The 1962 war: View from China

A new book offers a comprehensive account of the relationship between the two Asian neighbours

Few people have travelled as extensively through the remote mountains and forests of Thailand, Myanmar and north-eastern India as the Swedish journalist and strategic affairs analyst Bertil Lintner. In an earlier book, The Great Game East: India, China and the Struggle for Asia’s Most Volatile Frontier, Lintner provided a dramatic, if somewhat overdrawn, account of the Sino-Indian rivalry in the region, based on his travels and encounters with a colourful variety of tribal insurgents. 

Lintner returns to this theme in his latest book but with a different approach. His principal aim, as the title of the book indicates, is to demolish the Neville Maxwell thesis on the causes of the 1962 Sino-Indian war. Lintner argues that the real cause of the war was  Chinese ire over India’s Tibet policy in the wake of the abortive Khampa uprising and the Dalai Lama’s escape to India in March 1959. Beijing believed — incorrectly — that India was responsible for fomenting the uprising in collusion with Britain and the United States. Addressing the Politburo on March 17, 1959 — even before the Dalai Lama’s arrival in India — Zhou Enlai alleged that New Delhi was connected with the Tibetan uprising, acting  hand in glove with the two Western powers. On March 25, Deng Xiaoping declared: “When the time comes, we certainly will settle accounts with them [the Indians].” Chairman Mao expressed a similar opinion, stating that India was “doing bad things” but it should not be openly condemned for the time being and should be given sufficient rope to hang itself.

“The border dispute,” Lintner concludes, “was only an excuse for launching the 1962 War.” India’s  Forward Policy had little to do with it. China, he maintains, had decided on war long before India adopted its Forward Policy. As supporting evidence, he points to the collection of military intelligence by Chinese spies in NEFA  from 1960, citing Nicholas Eftimiades, an expert on Chinese intelligence operations. 

Lintner argues that the real cause of the war was Chinese ire over India’s Tibet policy

Maxwell’s India’s China War suffers from some basic infirmities. His analysis of Chinese policy is based almost exclusively on official and semi-official (press) statements, while he delves deep into Indian internal documents to assess New Delhi’s  policies. He makes no allowance for this assymetry of evidentiary materials. Moreover, he takes little notice of Chinese actions on the ground — such as road building, troop movements and intelligence operations — which shed light on the evolution of Chinese policy. The result is a one-sided account of Indian missteps, exonerating China from all responsibility for launching the war.

China’s India War: Collision Course on the Roof of the World; Author: Bertil Lintner; Publisher: OUP; Pages: 380; Price: Rs 348

A  great deal of new information on Chinese policy formulation has become available since the publication of Maxwell’s book. Lintner has made use of much of this material to challenge Maxwell’s thesis, drawing particularly from the works of Roderick MacFarquhar and John W Garver. He highlights China’s wildly incorrect assessment of India’s policy on Tibet and its consequences for India-China relations — a factor greatly underplayed by Maxwell. He also brings into focus Chinese actions on the ground, including intelligence gathering and other military preparations. These help to correct the black and white picture drawn by Maxwell. 

Lintner argues that the fact that the Chinese were conducting military intelligence operations in NEFA at least a year before India’s adoption of the Forward Policy “makes it hard to argue that India’s moves in the area provoked China to attack.” A more nuanced analysis would have distinguished between the timing, respectively, of Chinese contingency planning, of active military preparations, and of the final decision to launch the war. Clearly, the first two steps were essentially completed before November 1961, when India embarked on the Forward Policy, but the evidence suggests that the implementation of this policy in the absence of border negotiations did trigger China’s final decision to launch a massive attack across  the border.

The book offers an interesting up-to-date account of Sino-Bhutanese interactions, including the recent Doklam affair. In the author’s view: “Bhutan’s attempts to strike a balance between its traditional friendship with India and China’s attempts to gain more influence in the kingdom will be a major challenge for years to come. It remains to be seen how this is going to affect its internal stability…” 

While the principal focus of the book is on the Himalayan region, it also revisits a theme explored in Lintner’s previous work: the maritime contest in the Indian Ocean. The final chapter offers a competent summary of current developments including the inevitable reference to China’s “string of pearls”. The phrase was coined by Booz Allen Hamilton Inc and it reflects an MNC’s ability to oversell a product. The rapid expansion of China’s presence along the Indian Ocean littoral undoubtedly poses a major challenge but the “string of pearls” concept overstates the case by failing to draw a clear distinction between the mere construction of a port facility and actual control over its operations. Genuine pearls, such as Gwadar, must be distinguished from the rest.

In the concluding pages of the book, Lintner succinctly wraps up his argument. A New Great Game, he writes, is being played out between India and China over “border disputes in the Himalayas, the competition for influence in Nepal, Bhutan, and Myanmar, cross-border insurgencies, the sharing of water resources, and strategic rivalries in the Indian Ocean.” This is a comprehensive and easy-to-read account of the competition between the two Asian neighbours. 
 

The reviewer is a retired ambassador

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