order for military
confrontation; rather a kind of alert to prepare a strategic plan.
As such, it triggered the familiar Chinese style of dealing with
strategic decisions: thorough analysis; careful preparation;
attention to psychological and political factors; quest for
surprise; and rapid conclusion.
In meetings of the
Central Military Commission and of top leaders, Mao commented on
Nehru’s Forward Policy with one of his epigrams: “A person sleeping
in a comfortable bed is not easily roused by someone else’s
snoring.”10 In other words, Chinese forces in the
Himalayas had been too passive in responding to the Indian Forward
Policy—which, in the Chinese perception, was taking place on
Chinese soil. (That, of course, was the essence of the dispute:
each side argued that its adversary had ventured onto its own
soil.)
The Central Military
Commission ordered an end of Chinese withdrawals, declaring that
any new Indian outposts should be resisted by building Chinese
outposts near them, encircling them. Mao summed it up: “You wave a
gun, and I’ll wave a gun. We’ll stand face to face and can each
practice our courage.” Mao defined the policy as “armed
coexistence.”11 It was, in effect, the exercise of
wei qi in the Himalayas.
Precise instructions
were issued. The goal was still declared to be to avoid a larger
conflict. Chinese troops were not authorized to fire unless Indian
forces came closer than fifty meters to their positions. Beyond
that, military actions could be initiated only on orders from
higher authorities.
Indian planners noted
that China had stopped withdrawals but also observed Chinese
restraint in firing. They concluded that another probe would do the
trick. Rather than contest empty land, the goal became “to push
back the Chinese posts they already occupied.”12
Since the two
objectives of China’s stated policy—to prevent further Indian
advances and to avoid bloodshed—were not being met, Chinese leaders
began to consider whether a sudden blow might force India to the
negotiating table and end the tit for tat.
In pursuit of that
objective, Chinese leaders were concerned that the United States
might use the looming Sino-Indian conflict to unleash Taiwan
against the mainland. Another worry was that the American diplomacy
seeking to block Hanoi’s effort to turn Laos into a base area for
the war in Vietnam might be a forerunner of an eventual American
attack on southern China via Laos. Chinese leaders could not
believe that America would involve itself to the extent it did in
Indochina (even then, before the major escalation had started) for
local strategic stakes.
The Chinese leaders
managed to obtain reassurance on both points, in the process
demonstrating the comprehensive way in which Chinese policy was
being planned. The Warsaw talks were the venue chosen to determine
American intentions in the Taiwan Strait. The Chinese ambassador to
these talks was recalled from vacation and instructed to ask for a
meeting. There he claimed that Beijing had noted preparations in
Taiwan for a landing on the mainland. The American ambassador, who
had not heard of any such preparations—since they were not, in
fact, taking place—was instructed to reply that the United States
desired peace and “under present circumstances” would not support a
Nationalist offensive. The Chinese ambassador at these talks, Wang
Bingnan, noted in his memoirs that this information played a “very
big role” in Beijing’s final decision to proceed with operations in
the Himalayas. 13 There is no evidence that the United
States government asked itself what policy might have produced the
request for a special meeting. It was the difference between a
segmented and a comprehensive approach to
policymaking.
The Laotian problem
solved itself. At the Geneva Conference of 1962, the neutralization
of Laos and withdrawal of American forces from it removed Chinese
concerns.
With these
reassurances in hand, Mao, in early October 1962, assembled Chinese
leaders to announce the final decision, which was for war:
We fought a war with old Chiang [Kai-shek]. We fought a war with Japan, and with America. With none of these did we fear. And in each case we won. Now the Indians want to fight a war with us. Naturally, we don’t have fear. We cannot give ground, once we give ground it would be tantamount to letting them seize a big piece of land equivalent to Fujian province. . . . Since Nehru sticks his head out and insists on us fighting him, for us not to fight with him would not be friendly enough. Courtesy emphasizes reciprocity.14
On October 6, a
decision in principle was taken. The strategic plan was for a
massive assault to produce a shock that would impel a negotiation
or at least an end to the Indian military probing for the
foreseeable future.
Before the final
decision to order the offensive, word was received from Khrushchev
that, in case of war, the Soviet Union would back China under the
provisions of the Treaty of Friendship and Alliance of 1950. It was
a decision totally out of keeping with Soviet-Chinese relations in
the previous years and the neutrality heretofore practiced by the
Kremlin on the issue of Indian relations with China. A plausible
explanation is that Khrushchev, aware of the imminence of a
showdown over Soviet deployment of nuclear weapons to Cuba, wanted
to assure himself of Chinese support in the Caribbean crisis.15 He never returned
to the offer once the Cuban crisis was over.
The Chinese attack
took place in two stages: a preliminary offensive starting on
October 20 lasting four days, followed by a massive assault in the
middle of November, which reached the foothills of the Himalayas in
the vicinity of the traditional imperial demarcation line. At this
point, the PLA stopped and returned to its starting point well
behind the line it was claiming. The disputed territory has
remained disputed until today, but neither side has sought to
enforce its claims beyond the existing lines of
control.
The Chinese strategy
was similar to that of the offshore islands crises. China did not
conquer any territory in the 1962 Sino-Indian War—although it
continued to claim the territory south of the McMahon Line. This
may have reflected a political judgment or a recognition of
logistical realities. The conquered eastern sector territory could
be held only over seriously extended supply lines across forbidding
terrain.
At the end of the
war, Mao had withstood—and in this case, prevailed in—another major
crisis, even while a famine was barely ended in China. It was in a
way a replay of the American experience in the Korean War: an
underestimation of China by its adversary; unchallenged
intelligence estimates about Chinese capabilities; and coupled with
grave errors in grasping how China interprets its security
environment and how it reacts to military threats.
At the same time, the
1962 war added another formidable adversary for China at a moment
when relations with the Soviet Union had gone beyond the point of
no return. For the Soviet offer of support proved as fleeting as
the Soviet nuclear presence in Cuba.
As soon as military
clashes in the Himalayas escalated, Moscow adopted a posture of
neutrality. To rub salt into Chinese wounds, Khrushchev justified
his neutrality with the proposition that he was promoting the
loathed principle of peaceful coexistence. A December 1962
editorial in the People’s Daily, the
official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, angrily noted
that this marked the first time a Communist state had not sided
with another Communist state against a “bourgeois” country: “For a
communist the minimum requirement is that he should make a clear
distinction between the enemy and ourselves, that he should be
ruthless towards the enemy and kind to his own comrades.”16 The editorial added
a somewhat plaintive call for China’s allies to “examine their
conscience and ask themselves what has become of their
Marxism-Leninism and what has become of their proletarian
internationalism.”17
By 1964, the Soviets
dropped even the pretense of neutrality. Referring to the Cuban
Missile Crisis, Mikhail Suslov, a member of the Politburo and party
ideologist, accused the Chinese of aggression against India at a
moment of maximum difficulty for the Soviet Union:
It is a fact that precisely at the height of the Caribbean crisis the Chinese People’s Republic extended the armed conflict on the Chinese-Indian border. No matter how the Chinese leaders have tried since then to justify their conduct at the time they cannot escape the responsibility for the fact that through their actions they in effect aided the most reactionary circles of imperialism.18
China, having barely
overcome a vast famine, now had declared adversaries on all
frontiers.