Mao’s War on Nature and the Great Sparrow Purge

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Coastal geology & environment, Comparative politics, Economics and society,, Environmental, International Relations, Memorabilia, Political History, Politics, Regional History, Sport

Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” (GLF) in 1958—communist China’s bold venture to transform the nation’s economy from agrarian to industrial—necessitated some drastic social engineering, and more than a little tinkering with nature. The “Paramount Leader”, repudiating the advice of state economists, consistently advocated the efficacy of population growth for China (Ren Duo, Liliang Da – “With Many People, Strength is Great”) …he stated that “even if China’s population multiplies many times, she is fully capable of finding a solution, the solution is production” (‘The Bankruptcy of the Idealist Conception of History’, (1949)). One strategy of Mao’s for protecting the imperative of national productivity and boosting output involved an extreme “solution” in itself.

Four Evils Campaign poster (source: chineseposters.net)

Pest controllers: As a plank of the GLF Mao spearheaded the “Four Evils Campaign”, four “pests” of the natural world were targeted for elimination – rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows…the first three especially concentrated in large numbers certainly could pose a threat to public health and hygiene, but why sparrows? Mao singled out the sparrow because it consumed the grain seed and rice from agricultural fields. What followed was a government propaganda campaign exhorting the people to fulfil their patriotic duty and zealously hunt down these proscribed “enemies of the state”. The regime enlisted the civilian population in a military-like operation, a coordinated mass mobilisation, dedicated to this singular task. The mass participation event included the very young, armies of children aged five and older were despatched from their homes armed with slingshot and stones, to formicate all over the countryside and wipe out vast numbers of sparrows often with frightening effectiveness.

“Patriotic duty” of young Chinese (source: chineseposters.net)

Mao v Nature: Mao’s war on passerine birds was part of a wider war on nature. Mao encapsulated the objective for China in one of his oft-repeated slogans: Ren Ding Sheng Tian (“Man must conquer nature”). Mao’s modernist conception of the world saw humans as fundamentally distinct and separate from nature, so in order to fashion the world’s most populous republic into the socialist utopia that he envisioned, nature, this external thing, had to be harnessed and defeated (Zhansheng ziran). The result was a drastic reshaping of China’s physical landscape, the over-extraction of resources, intensive farming schemes, massive deforestation, riverine pollution, over-hunting and over-fishing [Judith Shapiro, Mao’s War against Nature (2001)]

Eurasian Tree Sparrow: top of Mao’s nature hit-list

A monstrous ecological imbalance and a species endangered: The nationally coordinated campaign against the four pests proceeded with phenomenal speed and ruthless efficiency. By early 1960 an estimated one billion sparrows had been destroyed🄰, nearly wiping out the species altogether in China…a fateful consequence that was to prove catastrophic for the country’s food production. The authorities had not heeded the expert advice from Chinese scientists🄱 that sparrows fulfilled a vital function in feeding off not just crops but off insects including locusts. With the removal of this natural predator, locusts in plague quantities were free to ravage the nation’s fields of grain and rice, and ravage they did, in Nanjiang 60% of the produce fields were ruined [‘Mao and the Sparrows: A Communist State’s War Against Nature’, Agata Kasprolewicz, Przekroj, 22-Mar-2019, www.przekroj.org] .

The Great (man-made) Famine, 1959–1961: The resulting Great Famine in the PRC caused up to 30 million deaths and an estimated similar figure or more in lost or postponed births, making it the worst famine in human history judged by population loss [‘Berkeley study: Historic famine leaves multiple generations vulnerable to infectious disease’, Berkeley Public Health, www.publichealth.berkeley.edu]. The plunge in agricultural output linked to the sparrow decimation project was further exacerbated by other factors such as Peking’s procurements policy, increase in grain exports from 1957 (redirecting grain away from domestic consumption which otherwise could have allowed millions of Chinese to survive the famine); the priority on industrialisation diverting huge numbers of agricultural workers into industrial sectors adversely affected the food scarcity crisis.

Fujian province propaganda poster, 1960 (image: US National Library of Medicine)

Postscript: Reprising the eradication campaign In 1960 the Chinese government upon realising the folly of its sparrow offensive, overturned its proscription of the birds, declaring war on bed bugs in their place. The disastrous sparrow mega-kill episode however didn’t bury the Four Evils campaign forever. The Chinese government in 1998 launched a new version of the movement, posters were seen in Beijing and Chongqing urging citizens to kill the four pests…the first three were the usual suspects as in 1958, but this time cockroaches were substituted for sparrows. Unlike the original sparrow campaign the 1998 version was not successful [‘The Four Pests Campaign: Objectives, Execution, Failure, And Consequences, World Atlas, www.worldatlas.com].

🄰 along with 1.5 billion rats, over 220 million pounds of flies and over 24 million pounds of mosquitoes

🄱 there were doubters within the hierarchy of the Communist Party who had misgivings about the wisdom of the Paramount Leader’s policy, but most found it expedient to remain silent for fear of the personal consequences of incurring the wrath of Mao

Big Troubles in Little Hong Kong: Unrepresentative Government and Civil Unrest in a British Colony in the Shadow of Communist China

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Inter-ethnic relations, Regional History

Rioting in Sham Shui Po, Kowloon, 1956 (source: simtang / gwulo.com)

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Social unrest has been the norm in Hong Kong over the last decade as we’ve witnessed the clash between the centre and the the periphery, between mainland China and the people (or at least a very significant chunk of the people) of its regained territory. Such polarisation and disharmony is hardly without precedence in Hong Kong however as a cursory glance at the postwar history of this long-existing Pacific colonial outpost of the British Empire reveals. Confrontation between the state as represented by the colonial government and its unrepresented Chinese citizens has erupted and spilt over into violent rioting and conflict on several occasions.

Double-10th riots (photo: scmp.com)

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“Double Tenth” Riots, 1956
In the 1950s tensions developed between right wing pro-Kuomintang settlers (many of which had fled to the British colony(𝒶) following the Communist takeover of mainland China in 1949) and pro-CCP inhabitants of Hong Kong. What triggered the riots that erupted in 1956 was to observers an act of “petty officialdom”. In the middle of National Day celebrations, an official tore down a Republic of China flag and decorations in a resettlement estate in the city. Enraged Nationalists railed against the police trying to defuse the tense situation but this eventually escalated into widespread rioting by the pro-KMT protesters with gang members joining in…attacks on property, arson attempts, looting, violence against the local police and against leftist workers and trade unionists across North Kowloon and Tsuen Wan. With the HK Police overwhelmed by the rioting the colonial secretary Edgeworth B David (acting on behalf of the governor Alexander Grantham) responded by bringing in a British army unit which eventually quelled the disturbances using force. Although brief in duration the riots resulted in 59 dead (including the wife of the Swiss vice consul) and around 500 injured. Although the Nationalist agents in the riots were politically motivated in their actions, another dynamic in the riots represented protests from the anti-communist refugees forced into overcrowded living conditions and blaming Chinese politics for “forcing them into Hong Kong in the first place”. (Wordie).

(photo: toursbylocals.com)

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Star Ferry Riots, 1966
The Star Ferry riots in 1966 started innocuously enough with a peaceful protest by commuters against the government’s decision to allow the company to increase fares for the cross-harbour journey by 25%(𝒷). As with what occurred ten years earlier, a heavy-handed reaction by the authorities to a minor kerfuffle provoked many Hong Kongers, especially its youth, to protest en mass which led in turn to widescale rioting and looting in Kowloon with police stations and other public facilities attacked and fire-bombed. The police fired tear gas into the crowds. Again, British forces were parachuted in to forcibly impose and maintain a curfew in the city. As a consequence of the disorder and rioting one rioter was shot and killed by police, dozens were injured and over 200 imprisoned.

Hill-side squatter huts, Tai Hang, 1965 (photo: Ko Tim-keung)

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1966, beginning of civic activism
The 1966 riots lacked the involvement of Chinese Triad gangs and rightist KMT malcontents that had been part of the 1956 troubles. Underlying its eruption was a widening disaffection of residents with the status quo in 1960s Hong Kong…in part it can be seen as a protest against the widening discrepancy in HK society between rich and poor and the appalling living and working conditions the masses had to contend with (overcrowding, ongoing housing dilemma, etc.), and a manifestation of the public distrust engendered by the corruption of officialdom and police.

Protesting tram workers clash with HK police, 1967

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The 1967 Riots
The 1966 riots produced perhaps the colony’s first large-scale social movement, however they were a prelude for a much more serious disturbance to Hong Kong society just one year later. What started as a minor industrial dispute involving workers at a plastic flowers factory in San Po Kong, striking over unreasonable work conditions, escalated into full-blown demonstrations, protests and violence by the Chinese inhabitants against the “iniquities” of British colonial rule with the HK governor David Trench taking a hard line with the malcontents.

Military patrol streets after Macau riots, Dec 1966 (Video, Papa Osmubal Archive)

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Spillover from the Cultural Revolution and the Macau disturbances
The political climate in Communist China at the time—Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution was very much on the upswing—played its part in stirring the pot of discontent among left-leaning Hong Kongers and emboldening them to defy their imperial masters. Another source of inspiration for the leftist rioters was the recent success of their counterparts in nearby Macau (themselves encouraged by the energy of the Cultural Revolution) in what became known as the 12-3 Incident. Conflict between the Chinese and the Portuguese authorities, brewing since July 1966, exploded at the end of the year…a dispute over a school building project triggered a series of Macau Chinese protests and rioting with the active participation of Mao’s Red Guards against corruption and colonialism in Macau. The Portuguese colonial police’s violent response to the Chinese protestors resulted in eight deaths and over 200 injuries. Under pressure from Chinese business owners and Beijing Macau’s Portuguese governor was forced into a humiliating public apology for the police crackdown and had to accede to the protestors’ demands. Consequently the balance of power in Macau was altered totally and irrevocably: Red China now had de facto suzerainty over the colony, reducing Portugal’s role in its governance to a nominal one only(𝒸).

Riot police using tear gas against 1967 protestors (photo: scmp.com)

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Smouldering Pearl
As the Hong Kong riots gathered momentum the demonstrators resorted first to strikes and property damage, then to the indiscriminate use of home-made bombs (branded by the government as “urban terrorism”). Governor Trench took a hardline in retailiation, imposing martial law in the colony, responding with tear gas and raiding the pro-CCP protestors’ strongholds like North Point. Whitehall took a laissez-faire approach to the 1967 riots leaving its management to the HK administration and the local police. The terrorist strategy adopted by leftist protestors—random bomb attacks coupled with some targeted assassinations—had the effect of alienating them from the majority of Hong Kong Chinese. By October 1967 Beijing had had enough, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai ordered the Communist protestors to halt the bombing campaign, and by the end of the year things were quiet again in the colony. The riots resulted in 51 dead, 832 injured, numerous arrests and some provocateurs deported to China.

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Trampling the seeds of democratisation
1967 witnessed the bloodiest, most violent riots in Hong Kong’s colonial history. The trauma of a succession of riots in the 1950s and 60s demonstrated one thing, the desperate need for reform of the political system and institutions in Hong Kong. While there was some labour reform and social improvements in the colony as a consequence of the 1967 unrest, overall HK governors overall contributed very little to this cause. One exception to this was Mark Young (governor in the 1940s) whose Young Plan called for wider political participation by creating a new Municipal Council to give the populace a greater stake in the colony. However Young’s plan was sabotaged when his successor Grantham opposed its implementation and it was blocked by the Legislative Council, never getting off the drawing board. Instead, it wasn’t until after 1984 with Hong Kong’s fate post-1997 firmly settled that HK governments made any overtures at all in that direction, by that time the horse has bolted!(𝒹).

Endnote: Chinese takeover of Hong Kong?
At the height of the 1967 riots rumours were circulating in the colony that China was planning to seize Hong Kong, to which the current hostilities were a prequel. There had been such a plan however the top echelons of the Chinese regime had never seriously countenanced it. Beijing was content with adding to the HK authorities’ internal troubles by despatching Chinese villagers over the border into the New Territories to launch attacks on police stations…for Beijing it was not the time for anything more. Perhaps it was as one observer noted, “the Chinese had no desire to take over Hong Kong at that time in their history…their proxy intervention had been no more than a demonstration” (Jan Morris, Hong Kong). And a test! It’s plausible that Beijing through its proxies was testing the HK regime to see if it would bow to pressure as the Portuguese Macau authorities did six months earlier. Ironically, at the height of the riots, Whitehall investigated evacuating Hong Kong altogether but the idea was strongly opposed by Governor Trench and the British Army command in Hong Kong on the grounds that it was deemed logistically too hard to pull off. A further objection was the danger to British citizens in the crown colony if a full-on evacuation was attempted (Yep).

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(𝒶) along with a criminal element affiliated with the KMT

(𝒷) the actual trigger for the riots was the spontaneous action of one HK vicenarian—inspired by urban councillor Elsie Elliott who dissented from the price hike decision and organised a petition against it—to stage a hunger strike at the TST terminal of the Star Ferry

(𝒸) the Chinese Communists subsequently moved to eliminate all pockets of Kuomintang influence from Macau

(𝒹) Governor Murray MacLehose was also of a reforming bent but he focused more on eradicating police corruption (establishing an ICAC) than on institutional reform

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Articles consulted:

‘What sparked Hong Kong’s Double Tenth riots’, Jason Wordie, South China Morning Post, 07-Aug-2016, www.amp.scmp.com

‘Fifty years on: The riots that shook Hong Kong in 1967’, Foreign Correspondents Club, 18-May-2017, www.fcchk.org

‘Whose Sound and Fury? The 1967 Riots of Hong Kong through The Times, Haipeng Zhou, global media journal.com

Yep, Ray. “The 1967 Riots in Hong Kong: The Diplomatic and Domestic Fronts of the Colonial Governor.” The China Quarterly, no. 193 (2008): 122–39. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20192167.

India v China, the Road to War, 1962: An Early Flexing of Regional Muscle by Two Future Asian Superpower Rivals

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Comparative politics, International Relations, Military history, Political geography, Political History, Regional History

Just last month there was a border flare-up on isolated Himalayan territory between northern India and China (Tibet)…one with familiar echoes of the past. A seemingly random clash of troops on the banks of Pangong Tso (eastern Ladakh) apparently initiated by the Chinese, some injuries, accusations of trespassing and of illegal building of defence facilities, a serious face-off between two bodies of troops 〚’China vs India: Beijing troops take control of border accusing India of trespassing’, (Brian McGleenon), Express, 18-May-2020, www.express.co.uk〛.

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Nathu La border, 2020  (Photo: AFP / Getty Images)

Though the incident is concerning of itself—two Asian military superpowers with nuclear empowerment going head-to-head—this is nothing new, there have been a number of such “minor incidents“ between the two countries over the past six decadesφ. Similar incidents to this occurred in 2017 at the same location and at the Doklam tri-junction (India/Tibet/Bhutan). Small incursions across the contested borderlands by both sides have long been a common occurrence 〚‘Chinese Troops Have Entered Disputed India Territory Several Times in Recent Days’, (AFP), Business Insider, 19-Aug-2014, www.businessinsider.com〛.

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Asian brotherhood – before the strains
Independent post-colonial India and the People’s Republic of China both emerged in the late 1940s. Initially the relationship between them was cordial, India even fulfilling a role as a diplomatic go-between for communist China to voice the isolated Peking regime’s concerns on world bodies like the UN〚‘India-China War of 1962: How it started and what happened later’, India Today, 21-Nov-2016, www.indiatoday.in〛. Indian leader Jawaharlal Nehru pursued a pragmatic approach to the gigantic northern neighbour, entering into the Panchsheel Pact (“Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence”) with China, eventually even recognising Peking’s right to rule Tibet. Nehru’s expression or slogan for the relationship during these “glass half-full” days was Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai (Indian-Chinese brotherhood) (India Today).

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Deterioration of Sino-Indian relations
In 1959 the relationship started to turn for the worst. The Lhasa Uprising and the Dalai Lama’s subsequent exile into India didn’t endear India to China and its leader Mao Zedong. But much more permanently troubling has been the ongoing spat between China and India over their shared and disputed borders. India inherited one nightmare of a border mess from the British colonials⌫…on two separate fronts – in the northwest of the country it has several contested boundaries with Pakistan and China (ranging over Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir,  Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand), and in the northeast with China (Arunachal Pradesh (“South Tibet”), Assam, Sikkim).

Border clashes and the road to war
In 1959 there were clashes on India’s North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) – at Kongka Pass, Ladakh (nine Indian and one Chinese soldiers killed) and at Longju, on the disputed McMahon Line (one Indian border guard killed). Both sides argued that the other transgressed into its territory first, a standard refrain in the Indo-Chinese confrontations. Mao was rebuked by Soviet leader Khrushchev at the time for harming the relationship with India〚’China’s India War: How the Chinese Saw the Conflict’, (Neville Maxwell), May 2011, www.chinaindiaborderdispute.files.wordpress.com〛.

From sabre-rattling to open war
Within three years the continuing border fracas developed into a full-blown border war between China and India…in October 1962 the Chinese People’s Liberation Army attacked the concentration of Indian border posts in Ladakh. The brief war itself was an unmitigated disaster for New Delhi and Nehru. The Indian army was badly led, out-manoeuvred and out-fought by the disciplined, efficient Chinese soldiers. Having spectacularly pushed the Indians back, Peking unilaterally called a ceasefire after one month of fighting and withdrew to the Line of Actual Control (a demarcation line separating the territory controlled by each side) leaving China in control of Aksai Chin (the location of Peking’s principal claim).

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The Sino-Indian war subsumed within the broader context of the Cold War
As India licked its wounds and tried to compose itself after the shock of the military debacle, Nehru set about portraying China as the belligerent aggressor and India as the aggrieved party merely trying to defend its own territory. Given the prevailing political climate of the time, the US and the UK readily agreed with New Delhi’s assessment of  China‘s actions as “bellicose and expansionist”. Peking was almost universally depicted as the villain in the piece with many Western countries adopting the “knee-jerk” anti-communist response, automatically denouncing Chinese aggression and offering support for the victim India. Both the US and the Soviet Union, who had just emerged from a superpower nuclear stand-off over the Cuban Missile Crisis, funnelled  lavished amounts of aid to India in the war’s wash-up〚Gregory Clark, Book Review of ‘India’s China War’, www.gregoryclark.net/; Neville Maxwell, India’s China War (1971)〛.

“Forward Policy”
The subsequent investigative work of Anglo-Australian journalist Neville Maxwell on the lead-up to the war turned this hitherto-accepted view of the conflict on its head. Maxwell obtained a copy of the top-secret, classified Henderson Brooks-Bhagat Report⊗ leaked from an ‘insider’ and published its findings in a book in 1971. Maxwell and the HBB Report exploded the “convenient military mythology” of the 1962 war as being caused by China’s unprovoked aggression 〚’National Interest: Who’s afraid of Neville Maxwell?’, (Shekhar Gupta), The Indian Express, 22-Mar-2014, www.indianexpress.com〛.

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Aksai Chin  (Source: www.thediplomat.com)

The documents revealed that India from the end of the Fifties pursued “Forward Policy’, an aggressive strategy of military patrolling of disputed land claimed by China (provocatively and repeatedly setting up military posts ever more forward, so that the Indian post troops found themselves eyeballing the Chinese ones✦), Also disclosed was the folly of India’s complete unpreparedness for war at the time 〚’Burying Open Secrets: India’s 1962 War and the Henderson-Brooks Report’, (Shruti Pandalai), The South Asia Channel, 02-Apr-2014, www.archive.org/〛. The classified report and Maxwell show an ill-conceived plan from go to woe on India’s part…Nehru and members of the government pushed the military into a course of reckless adventurism on the northern borders (with Nehru urging the Indian army to drive the Chinese invaders out of the Dhola Strip)(Clark).

Peking showed itself willing to negotiate border disputes with it’s other southern neighbours, working through obstacles and doing so amicably with Burma, Nepal and Pakistan (the latter only too happy to reach a settlement with the PRC, seeing it as buying an insurance policy against it’s number one enemy, India).

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(Image: www.differentbetween.info/)


Failure of diplomacy, a negotiating cul-de-sac 
In negotiations with India, China made it clear that it was prepared to exchange it’s claims to NEFA in it’s entirety for New Delhi’s recognition of it’s claim to Aksai Chin (important to China as a route between it’s northwest province Xinjiang and Xizang (Tibet)). Eminently fair and reasonable as that appeared, Nehru was unwaveringly intransigent and refused to budge on an inflexible, previously-stated position that the frontier and boundaries were already delimited. Nehru presented the Chinese with what was tantamount to a fait accompli, saying effectively, this is what we insist upon, agree to this and then negotiate the rest. Or equally unhelpfully Nehru would insist that the Chinese evacuate Aksai Chin but without making a reciprocal concession on India’s part (Clark).

An alternate view to Nehru’s refusal to countenance any degree of compromise at the negotiating table (Maxwell) has it that at least up until 1959 the Indian PM was favourably disposed to Chou En-Lai’s Aksai Chin/NEFA exchange proposal (Clark).

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Chou En-Lai in India  (Source: www.indiandefencereview.com)

A calamitous miscalculation
The approach of Nehru and his defence minister, Menon, was predicated on the assumption that Peking under no circumstances would resort to war¤ — this transpired to be a fatal misreading of the Peking mindset. Equipped with this (false) sense of security the Nehru government felt free to push the envelope as much as it liked, getting closer and closer to the Chinese posts, raising the stakes each time. Premier Chou from the Chinese side tried repeatedly to negotiate a solution with the Indian PM, while all the time fortifying China’s military position on the disputed borders. 

Extra-cabinet Policy-making
Nehru, intent on projecting an unwavering show of strength, insisted that the retention of “India’s territories” were non-negotiable, a question of “national prestige and dignity”. With the domestic opposition egging on the government to take an even more aggressive stance on the border issue, Nehru set the stakes too high, as the situation proceeded relentlessly, he could not back down without risking great loss of face. As India plunged deeper into the diplomatic crisis, Nehru monopolised decision-making in his own hands,  often by-passing cabinet and parliament altogether  (‘India’s China War‘).

Ultimately, a frustrated Peking lost all patience with such bloody-minded stonewalling by the Indian side and took the drastic step that to Nehru and New Delhi had been previously unthinkable 〚’China Was The Aggrieved; India, Aggressor In ‘62’, Outlook, (Interview with N Maxwell, 22-Oct-2012, www.outlookindia.com; ‘India’s China War’〛.

 

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(Source: www.firstpost.com/)

India’s ”Pollyanna approach” to the military situation
India blundered into a war it was wholly unprepared for. As Maxwell pointed out, India’s championing of a non-aligned position in world politics and the prestige that afforded it, led it to let it’s guard down defence-wise. During the Fifties the strength of the country’s armed forces was allowed to become depleted. The complacency circa 1960 was manifest in Indians’ characterisation of the border confrontations with the PRC as a “police action”, and in Nehru’s comments that the Himalayas represented an “effective barrier“ to stop China. The effortless annexation of Portuguese Goa in 1961, against hardly any opposing forces, further lulled India into an unrealistic assessment of its own military capability. Signs of hubris even! When it came to the actual conflict in October 1962, the contrast was stark. India had maybe a quarter of the strength of China stationed in the conflict zone. India was deficient to the Chinese in many other areas: in weaponry (shortage of tanks and artillery; it’s jawans (soldiers) lacked the warm clothing essential for the weather and were unacclimatised to the altitude; the Chinese had the advantages of location and communications; and the Indians underestimated the difficulty of the terrain 〚’’Reassessing the Soviet Stand on the Indo-China conflict’, (Arun Mohanty), Russia Beyond, 25-Oct-2012, www.rbth.com; ‘India’s China War’〛.

Blame for the military fiasco also lands heavily on the generals themselves…Lt-General Kaul in particular comes badly out of the report’s findings. The politicians did not get realistic advice from the military commanders on India’s capacity to handle the border conflict, in part because they themselves had dismissed the unfavourable but accurate advice they were getting from subordinate officers at the front concerning the army’s clear lack of combat readiness (‘India’s China War’).

Drifting away from non-alignment
There had been an Indian eagerness to engage in reckless war rhetoric in the lead-up to the Himalayan war. India was awash with a mood of nationalistic jingoism…following Pandit Nehru’s lead very few were talking about negotiation, inside and outside the government. This, together with it’s swift recourse to warfare to secure Goa just ten months earlier, lost India credibility in the eyes of other countries in the non-aligned camp, and as Nehru was very much the embodiment of non-alignment statesmanship, this diminished him as well⊟. The fracturing of Indian non-alignment was further underscored with the country gravitating towards both Moscow and Washington at the conflict’s end (‘India’s China War’).

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As we have seen since 1962, the posturing and muscle-flexing by India and China on the mountainous border continues to the present. These fracas may on the surface be ‘contained’ shows of bluster, but the geo-strategic importance of the China-Indian border, and its proximity to another unresolved latent border flashpoint in Kashmir (India v Pakistan), remains a very real concern for all three players to avoid the errors of the past 〚’India’s two-front conundrum’, (Shahzad Chaudhry), The Express Tribune, 31-May-2020, www.tribune.com.pk〛.

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PostScript: An emerging rift in the “fraternal socialist states”
The Indo-Chinese War had piquant ramifications for the Soviet/PRC relationship. When the conflict took a serious turn, China’s expectation would be that it’d get the support of its fellow socialist state against a capitalist democracy, but the USSR annoyed Peking by adopting a neutral stance (a sign to the PRC of emerging “Soviet revisionism”)◊. Moscow’s position shifted over the course of the conflict, initially tilting slightly toward the PRC then back more openly toward India. The Soviets saw friendship with India and Nehru as useful—in a Russian global strategy that was moving towards a peaceful co-existence with the capitalist world—culminating in the 1971 Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation. The war signalled the emerging ideological gap between the two communist powers which would splinter further apart in 1963 (Mohanty).

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Φ the former Indian army chief VK Singh has stated that he is unconcerned by the most recent fracas, attributing Chinese aggression to an attempt to deflect attention away from it’s current problems at home〚’Amid India-China border stand off, Army Commanders Conference begins’, The Hindu, 27-May-2020, www.thehindu.com〛
⌫ “(India) inherited frontiers…(but) no boundaries”, as Maxwell pithily put it
⊗ the report to this day has not been officially released by any Indian government, it is said, due to its “extremely sensitive” nature and “current operational value” (Pandalal)
✦ in the sensitive Chip Chap Valley almost 40 Indian posts were positioned on territory claimed by China.
¤ this was a massive fail on the part of the Indian bureaucrats too. The Congress government was acting on advice from Intelligence Bureau director BN Mullik who assured it China would not react militarily to Indian advance movements.
⊟ in the trauma and shock of the catastrophic military reversals, a despairing Nehru tried to talk the US and Formosa (Taiwan) into attacking China. As Maxwell noted of India’s curious dualism in this: to Nehru the use of force was “reprehensible in the abstract and in the service of others, but justifiably both politically and morally when employed by India in disputes” (‘India’s China War’)
◊ the USSR had its own boundary disputes with China in the Far East which weren’t resolved until the early Nineties