India's National Magazine
From the publishers of THE HINDU

Vol. 15 :: No. 25 :: Dec. 05 - 18, 1998

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BOOKS

Fresh insights into the 1962 war

A. G. NOORANI

The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, Vol. 3: The Coming of the Cataclysm 1961-1966 by Roderick MacFarquhar; Oxford University Press; pages 733, £70.

THE publication of this volume, the last in a trilogy, is a major event in the realm of China studies and the culmination of a feat of scholarship. It is indispensable to a proper understanding of China, especially its internal debates preceding the war on the Sino-Indian border in 1962. The first salvoes of the "great proletarian cultural revolution", which Mao Zedong launched, were fired in June 1966. The movement, though distinctly Maoist, reflected Stalinism without the killings. Personality cult reached obscene heights, the Communist Party was downgraded; the Yan'an "Round Table", an inner group of leaders at the headquarters in the years of struggle (1936-47), was broken up, and comrades of the Long March were humiliated in purges. The Red Guards simply went amuck. Foreign policy is closely related to domestic politics. Foreign Minister Chen Yi was disgraced and the Ministry itself was besieged (vide Melvin Gurton: "The Foreign Ministry and Foreign Affairs during the Cultural Revolution", China Quarterly, October-December 1969 and Selections from China Mainland Magazines, Hong Kong, December 2, 9 and 16, 1968, recording Chen Yi's travails). MacFarquhar writes: "Never before had a dictator unleashed the forces of society against the state which he himself had created."

The seeds were, however, sown much earlier and they are the author's principal concern. A scholar of over 40 years' standing, he is Professor of History and Political Science at Harvard and editor, with John Fairbank, of the last two volumes of the Cambridge History of China. The trilogy covers the decade 1956-1966. The first volume, published in 1974, covered "contradictions among the people 1956-1957". The period was well chosen. The year 1956 reverberated with Khrushchev's famous "secret" denunciation of Stalin and witnessed the revolution in Hungary, shaking Mao's confidence in Khrushchev. Having completed collectivisation, Mao began to entertain "visions of leaping economic progress."

The second volume appeared in 1983, the author having served a term as Labour MP (1974-79). Its theme was Mao's disastrous attempt to achieve an economic breakthrough in the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960).

The present volume records the coming of the cataclysm from 1961 to 1966. In it, the author answers the question he had posed in the first volume and which he doggedly pursued for a quarter century: "Why, then, did he, who had done so much to make the Chinese regime what it was in the spring of 1966, decide to tear down and rebuild? This study seeks to answer that question" (Volume I; page 2). Mao's paranoia fed on the consequences of his blunders. "There were 30 million excess deaths between 1958 and 1961" in "the worst man-made famine in history." Rejection of the Soviet model of development was followed by a radical break with Soviet foreign policy. Khrushchev became an obsession. Ironically, his ouster in 1964 served only to increase Mao's sense of threat from Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping.

All the volumes are meticulously documented. The concluding one is based on a mass of primary source material which the author acquired during research visits to Beijing. The Library of the Fairbank Centre, of which he was Director, has a "mass of new Chinese documentation". The end-notes run into 178 pages and the bibliography to 43. What is the answer to the question he set out to answer in 1974? To begin with, his opinion of Mao has changed as he changed, as he writes in the Preface: "My image of Mao is now less the stern but unifying sovereign of the Round Table, more a suspicious Olympian Jove, ready to strike down with lightning bolts. To some extent, this reflects the changing environment in which Mao found himself (and which he helped to create) in the decade covered by this work, but I am more inclined now to believe in his original sin." He concludes: "Whatever genuine if misbegotten idealism inspired Mao, his first resort was to sordid political intrigue. The Cultural Revolution bore the mark of Cain from birth" (page 473).

Mao's failures hurt his self-esteem and made him wonder if exposure of fallibility would drive sceptics to revolt. He need not have worried. "Only one old comrade was bold enough and responsible enough to challenge Mao. As at Lushan in 1959, so in Beidaihe in 1962, none of the whistle-blower's colleagues was prepared to stand by him, although they shared his views. At high noon, the party's rural chief Deng Zihui stood alone. Since he was not a general with potential for making mischief, his disgrace was less demeaning than Peng Dehuai's." (He had challenged Mao at Lushan.)

Prime Minister Zhou Enlai "seems always to have taken the line of least resistance, bending with whatever Maoist wind was blowing, be it leftist gale or rightist zephyr." These seem words of praise when compared to censures by others.

The author disdains simplistic answers. "It is not possible totally to disentangle Mao's motives, but the evidence suggests that 'Mao's ultimate dread - the image of extinction that stalk(ed) him - (was) the death of the revolution'. He had to devise some new recipe for reinvigorating it." Especially since he suspected his colleagues of "lack of ideological steel".

BUT policy was not the only factor. Personality also mattered. The author draws not only on Stalin's record, but also on those of Churchill and Margaret Thatcher as illustrations of the personal factor and quotes Geoffrey Howe's opinion of Thatcher: "In her final years, there was no distinction to be drawn between person, government, party and nation."

China paid dearly for one man's hubris. And, so did India. The second volume had useful material on the tensions between China and the Soviet Union once the border dispute with India erupted into the open. We learnt, for instance, that Zhou's reply to Nehru's letter of March 22, 1959, was sent on September 7 in order to preempt Tass's statement, after attempts to persuade Moscow not to release it had failed. Moscow advanced its publication by a day, six hours after Zhou's letter was broadcast. The Chinese never forgave the Russians for their statement.

The author and his wife Emily, a distinguished journalist, are committed friends of India. His comments on Nehru's later policies which contributed to the deadlock acquire added weight.

The third volume not only draws on new Chinese material but so marshals the facts as to bring out fine nuances and provide fresh insights. Even at the height of the border row, India was opposed to any U.S.-aided attack by Taiwan on China. It is, however, clear in retrospect that China would not have conceived of action along its borders with India, on October 20, 1962, were it not for the fact that the U.S. had, unwittingly, eased its fears of a second front. Half a million Chinese troops were positioned in Fujian province, opposite Quemoy, all set to repel a full-scale assault. An urgent meeting of envoys was convened in Warsaw on June 23, 1962, where Ambassador Wang Bingnan warned Ambassador John Moors Cabot against supporting a KMT invasion. He was assured that the U.S. would not support any such venture. President Kennedy confirmed it publicly later. Ambassador Wang wrote in his memoirs that the statement of American policy "had a great impact on policy decisions at home." Around this time Mao returned from his retreat to assume complete charge of the government.

A mammoth Seven Thousand Cadres Conference held from January 11 to February 7, 1962, received a written report on the international situation by Liu Shaoqi in which he criticised "modern revisionists" for serving the interests of "imperialism" and of "reactionaries like Nehru". After the conference, Mao left for Shanghai and went on to Hangzhou. He did not participate in major party meetings. This "abdication in favour" of Liu for the first half of 1962 ended in the first week of July. During his absence, Wang Jiaxing, a former Ambassador to the USSR, expressed views on domestic and foreign affairs which Mao found unpalatable. In Wang's view, China should concentrate on its pressing economic problems, "adopt more conciliatory external policies in order to avoid crises with the United States, the Soviet Union and India", and also reduce its foreign aid. In a long conversation with Wang, Liu agreed with him. "Wang was encouraged by this and other discussions to write, on February 27, 1962, to the three men running foreign affairs - Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping and Chen Yi. That he did not see or write to Mao is further evidence of the Chairman's withdrawal from affairs after the Seven Thousand Cadres Conference. The deputy directors of the International Liaison Department, Liu Ningyi and Wu Xiuquan, also signed the letter.... Wang Jiaxiang's final plea for a more restrained posture in foreign affairs was dated June 29, 1962; until then, it seems, his ideas had not met with significant criticism. Deng Xiaoping, like Liu Shaoqi, supported him totally." (pages 270-271). Significantly, The People's Daily had a positive editorial on Sino-Indian relations on June 3. (Emphasis added, throughout).

During the Conference on Laos in Geneva, Chen Yi took the initiative to meet V.K. Krishna Menon on July 22 and 23. "Only a failure in communication with Delhi prevented the issue of a joint communique proposing further talks" (S. Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru; Volume 3, page 213). India sent a Note on July 26 hinting at negotiations, provided China withdrew in Ladakh to the line as it stood in its 1956 map. Chen Yi rejected this on August 3.

Mao registered his return at a conference in Beidaihe on August 6 where he took the offensive and dominated the proceedings with his own agenda. One of the factors that emboldened him was that "by the time of the Beidaihe meeting, Mao knew that the United States would restrain the KMT from launching an invasion of the mainland."

By this time, Nehru's Forward Policy in Ladakh was in full swing. It was based on the assessment that China would not launch a major attack in retaliation. Soviet advice was on the same lines. The author remarks: "Indian misperceptions were compounded by the lack of any systematic attempt by the New Delhi intelligence community to analyse Chinese domestic and diplomatic developments. Instead, reliance was placed on CIA briefings, newspaper accounts, and, presumably, despatches from the Indian embassy in Beijing about China's economic crisis, its split with the Soviet Union, and the threat of invasion from Taiwan. India concluded that the Chinese were too hard pressed to contemplate any major hostilities."

MacFarquhar is not overwhelmed by Chinese material and fairly points out that "one of the problems in analysing the Sino-Indian border war is that even the most detailed post-Cultural Revolution accounts do not provide one with the inside information about the Chinese decision-making process comparable to that long available for the Indian side."

THE end of the Beidaihe Conference was a watershed in China's attitude. A major build-up of war material began on August 29. The author records: "According to one official account, Zhou took personal charge of all arrangements, including notes, letters, news releases, and negotiations, and every move went to Mao for his approval. According to another, Liu Shaoqi also played a role, presumably presiding over a CC secretariat conference on July 14, at which he and Zhou both reported on the border and the general staff issued appropriate orders thereafter. Mao is said to have approved and given two linked reasons why, despite ample justification, China should not yet hit back: Nehru had to be allowed to expose himself and the international community had to be convinced of India's aggression."

In June 1962, India set up a post at Dhola, to the north of the McMahon Line according to the agreed 1914 map, but within Indian territory according to the watershed principle. The post was encircled by Chinese troops on September 8. In a brilliant but neglected analysis of the sequence of events thereafter, Prof. Klaus H. Pringsheim concludes: "China appears to have baited an elaborate trap" into which India mindlessly walked (Asian Survey; October 1963). Chinese perceptions must not be ignored, however. "As early as May 1962, Zhang Guohua's old chief, Marshal Liu Bocheng, one of the PLA's most brilliant commanders and head of the Military Affairs Commission's (MAC) strategy small group, had predicted an Indian attack, and was deputed to oversee the planning of a Chinese counter-attack." (Zhang was commander of the Tibet Military Region.)

The author has drawn, among other writings, on a book by Xu Yan entitled "The True History of the Sino-Indian Border War" (Zhong Yin Bianjezhi Zhan Lishi Zhenxiang). One hopes it will be translated into English before long. "Sometime earlier, Mao had complained that the Indians had been pressing the Chinese along the border for three years, 1959-61; if they tried it a fourth year then China would strike back. The Dhola clash apparently decided the Chinese leaders that a military engagement was inevitable. On October 6 the order was sent to the border forces: 'If the Indian army attacks, hit back ruthlessly... If they attack, don't just repulse them, hit back ruthlessly so that it hurts.' During fateful discussions held by the Chinese leadership in October, Mao and Zhou were in charge, but Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping also participated, along with Marshals Liu Bocheng, He Long and Xu Xianggian, and General Luo Ruiqing as Chief-of-Staff. In the light of subsequent events, Marshal Liu's recommendations were clearly taken very seriously. He rejected the idea of simply dealing with border troops by removing them, forcing them back, breaking up their attack, and surrounding them. Rather, he advocated taking on India's best troops and swiftly beating them. Only that could be called a decisive victory."

Prof. Ye Zhengjia, Senior Fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, quotes from the memoirs of Major-Gen. (Retd.) Lei Yingfu, the then Deputy Director in the Operational Department at the headquarters of the general staff of the PLA, entitled My Days as a Military Staff in the Supreme Command (1997) which averred that Mao gave the green signal at a Polit Bureau meeting on October 18 ("Clearing the atmosphere", Frontline; October 23, 1998). The record shows that the build-up had begun much earlier and the decision in October - whether on 16th or 18th - was for the final green signal.

On October 11, faced with Lt. Gen. B.N. Kaul's alarming report, Nehru decided neither to build up Indian strength in order to attack Chinese positions, nor to retreat. The next day, he said at the airport en route to Sri Lanka: "Our instructions are to free our territory." In a section appropriately entitled "Mao's India War", in contrast to Neville Maxwell's book India's China War, MacFarquhar records: "The Chinese seized on Nehru's unguarded remark, and indeed to this day it figures in Chinese accounts of the border war as the essential proof that India was the aggressor... On October 16, four days after Nehru's fateful remark, the MAC decided to annihilate Indian troops north of the McMahon Line; the following day the operational order was given 'liquidate the invading Indian army'."

Even Maxwell, whom Xinhua called "the friendly British writer", characterised China's version, in its statement on October 20, of an action "in self-defence" against alleged large-scale Indian attacks as "the tactic of 'turning truth on its head'." This tactic persists still.

MacFarquhar poses the question which has troubled many and rightly gives a tentative answer: "The question that remains unanswerable is: if Mao had still been in retirement, would Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai have chosen to teach Mr. Nehru a lesson in quite so brutal a fashion? Probably not, in the light of their support" to a conciliatory policy only four months earlier. The Indian Charge d' Affaires to China, P.K. Banerjee's book My Peking Memoirs (Clarion, New Delhi; Rs. 145) tends to exonerate Zhou.

MacFarquhar's documentation fully confirms the view that Zhou sought Soviet support against "a massive attack" by India in a talk with the Soviet Ambassador on October 8 - in his jargon for a Chinese attack on India. On October 14, Khrushchev gave his approval at a dinner in honour of the departing Chinese Ambassador Liu Xiao. Khrushchev was not then aware of the fact that on that very day the CIA had detected construction of missile silos in Cuba. Kennedy made it public on October 22.

On October 20, "Nehru received a letter from Khrushchev in which the Soviet leader alluded to earlier reports of India's intention to initiate hostilities and urged him to agree to Zhou's offer of talks. Soviet officials followed through on Khrushchev's undertaking to Liu Xiao on MiG-215, telling the Indian embassy in Moscow that the Soviet commitment to sell to New Delhi would not be fulfilled." The Soviet Union preferred its Chinese "brothers" to its "Indian friends", only to switch sides a couple of months later.

However, even as late as in 1986, Soviet scholars were not prepared to acknowledge a historical truth at an Indo-Soviet seminar (K. Subrahmanyam and Jasjit Singh (eds.); Security without Nuclear Weapons; Indo Soviet Dialogue, Lancer International and IDSA; pages 207-8). The proceedings record: "Of the Chinese document claiming Khrushchev's support for what China did in 1962, the Soviet side said it was unaware of any such official Chinese publication. If such a charge had been made it was a fabrication. In any case, they could look into the matter further and it would help if the Indian side provided them with what was being circulated. This the Indian side promised to do." One wonders if that was done. The 1962 episode in Indo-Soviet relations merits detailed study.

Two recent disclosures from the former Soviet archives have been mentioned. Both were published in Bulletins of the Cold War International History Project conducted at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, Washington D.C. On October 14, 1959, Mao told the Soviet diplomat and sinologist S.F. Antonov: "We never, under any circumstances, will move beyond the Himalayas. That is completely ruled out. This is an argument over inconsequential pieces of territory." Bulletin 3; page 56)

Visiting Ulan Bator on December 26, 1962, Zhou was disappointed to find the Mongolian leader J. Zedenbal sceptical of Chinese policy: "It will be very disadvantageous for our camp if in place of Nehru, a man such as (Morarji) Desai comes to power."

The following exchange is very relevant in view of China's stand on the eastern sector.

"Zedenbal: I understand that the Chinese side does not unconditionally insist on immediately incorporating a 90,000 square kilometre area on the eastern border, that this question will be decided in the future. Is that true or not?

"Zhou Enlai: I already went to India with Comrade (Foreign Minister) Chen Yi in 1960 in order to settle the Chinese-Indian border question, but we returned with empty hands."

He went on to add: "The essence of the matter is that the Indian side is trying to annex an even larger area on the western sector of the border." In 1980, China began to lay emphasis on the eastern sector.

Roderick MacFarquhar has rendered high service to history. The time is come for a free flow of literature between India and China and for their scholars - not to forget Indian and Pakistani scholars - to meet and discuss as objectively as they can the historical roots of the disputes that divide their peoples. Obstacles should not daunt them. As Cardozo wisely reminded: "We may try to see things as objectively as we can but we cannot see them with eyes other than our own."

(The work has been published under the auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London and East Asian Institute, Columbia University.)