The London School of Economics and Political Science Defining Independence in Cold War Asia: Sino-Indian Relations, 1949-1962 Anton Harder A thesis submitted to the Department of International History of the London School of Economics for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, May 2015 Page !1 Declaration I certify that the thesis I have presented to the London School of Economics for examination for the MPhil/PhD degree is wholly my own work other than where i have indicated. Copyright of this thesis rests with the author. Quotation from it is permitted, provided that proper acknowledgement is made. This thesis made not be reproduced without prior consent. I warrant that this authorisation does not, to the best of my belief, infringe the rights of any third party. I declare that my thesis consists of 99,997 words Page !2 Abstract In the early hours of 20 October 1962, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) launched a series of devastating assaults on Indian posts stretched along thousands of miles of mountainous border. The attack drew a line under several years of acrimony over the border and an even longer period of uncertainty and ambiguity regarding each sides’ respective claims. However, the Sino- Indian War was far more than just a territorial scrap, bloody as it was. It was widely perceived as a Chinese attack on Nehruvian non-alignment, a peculiar foreign policy posture that he had developed to counter the Cold War. By rejecting Nehru so firmly, Beijing was demonstrating a clear turn from the moderation it had pursued in tandem with the Soviets to engage non-socialist Asia through the mid-1950s. Mao’s attack on India was then a firm rejection of both Delhi’s moderation and Soviet partnership and a major turning point in the history of the Cold War and Asia. This thesis adds to the existing histories of the war by exploring Sino-Indian relations from 1949 when the two Asian giants cautiously swapped ambassadors. The ambiguous relationship between Beijing and Delhi is examined from the perspective of Nehru’s ambitious overall foreign policy agenda, rather than just a narrow focus on the border and Tibet. The deterioration of ties between Delhi and Beijing is often characterised as the result of conflicting territorial and indeed imperial ambitions. But it is also true to say that from early in the 1950s there was a remarkable effort at collaboration and accommodation of their respective ambitions. Simultaneously, collaboration was always underpinned by an acute sense of competition for influence in Asia, in particular over the appropriate model of development for the region. In particular, this thesis gives far greater emphasis on Beijing’s function within the dynamics of Sino-Indian relations, and shows how vital were the ideological shifts within the Chinese leadership. The ideologically framed judgements about Indian economic development policies had a major impact on how Beijing assessed the ongoing feasibility of its entire experiment with a moderate foreign policy in general and cooperation with Delhi specifically. By illustrating how these understandings of India also affected Chinese views of the Soviet leadership’s competence, this thesis also makes an important Page !3 contribution to the historiography of the Sino-Soviet split. Ultimately, relations collapsed with Delhi not just because of hard territorial interests, but because Mao came to believe that the continued deferral of revolutionary goals was leaving the field clear for reactionary elements in China, India and beyond Page !4 Table of Contents Abstract 3 Table of Contents 5 Abbreviations 6 Introduction 7 Chapter One 37 Dilemmas of Diplomatic Recognition, 1949-50 Chapter Two 60 Cold War in Asia, 1950-53 Chapter Three 111 A Moderate Friendship? 1953-56 Chapter Four 178 Drawing lines between class and nation, 1957-1959 Chapter Five 225 Diplomacy, imperialism and war, 1959-62 Conclusion 283 Bibliography 296 Appendix 1 309 Page !5 Abbreviations AAC Asian African Conference CCP Communist Party of China CIA Central Intelligence Agency (US) CMFA Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs CoGS Chief of General Staff Cominform Communist Information Bureau CPI Communist Party of India CPSU Communist Party of Soviet Union CYNP Chen Yi Chronology CYWX Chen Yun Selected Documents DRV Democratic Republic of Vietnam FLN Algerian National Liberation Front FYP Five Year Plan GMD Guomindang (Chinese Nationalist Party) IB Intelligence Bureau (India) ICC International Control Commission HBBR Henderson-Brooks Bhagat Report JGYLMZDWG Collected Documents of Mao Zedong since the founding of the PRC JGYLMZDJSWG Collected Military Documents of Mao Zedong since the founding of the PRC JNSW Jawaharlal Nehru Selected Works JNLCM Jawaharlal Nehru Letters to Chief Ministers MEA Ministry of External Affairs (India) MZDWJ Collected Documents of Mao Zedong MZDWJWX Selected Diplomatic Documents of Mao Zedong MZDXZGZWX Selected Tibet Work Documents of Mao Zedong NAM Non-Aligned Movement NEFA North-East Frontier Administration NMML Nehru Memorial Museum and Library PLA People’s Liberation Army PRC People's Republic of China PRO Public Record Office, Kew, United Kingdom RSS Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh TASS Soviet News Agency UN United Nations UNGA United Nations General Assembly UNSC United Nations Security Council UNSEC United Nations Social and Economic Council YFHY Chinese documents on the Bandung Conference ZELNP Zhou Enlai Chronology ZELJSWX Selected Militart Documents of Zhou Enlai Page !6 Introduction On the morning of 19 October 1962, one day before the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) attacked Indian forces at various positions along their massive Himalayan border, Beijing’s ambassador to Pakistan had sought a meeting in Islamabad. Pakistan’s leadership was due to discuss the Sino-Indian border problem, and Beijing wanted to be sure its interests were considered. After emphasising that Islamabad’s official desire was that the conflict be contained, Pakistan’s Secretary of Foreign Affairs said that in their hearts they felt, ‘India deserved to be taught a lesson, [we] hope China will hit India hard, and wear India down with a long-term struggle’. The Pakistanis then provided evidence of the Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru’s, hypocrisy. Nehru had ‘all along been spreading a monstrous lie, on the surface opposing imperialism and colonialism, conducting a “neutral” policy, and strenuously opposing military alliances and agreements etc’. But, the Pakistani revealed, they had proof of a secret military understanding between India and the US agreed back in 1951, and they asked the Chinese to circulate the evidence amongst Afro-Asian neutral countries.1 A few weeks later, in November 1962, TN Kaul, Delhi’s Ambassador to Moscow, met several times with Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). The friendly meetings followed China’s initial attack on Indian border positions and continued after the attack was renewed in the middle of November. At one meeting, the Soviet leader assured Kaul that Moscow would revive a deal to supply Delhi with MiG fighters, held up temporarily in deference to Chinese sensitivities. Khrushchev coyly explained that the end 1 ‘Ding dashi yu Ba waishi mishu tan Zhongyin bianjing chongtu deng wenti,’ 20 October 1962, Bajisitan xielu Yindu tong meiguo zao yi qianding mimi xieding, CMFA 105-01111-01, 1-4 Page !7 of the ‘Caribbean crisis’ provided new possibilities with regard to the supply of military material. As their conversation wound down, Khrushchev asked Kaul, ‘I hear Mr ambassador, you are arresting a whole range of communists in your country?’ Kaul's answer provoked loud laughter from the Russian, ‘They are all Stalinists.’2 These encounters highlighted how the 1962 war was a turning point in both the post-war history of Asia and the Third World, and also in the history of the Cold War. The war ended the possibility of Sino-Indian international cooperation. The first wave of decolonisation after World War Two had seen an unprecedented extension of the European nation-state system to Asia and the concomitant enlargement of the United Nations. The partnership of Beijing and Delhi had symbolised the potential power of broad collective action across Asia and the Third World. China and India’s subsequent collapse into enmity reflected the challenges to Third World unity given differing national interests, ideologies and Cold War pressures. This history reverberates in the 21st Century within debates about the possibilities for cooperation between China and India, and amongst the emerging economies of the world, not least because India remains deeply scarred by the 1962 war. Furthermore, the enduring relationship between Islamabad and Beijing, indicative of a profound underlying pragmatism in 1962, continues to disturb Indian security experts today. The war with India was also a major brick in the wall Mao constructed between Moscow and Beijing. India had been an important factor for the Sino-Soviet relationship since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, simultaneously an object of common action and yet also a source of varying degrees of competition. In a Pan-Asianist fog, Nehru had initially predicted that Beijing’s Asian character would dilute its commitment to Moscow and radical politics. While Beijing’s very positive relations with Delhi in the mid-1950s seemed to Nehru a product of his initiative, it had in fact been part of a shared Sino-Soviet project to engage moderate Asia. As Nehru had suspected however, there had always been a certain ambiguity about Beijing, and 2 ‘Some notes made by Kaul in 1962 on Khrushchev,’ 1966-1992, articles on Indo-Soviet Relations by TN Kaul, TN Kaul I, II & III Instalments, Subject File 11, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), 17 Page !8 especially Mao’s, willingness to tolerate Moscow’s pre-eminence, and starting from 1958 the Chairman began to actively steer his country away from the USSR’s influence.