The McMahon Line- a Century of Discord

by J J Singh

  This chapter endeavours to address the important aspects that have a bearing on Sino-Indian relations to facilitate a more realistic understanding of the Dragon. Indian policymakers need to study Chinese philosophy and strategic thinking, their culture and characteristics as a people, their leadership and way of doing things—all of which go to make up the strengths and weaknesses of their civilization. Unless we understand the Chinese mind, how can we successfully negotiate with them? If independent India had been doing this right from the time the People’s Republic of China was born in 1949, we might not have made the grievous errors in our Tibet policy that we did, for which we continue to pay the price to this day. Jagat Mehta has said: ‘One cannot help but conclude that we have yet to fully and unsentimentally understand the “otherness” of China.’ He went on to say, ‘China is able to wait out strategically and improvise tactically. This stumps democracies like India which have no comparable patience or sustained policy spread over decades, leave alone centuries.’3

  However, despite China’s ‘historical self-confidence’ that is ‘unique’, it may or may not be able to handle the Tiananmen-type of spontaneous public outbursts or simmering unrest in Uighur province of the present era, where information technology and social media have made it difficult for a nation to conceal facts or suppress public opinion. ‘Just as China never bothered to understand the working of a democracy, India never followed carefully the impact of domestic debate inside China.’4

  Mao’s forceful ideological drive at the Lushan plenum in 1959 and his subsequent actions led to the disastrous ‘Great Leap Forward’, which resulted in a severe famine in China in which thirty million people died. But despite China’s internal problems, Mao did not hesitate to plan and to give the go-ahead for the country’s border war with India when he thought ‘the time was ripe’—to use the oft-quoted Chinese metaphor. The leadership of both countries faced the monumental challenges of their agrarian economies, burgeoning populations, poverty and lack of infrastructure. In the case of India, most of the arable land was heavily dependent on the monsoon, whose failure often resulted in famine. In the case of China, it had large tracts of unproductive land, such as the Tibetan plateau, the Gobi Desert and some areas of Inner Mongolia and Manchuria. ‘And with 0.08 hectares per capita compared to a world average of 0.24, China falls just above Bangladesh and Egypt.’ China was positioned twelfth from bottom in this respect.5 Both countries paid great attention to agricultural reforms, as large-scale industrialization was a long way off at their nascent stage of nationhood. Mao Zedong’s first major policy initiative was aimed at freeing the poor and landless peasants from the rich landlords through a programme that came to be known as fanshen, which has been wonderfully described by Rebecca Cairns, in her article ‘Agrarian Reform’, in which she quotes Mao defining the process of agrarian reforms in June 1950 thus:

  Land reform in a population of over 300 million people is a vicious war. It is more arduous, more complex, more troublesome than crossing the Yangzi, because our troops are 260 million peasant soldiers. This is a war for land reform, this is the most hideous class war between peasants and landlords. It is a battle to the death.6

  Fanshen resulted in the execution of over a million landlords or rich peasants, and redistribution of lands among the poor farmers and landless cultivators. In democratic India, land reforms did not take off as intended, as many provinces did not enact or enforce the reforms with the required zeal. Besides, India did not exploit its higher threshold of industrialization and its advantage of familiarity with English. Moreover, both India and China got deeply immersed in regional conflicts, India with the Indo-Pakistan war of 1947–48 over Jammu and Kashmir, and China with the war in Korea. Internal strife and territorial consolidation too consumed the attention of the leadership and resources of both countries. Mao assigned the ‘liberation’ of Tibet to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) during 1950 as a top-priority objective, besides the subjugation of recalcitrant and warring factions in the country, particularly in the southern and western frontier regions of China. The Indian leadership was occupied with assimilation of Hyderabad and Junagarh states into India, and later with liberation of Goa, Daman and Diu from Portuguese rule.

  Socio-economic development, infrastructure and industrialization were the other vital result areas for both nations, which embarked on five-year plans to achieve their targeted growth. In the case of India, one can say with certainty that the defence sector received less than the desired importance or attention. Being a democratic, peace-loving and development-oriented nation, India had no security threats—this was the impression and belief of both India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and many other national leaders of the time. They naively considered the Himalayas in the north and the seas along the peninsula as sentinels that would ensure the security of India’s vast frontiers.

  But the Chinese had a fairly evolved national security strategy, and their leaders were battle-experienced veterans who understood the need to secure the country’s frontier regions and the necessity and importance of being militarily strong. So while India did not accord the Sino-Indian boundary the attention it deserved, particularly in view of the undemarcated nature of a large part of this boundary, China deliberately did not want to raise this issue of its demarcation until the ‘time was ripe’—a characteristic Chinese strategy deployed effectively even during the Simla Conference of 1913–14 over a century ago! India, since Independence, has neither displayed extraterritorial ambitions nor endeavoured to export any ideology, although the country was proud of its democratic moorings. But Mao never concealed his unambiguous objective of reclaiming territory that at some point of time had belonged to China. This expansionist policy, along with the ‘hard-core’ communist ideology that China not only imposed on her far-flung dependencies like Tibet, Xinjiang and Mongolia, but also urged its neighbours to adopt, made for a precipitous combination loaded with potential for conflict.

  The Chinese believe that any territory that was once invaded by their army belongs to China and that they can assert their rights to such areas forever afterwards. For example, China’s now extinct claim to Nepal was based on a single Sino-Tibetan expedition across the Himalayas in the nineteenth century. The Chinese believe their nation is the ‘Middle Kingdom’, an ancient and rich civilization of a superior race. They are a proud people and tend to look down on others as less cultured or civilized. Though they too had been ruled by outsiders—the Mongols and the Manchus, as India had been by the Mughals—these rulers were eventually assimilated into their civilization and culture. Since the days of the Manchu Empire, the Chinese have given great importance to their minorities, assuring them of equal status and referring to them as a family of five races—the Han, Manchu, Mongol, Muslim and Tibetan— represented by the stars of their national flag.

  In fact, the Chinese can never forget the 200 years of their subjugation from 1749 to 1949 by Western powers and by Japan, and avenging this at an opportune moment in the future is always on their mind. They are not in a hurry, though, as they believe time is on their side. The Chinese display enormous patience; when the world talks of decades, the Chinese talk of centuries. In their negotiations, they often achieve their goal by exhausting the tolerance of the other side or by exploiting their haste. ‘Procrastinate to frustrate’ seems to be their aim. They do not hasten to finalize any agreement, particularly if it relates to the boundary, unless it is on their terms. When required, they can be evasive and vague, and can resort to obfuscation with uncanny ease.

  Chinese procrastination was not accidental, but a well-orchestrated strategy to extract the best deal and not be hustled into arriving at decisions not most favourable to themselves. They demonstrated a proclivity to prolong negotiations and wear out the other side, thereby securing the best possible deal for themselves. Time has never been a major determinant for them in arriving at a conclusive decision. In July 1914, the Chinese kept Viceroy Lord Hardinge and Arthur Henry McMaho
n hanging on the slim hope that British India would eventually succeed in getting the Simla Convention accepted, only to dissappoint them.

  Another characteristic of the proud Chinese race is non-acceptance of ‘loss of face’. The British Empire in its heyday had also taken prudent decisions keeping in mind the threshold of China’s ability to accept those decisions. The leaders of communist China were clear that they had to avenge the ‘century of humiliation’ that was inflicted on their country when it was weak. China was also wary of the British Empire expanding to gain control of southern Tibet, including the Chumbi Valley, Shigatse, Gyantse and the contiguous areas south of the Tsangpo. After the Younghusband expedition, the Chinese realized that Tibet was the vulnerable western flank of their empire, the security of which had to be ensured. Moreover, that vulnerability was accentuated by the non-acceptability of Chinese rule to the Tibetans, resulting in the ‘back-door threat’ syndrome. Many Chinese analysts have read a lot into India’s Tibet agenda, and India’s proximity to southern Tibet is a factor that weighs heavily on the Chinese mind. During his visit to India in April 1960, Zhou Enlai is reported to have said: ‘The developments in Tibet have a direct bearing on the border problem.’ Further commenting on the ‘unfortunate’ skirmishes along the border in 1959, he believed that ‘it was a logical outcome of the revolt in Tibet and the coming of the Dalai Lama to India’.7

  Prime Minister Nehru’s visit to Peking in October 1954 was the first landmark visit of any Indian national leader to China. The Indian prime minister was given a rousing reception and the visit was high on ceremonials. The ‘Hindi Chini bhai bhai’ slogan resounded everywhere. During this visit, Nehru pointed out the inaccuracy of the boundaries on Chinese maps. Zhou Enlai’s explanation was that these maps were reproductions of the old Kuomintang maps and that the present government had not had the time to revise them.8 When the new Chinese maps published in 1956 still showed large parts of India within the Chinese boundary, Nehru again flagged the matter with Zhou En-lai during the Chinese leader’s visit to India that year. As said by Neville Maxwell in India’s China War, the Chinese premier spoke only about the McMahon Line in response. ‘This line, established by the British imperialists, was not fair … it was an accomplished fact and because of the friendly relations which existed between China and the countries concerned, India and Burma, the Chinese Government were of the opinion that they should give recognition to this McMahon Line.’9

  However, unlike in the case of Burma, the Chinese did not honour their word to India. Zhou Enlai remained consciously guarded as far as revealing the Chinese strategy on the boundary issue in the western sector was concerned, not wishing to discuss that until completion of the Aksai Chin highway, which was one or two years away! Describing one of the fundamental features of Chinese strategy more than a century ago, the thirteenth Dalai Lama told Charles Bell, his biographer:

  The Chinese way … is to do something rather mild at first; then to wait a bit, and if it passes without objection, to say or do something stronger. But if we take objection to the first statement or action, they urge that it has been misinterpreted, and cease, for a time at any rate, from troubling us further. The British should keep China busy in Tibet, holding her back there. Otherwise, when the Chinese obtain a complete hold over Tibet, they will molest Nepal and Bhutan also.10

  These are precisely the tactics the Chinese have been applying in Ladakh, Arunachal Pradesh, the South China Sea islands and other places. It is sad that our policy planners failed to register this historical Chinese pattern of the past. However, in June–July 2017, when the Chinese tried to ingress into the Doklam plateau (in Bhutan) near the tri-junction and build a road there, they were stopped in their tracks by the Indian Army on the request of Bhutan. This was the first time such an action was taken by the Indian government, and the Chinese were taken by surprise. The tense stand-off continued for over two months and has been resolved peacefully for the present by diplomacy. However, it must be noted that diplomacy works best when it is backed by military strength, as it is in this case. Both sides agreed to retreat from the eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation. The imminence of the ninenteeth National Congress of the Communist Party of China also prompted the Chinese to avoid an armed clash, which could cast a shadow on the conference. The de-escalation of this situation was accomplished with great finesse so that neither side lost face.

  Referring to a Sino-Soviet polemic in a pamphlet published in 1964–65, Jagat Mehta explains what peaceful coexistence meant to the Chinese: ‘Peaceful co-existence was temporary tactics: it was not an article of faith. This fits in well with the Chinese leadership’s strategy that justified the advancing of national interest by improvisation, including postponing the resolution of problems considered not ripe for solution.’11 It can be recalled that even though in 1954 the Chinese were quite aware of the boundary alignment shown on Indian maps, they did not raise the matter and instead chose to conceal information regarding their construction of the Aksai Chin road. As far as the McMahon Line was concerned, they kept their cards close to their chest. They did not reciprocate in equal measure the goodwill and many acts of solidarity and support undertaken by India.

  In addition, there was an undercurrent of rivalry between the leaders of China and India with regard to who held the pole position amongst the Afro-Asian community. These two emerging giants were aiming at socio-economic development, but were evolving along different trajectories. One was following the path of communism, now labelled as ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’, and the other was an adherent of parliamentary democracy. Because of their opposing ideologies, there were bound to be contradictions and differences in their approach to the same goals. ‘A successful and democratic India, which rises fast and eliminates its poverty in a reasonable period, is the biggest challenge to the legitimacy of China … The competition between India and China is, therefore, an ideological one,’ argued K. Subrahmanyam, a noted strategic thinker and author.12

  By the mid-1950s, Nehru had succeeded to a large extent in acquiring a niche position as a statesman and important leader of the developing countries and the non-aligned world. Sometimes unabashedly displaying his position as prime minister of the largest democracy of the world, he would adopt a chaperoning attitude towards other leaders. Carlos Romulo, representative of the Philippines at the Afro-Asian Bandung Conference in 1955, has described how Nehru deftly played ‘mother hen’ to Zhou Enlai, then prime minister and foreign minister of China. ‘Nehru arranged a number of private gatherings calculated to bring Zhou into closer contact with other delegates.’13 Nehru’s tendency to display a ‘dogmatic, impatient, irascible and unyielding’ attitude conveyed a sense of ‘the affectation of cultural superiority induced by a conscious identification with an ancient civilization’,14 which many delegates found off-putting. On the other hand, Zhou Enlai greatly impressed the delegates with his ‘apparent humility and reasonableness’.15

  In a candid comparison of the two leaders, Jagat Mehta, who played a key role during the official-level talks in 1960 between the two countries and was an observer during the extensive discussions held between the two prime ministers prior to the talks, said: ‘Zhou Enlai was an ace diplomat, in total command of details and able to weave these into a plausible conceptual framework. Nehru understood international affairs in depth and combined it with the transparent sincerity of an idealist, but did not have the matching capacity of marshalling facts.’16

  The adulation received by Zhou did not escape the attention of Nehru. In order to diminish China’s influence on the developing Afro-Asian nations and other ‘take aways’ [sic] from the Bandung Conference, Nehru ardently began to promote the Non-aligned Movement (NAM). The spadework done by Nehru, Nasser and Tito yielded results, and in September 1961, the non-aligned nations held their first convention at Belgrade. ‘It provided a high-minded, moralistic formulation for Indian foreign policy, differentiating India’s morality-based leadership from the supposedly amoral power
politics of the two Cold War camps, while giving India an arena within which it could play an independent, major role in the world.’17 Undoubtedly, though Nehru placed a huge premium on friendly relations with China and undertook many initiatives to help China establish itself in the comity of nations and gain recognition by the United Nations, China was not prepared to play second fiddle to India in Asian affairs. It must not be forgotten that the newly forged People’s Republic of China had appeared on the world stage after winning a decisive ‘people’s war’ against the Nationalists, who were pushed across the Taiwan Strait into Taiwan, and a fairly successful campaign in the Korean War.

  China, at that point, was a poor, populous, underdeveloped yet proud and victorious nation led by clear-headed, battle-hardened, pragmatic leaders, an enthusiastic communist party and a war-experienced army that was thoroughly committed to the party’s ideology. What is significant is that the Chinese leadership carried no moralistic baggage and were not afraid to change their goalposts when it suited them. They had developed a strategy of making vague and complex assertions, delaying finite conclusions until they had achieved their objectives. For example, Mao Zedong’s comment on the overall situation was that ‘the East wind prevails over the West wind’. He used to say it was China’s ‘sacred duty’ to liberate Tibet, as it was ‘the final goal’ and of ‘supreme importance’, and the cost or means mattered less … The question arose as to whom the Tibetans were being ‘liberated’ from! The Chinese leaders described the boundary dispute as a ‘complicated question left over by history’, and, as to why they never raised the boundary issue before 1956, the reply was, ‘the time was not ripe then’. These typically Chinese expressions—vague, noncommittal, or capable of being variously interpreted—have been developed into a fine art as weapons of realpolitik. Claiming to be the ‘sovereign’ of Tibet, how could China fail to notice major variations in the delineation of its empire’s southern limits?