Foreign Policy Blunder II: The China War

The events leading to the war with the Chinese where we were comprehensively defeated reveal a long saga of British perfidy and our ineptitude. British, of course were taking care of their own interests so their machinations can be explained that way. However it is our ineptitude, which constitutes the second in our foreign policy blunder series. The British negotiated the border between China and India with their interests in mind. Depending upon the political climate, there were as many as eleven different borders. During these negotiations, the Aksai Chin area was handed over to the Chinese to prevent Russian quest for a warm water port. Anyway, in my view it is unimportant how the maps were drawn before independence because we had absolutely no control over the matter. But after independence, the problem was ours to deal with. At that time, the boundary with China was called the Johnson line, which became the official boundary.

In 1954, GoI laid claims to Aksai Chin to which the Chinese did not object. In fact, China and India negotiated the "Five Principles of Peaceful Existence". Nehru came up with the "Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai" slogan. While this was going on, unbeknownst to India, the Chinese constructed a road connecting Tibet with Xinxiang, which ran south of the Johnson line. We did not find out about it till later. We [...]


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