The 1962 China-India war over border disputes is the most bizarre war in modern history. The final result of the war, according to Jin Hui, author of the book The Lure of Murdoch in Tibet, “The victor got everything the loser had except being called a loser; the loser got everything the victor had except being declared the victor.” But why was this? The answer lies in the CCP’s twisted motivation for war.
This is the third part of the series that explores the CCP’s motivation for waging war. In 1962, China fought with India over border disputes. Although the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) won on the battlefield, India ended up getting everything it wanted and more. China did not win anything. Even the Chinese soldiers didn’t understand why the leaders gave up so quickly and wondered what they had fought for. Let’s look into the history of the war in order to gain insight.
Bizarre China-India War
The border between China and India is 2,000 km long and the two countries have a long history of disputes. From 1913 to 1914, British India, the government of Tibet, and the Republic of China (ROC) negotiated the eastern section of the border. The ROC government couldn’t accept the agreement and withdrew from the talks. The Tibetan government and British India signed a treaty that delineated the “McMahon Line” and assigned an area of 90,000 square kilometers of southern Tibet to British India. However, the ROC refused to recognize the treaty.
After the Chinese Communist Party seized power in 1949, the CCP leaders did not recognize the McMahon Line either, but they never officially raised the issue with India. In 1954, the Indian government overhauled the official map and continued to encroach on the disputed areas. Conflicts along the Sino-Indian border surfaced frequently.
In the summer of 1962, then-Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru announced a policy denying China’s exclusive possession of Tibet. Indian troops began building new outposts in the disputed territory, some of which were located between China’s border posts. On Oct. 17, 1962, the CCP Central Military Commission issued an order to “eliminate invading Indian troops.” Three days later, the Chinese PLA launched an attack. Nehru ordered the Indian military to “drive the Chinese army out.” A full-scale war between the two countries broke out.
PLA
Zhang Guohua and He Jiashang, commanders of the PLA’s Tibetan Military Region, led the Chinese troops in the attack. The Indian army was quickly defeated. The Chinese Military regained control over the territories that India occupied. Of the territories that China took back, the eastern section of southern Tibet was very fertile and desirable. With a mild climate, abundant rainfall, and lush forests, the area is called the “Southern Yangtze River in Tibet.”
After taking these territories back, Beijing launched a propaganda campaign utilizing all media outlets to celebrate the victories. But then, something unexpected happened.
India-china landscapes
On Nov 21, 1962, about a month after the war started, Beijing declared a ceasefire on all fronts, voluntarily retreated, and returned all captured Indian weapons and equipment—as well as all the land it had regained, including the desirable “Southern Yangtze River in Tibet.”
The Chinese withdrew 20 kilometers back from the “McMahon Line” across the board.
In his book India’s War with China, British author Neville Maxwell writes that the sudden announcement by Beijing of a unilateral and unconditional withdrawal at a time when the Chinese army achieved major victories shocked the world. Never before in the history of warfare has the victorious side unconditionally withdrawn troops before the defeated side, effectively nullifying the hard-won victory at great cost.
The Chinese book titled “The 1962 War Against India: What Did China Get?” reads: “Why did we abandon this land? The soldiers couldn’t accept it, and neither could the civilians. When we dashed down from the snow-capped mountains in 1962, we had such unstoppable momentum that we threw away our winter coats along the way. The more we fought, the faster we advanced. When we retreated, however, we moved slower and slower. The soldiers couldn’t understand why we abandoned our own territory.”
After the war, India moved more than a million people to the southern Tibetan region, which became the state of Arunachal Pradesh in 1986. It is the size of Hungary and three times the size of Taiwan.
Why did the CCP suddenly stop the war and give up unconditionally? This brings us to the real reason why Mao launched the war in the first place.
Mao devised the war
After Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” movement in 1958, China suffered the greatest man-made disaster in human history: the Great Famine. From 1959 to 1971, an estimated 40-55 million people died from starvation. Mao faced great opposition from within the Party.
From Jan. 11 to Feb. 7, 1962, the CCP held a “7,000 People Conference” to address the disaster, and Mao was forced to recognize his mistakes.
According to the Diary of Deng Yingchao, the wife of former Chinese premier Zhou Enlai, many leaders asked Mao to step down. On Feb. 10, Mao convened the Politburo Standing Committee and said: “I am willing to follow the decision of the conference and resign as chairman. I’ll step down and go focus on social studies.” CCP leaders including Deng Xiaoping welcomed Mao’s resignation.
After the conference, Mao’s appointed successor Liu Shaoqi presided over the central government. But Mao was resentful. Chairman Mao did not sit idle, and internal political struggles worsened.
At the Tenth Plenary Session of the CCP’s Eighth Central Committee in September of that year, Mao branded Xi Zhongxun, Xi Jinping’s father and then Vice Premier and Secretary-General of the State Council, as an anti-Party activist guilty of using a novel to oppose the Party. The novel that Mao referred to is a biographical one that extols the founders of the CCP’s northern base in Shaanxi Province. Mao was left out of this fictional work; he took it personally and labeled it “anti-CCP” and “anti-Mao.”
In the same year, Peng Dehuai, the marshal who commanded the PLA during the Korean War but was later removed from power by Mao, requested to be reinstated. Mao refused as he was paranoid and believed that many CCP leaders were against him. Meanwhile, Sino-Soviet relations also continued to deteriorate. Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader at the time, expressed his dissatisfaction on several occasions with Mao’s extreme leftist policies. Mao was angry and criticized Khrushchev in return.
Nikita Khrushchev
It was against this background that Mao decided to start a war so that he could regain the political limelight. Mao had a famous saying: “A regime is born from the barrel of guns.” War is how CCP leaders obtain power. And the Indian border dispute became a good cause for a war. Mao only wanted to use war as a means of regaining domestic political power. He was not interested in creating a geopolitical event. He was careful to avoid involving the Americans and the Soviets.
Cuban Missile Crisis
Then, much to Mao’s delight, the Cuban Missile Crisis broke out in October 1962. He seized the opportunity. The Soviets were secretly building nuclear missile launch facilities in Cuba and the United States reacted strongly. The crisis brought the two superpowers to the brink of a nuclear war when the U.S. enacted a naval blockade of Cuba and demanded the missiles on the island be returned to the USSR.
The start date of the Cuban Missile Crisis is Oct. 16, 1962. And the CCP’s central military commission issued a war order against India the following day. Mao seized the window when the US and the USSR were tied up in a crisis and launched the Sino-India War on Oct. 20.
So why did Mao end the war so abruptly, abandoning the territories that the PLA had already seized? From my point of view, firstly, Mao wasn’t all that interested in border disputes. He didn’t start the war to take back the lost territories. Secondly, he didn’t want to risk getting the Soviets or the Americans involved.
By Oct. 29, an agreement was reached between President John F. Kennedy and Khrushchev. Mao ended the first phase of the war with India on that same day. The second phase was from Nov. 18 to 21. From Oct. 29 to the end of November, the USSR and the United States began fulfilling their promises to each other. The USSR halted its missile project in Cuba and returned the missiles to the Soviet Union while the United States withdrew armed missiles stationed in Turkey. The fast resolution must have come as a surprise to Mao and he abruptly ended the Sino-Indian war on Nov. 21 when the Cuba crisis was over.
This is the last one of the 3-part series that analyzes CCP leaders’ motivation for waging war. As you can see, CCP leaders do not care about winning or losing nor do they care about the cost of a war. Launching war is only a tool for them to achieve some ulterior motives. The Korean War enabled the CCP to develop the Chinese Air Force and the aviation industry. Deng Xiaoping’s Sino-Vietnamese war allowed the CCP to gain America’s trust, which enabled him to start China’s economic reforms. The Sino-Indian War of 1962 was a tool that Mao used to regain political power amid CCP infighting.
I hope this series offers insight into the current situation in the Taiwan Strait and Xi Jinping’s motive for war.
Watch Lei’s Real Talk on this topic
Why Chinese military and CCP leader launched the most bizarre China-India war
