'You wave a gun, and I’ll wave a gun' - Hindustan Times
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'You wave a gun, and I’ll wave a gun'

Hindustan Times | By, New Delhi
Jun 04, 2011 11:06 AM IST

In an exclusive extract from his new book On China, Henry Kissinger charts the developments that led up to 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 US 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.

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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...

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...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.”

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 recognise the validity of Indian administration of the territory south of the McMahon Line, although it initially made no overt attempt to contest it.

The curious case of Aksai chin

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 realise, 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. 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 UN.

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. Premier Zhou Enlai 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 20 kms. 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 recognised by us... [and] prevent the Chinese from advancing further and also to dominate any Chinese posts already established on our territory.”

It proved a miscalculation. Mao at once cancelled 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.”

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.” 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”. It was, in effect, the exercise of wei qi [Chinese strategic board game] in the Himalay

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