China Pushes Southward

...Why have the Chinese been so recklessly antagonizing Indian national sentiment by these claims and encroachments...

...Ladakh, formerly a detached Tibetan kingdom, was conquered by the Dogras of Kashmir in the 19th century, and now belongs to India by virtue of the accession of Kashmir to the Indian Union...

...They formed a buffer zone between Assam and Tibet, and only the requirements of modern political geography and international law—which do not recognize mere tribal areas as "sovereign" —compelled the Government in Delhi to seek a definition of the international boundary...

...If Tibet had been recognized as an independent state and admitted to the United Nations, the Chinese invasion of 1951 would have been a clear act of aggression...

...Peking's current policy is directed toward 'rounding off the reconquest of Tibet by incorporating all ethnically Tibetan areas' China Pushes Southward By G. F. Hudson WHEN INDIA was part of the British Empire, no very serious attention was ever paid to the Himalayan frontier...

...In response to Indian protests, the Chinese Government declared that the incidents had been provoked by India, that, in any case, China did not recognize the McMahon Line and that there should be negotiations to determine the frontier...

...To Indian protests the Chinese Communist Government at first made the excuse that these maps had been printed under the Kuomintang regime and that there had not been time to change them...

...Recent skirmishes along the Chinese-Indian border have focused world attention on this friction point of Southeast Asia...

...The British formula, designed to placate China while recognizing Tibetan independence, was that the region known as Outer Tibet, including Lhasa, should be an autonomous state under the "suzerainty" of China, while Inner Tibet, to the east of it, should remain under Chinese administration, but with ecclesiastical rights reserved to the Dalai Lama...

...Director of Far Eastern Studies at St...

...instead of according Tibet a de jure sovereignty corresponding to its de facto independence, Britain left the Chinese with a legal case for challenging the validity of the McMahon Line if ever they should succeed in reimposing their rule in Tibet...

...The opportunity was finally created after the campaign against the Khamba rebels in the region north of the McMahon Line had led to the concentration of Chinese troops near the frontier...

...At the same time, the British proposed that the Indian-Tibetan frontier to the north of Assam—which had never previously been defined—should follow what has since been known as the McMahon Line, from the name of the British representative who drafted it...

...On the basis of these proposals, a treaty was concluded and initialed in July 1914...

...The absence of Chinese consent made no difference at the time, because the Chinese had meanwhile been driven out—not only from Outer Tibet, but from most of Inner Tibet as well—so that the only de facto authority to the north of the McMahon Line frontier was Tibetan...

...At the same time, Indian political reactions to the brutal suppression of the Tibetan revolt caused a sharp deterioration in Indian-Chinese relations...

...This irredentist policy claims that not only Tibet proper but all the areas to the west and south inhabitated by people of Tibetan stock and professing Lamaic Buddhism belong to the "Chinese motherland"—that is to say, Ladakh, the Tibetan-inhabited parts of Nepal, and the two Himalayan states of Sikkim and Bhutan...

...And in any case, the neighbor beyond the watershed of the mountains was only the pacific, monk-ruled country of Tibet, which could not be a cause of alarm to anyone...

...In view of Tibetan turbulence, moreover, China feels that it is necessary to round off the reconquest of Tibet by incorporating, as far as possible, all ethnically Tibetan areas which can be foci of continuing national resistance to Chinese domination...

...But by clinging to the formula of Tibetan autonomy under Chinese "suzerainty...

...It seems more likely that the intense desire of Nehru and Defense Minister Krishna Menon to preserve friendship with China caused them to turn a blind eye to Chinese encroachment in a wild area remote from the Indian public...

...This challenge caused much indignation in India, and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, while declaring that he was ready to accept minor rectifications of the border after arbitration, stated that he would not give up the "large chunks" of Indian territory demanded by China, and that the McMahon Line was a boundary geographically justified, and established by custom and usage...

...India is responsible by treaty for the defense of Sikkim, and during the recent crisis declared that it would also protect Bhutan against external aggression, though no formal defense agreement exists yet...

...As it was, the Indian Government, inheriting the British diplomatic position on Tibet, had to admit that Tibet was a part of China and that Indian frontiers with Tibet were frontiers with China...

...Therefore, when the Tibetans themselves threw off the Chinese yoke in 1912, Britain tried to clarify the situation on India's northern borders by inviting Chinese and Tibetan representatives to Simla to negotiate a tripartite agreement on jurisdictions...

...The main reason is undoubtedly that the Chinese Communists base their power on national chauvinism as much as on social doctrine, and it is especially necessary for them to beat the patriotic drum when the Chinese people are feeling the strain of the Party's economic policies...

...The huge range of the Himalayas, extending from Kashmir to the northern tip of Burma, seemed to provide a perfect natural frontier—a virtually impassable barrier against invasion...

...British policy was directed toward disrupting the Chinese Empire and separating the Tibetans from their Chinese "motherland...

...The authority of Peking in Tibet, which had been only shadowy since 1850, disappeared altogether in 1912, when the Tibetans revolted and drove out the small Chinese garrisons stationed in the country...

...Antony's College, Oxford, examines the historical background of the conflict and indicates the motives that lie behind China's new expansionist policy...

...If all this means a quarrel with India, Peking does not greatly care, for in Chinese Communist eyes the Indians have already been guilty of impertinent behavior by criticizing Chinese actions in Tibet...

...According to the version of history now officially adopted by China...

...China also doubtless considers India militarily incapable of an effective defense of its northern frontiers—at least as long as its main strategic efforts are directed against Pakistan...

...To judge from speeches made by Chinese officials in Lhasa, the challenge to the boundary of Ladakh was a preliminary to a claim to the whole of Ladakh as a part of Tibet...

...Britain and Tibet subsequently accepted it as binding, but the Chinese Government repudiated its representative at the Simla conference and refused to ratify the treaty...

...A measure of restraint, however, appears to have been imposed on China by the refusal of the Soviet Union to support an anti-Indian policy, and the Chinese, without renouncing their far-reaching claims, may refrain for the time being from further military action in the frontier areas...

...The initial Chinese demands are now on record as a basis for diplomatic pressure...

...Since 1720 Tibet had been a part of the Chinese Empire, but China had been in decline during the later part of the 19th century and was further weakened by civil wars after the fall of the monarchy in 1911...

...As time passed, however, and no corrections were made, it became clear that Peking was holding its territorial claims in reserve to be put forward at a convenient moment...

...It was also disclosed during Parliamentary discussion of the Longju incident that the frontier India inherited from the British had been challenged by China in another quarter...

...Asked in Parliament why this road-building had been permitted by India, without any information being given to the Indian public, Nehru declared that India had no officials in the area and that it was uninhabited...

...Moreover, it was hardly a frontier in the ordinary sense, for the forest-clad slopes and foothills on the southern side of the Himalayas to the east of Bhutan were occupied by primitive tribes, who had always hitherto been independent in their mountain homes...

...The British Government had no desire to extend British administration beyond the Himalayas, nor did it care whether Tibet was independent or subject to China, as long as there was a definite political authority with which to deal in any disputes that might arise...

...In spite of its desire to maintain friendly relations with China, the Indian Government several years ago began to show concern at the circulation in China of maps showing an area of more than 20,000 square miles south of the McMahon Line as Chinese territory...

...A Chinese military road from Sinkiang into Tibet had been built across the northeastern corner of Ladakh beyond the Karakorum mountains...

...it involves also the revision of frontiers to which China has never given its formal consent...

...In fact, however, the British military expedition to Tibet in 1904, which is supposed to have been the outcome of this policy, was ultimately due to the refusal of the Tibetans to carry out a trade agreement concluded by Britain with the Government of China...

...It is in fact traversed by Tibetan nomad shepherds and it is difficult to believe that New Delhi was never informed of what was going on...

...The reconquest of Tibet was the recovery of a portion of "China" lost through "imperialist intrigues...

...Down to the end of the period of British rule in India there was no trouble over the McMahon Line: the Tibetans accepted it, and the Chinese were in no position to do anything about it...

...Whatever may be thought of the British action in coercing Tibet, it was not for the purpose of terminating Chinese rule there, but to enforce a treaty with China on a people whom China could not control...

...Nepal is today internationally recognized as a sovereign state, but it would certainly receive Indian support in any frontier dispute with China...

...Here, G. F. Hudson...

...Then last month, Chinese troops crossed the McMahon Line at several points and captured the Indian outpost of Longju...

...this also was claimed as Chinese territory...