Chinese Shadow on the Asian Rim:

...Subandrio left no doubt of his real feelings about the treatment he had received or, more important, about his new apprehensions of the dangers from Communist China...

...Under the pressure of Chinese Communist threatening moves, whose implications could not be fully perceived, Indonesia, like India, had been forced to take a hard second look at Communist China, and it had not liked what it had seen...

...All China's organs of propaganda were unleashed in criticizing the steps taken to implement Sukarno's decree on rural "alien" retailers, and Chinese Embassy officials in Indonesia, obviously acting on instructions, went to some rural areas and made a number of undiplomatic statements...

...In May 1959, President Sukarno had issued a tough decree, ordering "alien" retailers in rural areas to hand over their businesses to Government cooperatives and to move to larger towns and cities before the end of the year...

...but they do not seem to regard forfeiting this friendship as too high a price for what they clearly feel will be larger gains...

...As Indian agitation against the Chinese Communist actions in Tibet began to die down, new and more disturbing evidences of Chinese expansionism and pressures were provided along India's Himalayan frontiers...

...In early November the Government issued a second White Paper, consisting of Sino-Indian diplomatic exchanges following the Longju and other incidents in August...

...A note by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs to the Chinese Ambassador in New Delhi on Nevember 4. after reviewing the recent incidents along the Sino-Indian border, contained a sweeping charge against the Chinese Government: "These facts, taken together with a continuance of aggressive attitudes in various parts of the frontier and the type of propaganda that is being conducted on behalf of the Chinese Government, are reminiscent of the activities of the old imperialist powers against whom both India and China struggled in the past...

...But, at a press conference in mid-November, when he was asked a question which everyone was asking, concerning "the reason for China becoming hostile to us," Nehru confessed he did not know...

...The hard-won freedom of the newly independent countries of Asia is no longer threatened by the old colonialism of the West but by the new imperialism of the Communist bloc...

...Since 1954 India and China had occasionally exchanged sharp notes, alleging that nationals of each had violated the territory of the other...

...On the recognition issue he remarked: "It is sufficient for me to say I distrust all people who show any tendency towards recognizing a regime or force or political party which has caused so much destruction to life and property in this country...

...Were they prompted rather by increased power and confidence, with perhaps collateral objectives of humiliating the greatest non-Communist states of South and Southeast Asia, and of reminding the Soviet Union and the world at large that China was now a major factor in world affairs which could no longer be ignored...

...Much of the criticism on the latter point was directed against Krishna Menon, the Defense Minister, who is hardly more popular in India than abroad...

...In a long reply on September 26 Nehru declared that he was "greatly surprised and distressed" by Chou's letter...

...A series of incidents there was a most unwelcome reNORMAN D. PALMER, chairman of the International Relations Program at the University of Pennsylvania, recently completed an extensive tour of Asian countries...

...Five years ago, at the Bandung Conference, Chou En-lai was markedly successful in projecting an image of China as a force for peace and a true champion of the "neutralist" states of Asia...

...Were her threatening moves efforts to distract the attention of her own peoples from the "failure" of the communes or other internal difficulties...

...Aside from the Chinese maps, which were widely circulated, few of these incidents were known to the Indian public...

...In The New Socialist, Sisir Gupta, an able Indian student of foreign affairs, wrote: "It is not grant of asylum to the Dalai Lama which has piqued Peking...

...Chinese Communist leaders have alienated the very countries which in the past have been most friendly to them...

...Father Raymon de Jaegher, knows and loves China and detests the Chinese Communists...

...The great change which recent Chinese actions has provoked is that China now looms more as a threat than as a hope...

...In fact, Subandrio was reported to have been thoroughly alarmed by the evidences of China's growing power he saw during his unpleasant visit to China...

...The Hindustan Times, which normally reflects Government views, saw an even greater threat: "They [the Chinese Communists] have not violated our territory by accident...

...Many Indian observers were convinced that the reason was more deep-seated...

...In September, Robert Trumbull of the New York Times wrote from New Delhi: "India's startling reversal of mood toward Communist movements both inside and outside this country is undoubtedly one of the most significant political developments going on in Asia today...

...Actually, Nehru was not so far behind as his people thought...

...Meeting in Meerut in mid-November, CPI leaders were unable to agree on a common policy in light of the new Sino-Indian tensions...

...In Indonesia I was told by several high officials that in their judgment the Chinese were acting from strength...

...Almost on the fourth anniversary of Bandung, however, armed revolt erupted in Tibet, and the Chinese Communists suppressed it with such ruthlessness that the International Commission of Jurists, appointed by the United Nations, found "a prima facie case of genocide against the People's Republic of China...

...Coming from a leading apologist for Communist China, this was indeed extraordinary...

...Nehru has been so far behind public opinion on Communist China in recent months that he may have to run to catch up...

...Less than a week after I left Jakarta, Foreign Office spokesmen for the first time publicly revealed the depth of their feelings against the Chinese Communists who, thev maintained, had created "anxiety and probably alarm" by their efforts to use the overseas Chinese for their own purposes...

...We had repeatedly warned India," said an official of the Burmese Foreign Office, with more than a touch of complacency, "that it is a mistake to trust the Chinese Communists...

...minder to India that it was faced with a grave security problem in areas regarded as remote and virtually impregnable, from a country which it had considered friendly...

...It was no secret that General K. S. Thimayya, the Indian Army Chief of Staff, had clashed with Menon and had been prevented from resigning only by Nehru's personal interposition...

...No other action of a foreign power, not even American arms aid to Pakistan, stirred up such large numbers of Indians or was condemned so strongly as the Chinese actions in Tibet and along the Sino-Indian border...

...We must face up to a big power with expansionist inclinations...

...He was also attacked for following too soft a policy in the face of mounting evidences of Chinese ruthlessness and expansionism, and for failure to take adequate measures to guard the Himalayan frontiers...

...Demonstrations were staged throughout the country with demonstrators carrying signs and banners bearing such slogans as "Down with Chinese Imperialism...

...A prominent Indian journalist, Frank Moraes, thus described India's change of mood: "With China's aggression on Tibet the scales have fallen from Asia's eyes, and Asia, more particularly India, is now in the process of agonizing reappraisal...

...though they lived in Indonesia, held Chinese Communist passports...

...Shortly before my visit the Chinese Communists had demonstrated a strange disregard for Indonesian sensitivities and for diplomatic behavior...

...Thus, a marked "reversal of mood," if not of policies, has set in throughout South and Southeast Asia, caused by China's deliberate acts against the two most important non-Communist and "neutralist" states of the area, India and Indonesia...

...Asia has suddenly discovered that the Chinese Communists are not different from the Soviet Communists and that the objectives and methods of Communist imperialism, whether Russian or Chinese, are the same...

...They were by no means unaware of the potential dangers from China, but in recent years, in the neutralist countries especially, the "Bandung spirit" had led many to look to the "New China" with hope rather than apprehension...

...The Prime Minister, Tengku Abdul Rahman, made a strong defense of three phases of Malaya's foreign and defense policies which had attracted some criticism: retention of Commonwealth troops in the country, non-recognition of Communist China and Malayan sponsoring, together with Ireland, of a resolution in the General Assembly of the United Nations condemning Chinese actions in Tibet...

...The "reversal of mood" in Indonesia was almost as marked as that in India, and even more so in official circles...

...As has been indicated, Nehru seems to think that China is actuated by "pride and arrogance of might...

...The dominant feelings were indignation against the Chinese Communists and apprehension over the implications of their expansionist moves...

...The shadow of China over all of Southeast Asia grew suddenly darker and more ominous...

...Among these were the harder line the regime had taken toward Communists in Indonesia, and, above all, the decree against rural "alien" businessmen, most of whom were Chinese, and of Communist China's reactions to these moves...

...and the Government of Communist China sent what Indonesian Foreign Minister Subandrio called "as peremptory a diplomatic note" as Indonesia had ever received...

...A study of leading Indian newspapers," reported Trumbull, "suggests that Mr...

...Although he did not voice his resentment in public, in private discussions with Indonesians and non-Indonesians alike...

...The main reason" for China's recent actions, according to an English authority, G. F. Hudson, in an article carried in an Indian magazine, "is undoubtedly that the Chinese Communists base their power on national chauvinism as much as on their 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...

...Peking's aggressiveness towards Jakarta has been at least as surprising as its attack on India...

...More recently, in one of his last major acts as Premier of Burma and before his voluntary abdication after the February 1960 election, General Ne Win went to China, and signed a significant agreement on the Sino-Burmese frontier...

...India and China engaged in sharp exchanges over the Chinese moves in Tibet and the Indian reception of the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan refugees...

...In Saigon I was given a wholly different interpretation by a man who is probably as well informed as any Westerner about present happenings inside Communist China...

...so we dismiss the Communist Chinese Government as just another imperialist power with which Indonesia has to be very careful, knowing that we have dealt with other imperialist powers...

...A democratically developing India will demonstrate to the rest of the developing world the anachronistic character of the Chinese method and theory of economic development...

...Apparently they split in at least three ways, one group favoring support of China as a Communist state, which by definition could not possibly be guilty of "imperialism," another believing that the CPI should support the relatively moderate position of the Indian Government and India's claim that the McMahon Line was the rightful border between India and Tibet, and a third group advocating a noncommittal position...

...In defending himself before a meeting of the Parliamentary Committee of the Congress party on November 25...

...Indian newspapers and other organs of opinion inveighed against the Chinese Communists with a vehemence quite out of keeping with the previously prevailing line, demonstrating that Indian opinion was really aroused and awake to the implications of what one Indian journal called "the disparity between what China is and what it has been expected to be...

...On August 25 a Chinese detachment crossed into Indian territory south of the McMahon Line, fired on an Indian picket group, seized some of its members, and later fired on personnel manning an Indian outpost at Longju...

...However," he continued, "we have not made an issue of the so-called McMahon Line, as has India, even though most of our border with China is an extension of the McMahon Line...

...While still trying to calm his own people, he was increasingly outspoken in his criticisms of the Chinese Communists who, he stated, were being carried away by "pride and arrogance of might...

...In the countries of Southeast Asia which I visited, I found the same alarm over Chinese Communists' actions as in India, and the same differences of opinion about the reasons for China's almost contemptuous treatment of the non-Communist countries with which presumably it had been on friendly terms...

...It is a matter of deep regret that the Chinese Government, which has so often condemned imperialism, should act in a manner which is so contrary to their own assertions...

...but, in spite of the criticisms in the Parliament, they were endorsed by the overwhelming majority of its members and if newspaper editorials and public statements by prominent Malayans of various backgrounds and professions may be taken at face value, apparently were generally approved throughout the country...

...The Indonesian Government justified the harsh decree on grounds of national security, the necessity to prepare the way for "guided democracy" and the exploitation by the "alien" businessmen of the people in the rural areas...

...If the predominant theme in the protest meetings and newspaper editorials was indignation toward China, a second theme was criticism of the Indian Government and, directly or indirectly, of Nehru himself, for keeping the Indian people in undue ignorance of aspects of Sino-Indian relations...

...it is the bleak prospects of Communism in India . . . and the possibility of India achieving a fair rate of growth with foreign assistance...

...It is a matter of even deeper regret that the Five Principles as well as the Declaration of the Bandung Conference should thus be flouted by the Chinese Government...

...This concern was strongly manifest in the months that followed...

...Menon declared: "Now the danger is come and we are fully prepared for it...

...This man...

...Henceforth, although foreign policy might not be admittedly changed, the growing realization of the nature of the Chinese Communist regime and of the dangers from it would be major factors in shaping the foreign relations of Indonesia...

...By their deliberate acts of provocation, they have created a situation more favorable for cooperative measures to resist Chinese aggression than has existed for a long time...

...In the summer of 1959, however, Chinese actions precipitated major crises along the Sino-Indian border...

...It is in keeping with our foreign policy which is independent and entirely our own...

...Even the Communist party of India—already on the defensive because of the failure of the Communist regime in Kerala, the reactions in India to Chinese actions in Tibet and internal dissensions—was affected by the prevailing climate of opinion...

...When I talked with him in December, he was obviously still smarting from the experience, and still trying to weigh the impact of a China which had torn off the Bandung mask...

...Prominent Indian leaders, including Jayaprakash Narayan, Asoka Mehta and even some members of the ruling Congress party, addressed public protest meetings...

...He is convinced that Chinese Communist leaders have changed from subtle to open pressures upon overseas Chinese and the vulnerable countries of South and Southeast Asia because they can then use the excuse of mounting opposition just outside their borders as justification for the stern measures they are being forced to take at home...

...He protested against "the attempt of India to impose upon China its one-sided claims on the boundary question...

...indeed, I was told frankly by responsible officials of the foreign offices of Burma, Malaya and Indonesia that they now looked upon China as a threat to their independence and future...

...These positions were strong ones for a small "neutral" nation in Southeast Asia, with a large Chinese population, to take...

...you have now brought forward, with all insistence," he said, "a problem which dwarfs in importance all that we have discussed in recent years and...

...The Government of India immediately sent a strong protest, referring to the Longju incident as the most flagrant of "repeated violations of Indian territory by Chinese armed forces," and warned that news of such violations could no longer be withheld from the people...

...Most of the "aliens" affected were "overseas Chinese" who...

...Nor was there agreement on another major question: Did China act from strength or weakness...

...Instead, we refer to it as 'the traditional frontiers between Burma and China.' " He pointed out that most of the border issues between his country and China had been settled or seemed on the way to settlement...

...The Communist party of Indonesia, which had been supporting Sukarno, denounced the decree as "shoddy chauvinism, inspired by racial hatred and a desire for personal gain...

...They are working on a grand design and it will be foolish not to recognize this in future dealings with them...

...There could be no question about the reality of this "reversal of mood," although it was unlikely to be reflected in a basic reorientation of policy...

...An analysis of the By Norman D. Palmer CHINESE SHADOW ON THE ASIAN RIM A NEW AND grimmer picture of Communist China has emerged in South and Southeast Asia, and the picture is of Communist China's own making...

...In this context, it may be that forcing India to divert her attention and energies to the defense of her 2.000-mile frontier is a way of upsetting our development program and hampering our economic progress...

...but Nehru defended it with considerable vigor, and pointed to the diplomatic exchanges in the two White Papers of August and November as indications that his Government had taken a strong line with China...

...All I think," he said, "is that this has been because of a very considerable irritation in China about not only our reception to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan refugees but the general reactions in India over this...

...The revulsion which Russia's brutal suppression of the Hungarian uprising provoked in Europe is paralleled in Asia by China's crushing of the Tibetan rebellion...

...While concern over the events in Tibet, and the obvious Communist Chinese assistance to the anti-Government forces in Laos, were factors in Indonesia's growing disillusionment with China, the main reasons were to be found in a series of more direct incidents between China and Indonesia...

...The Foreign Minister, Dato Ismail bin Dato Abdul Rahman, said he was proud that Malaya had co-sponsored the UN resolution on Tibet: "As Foreign Minister I wanted to take the initiative on Tibet...

...Throughout South and Southeast Asia, and particularly in India, the effects of the sensational events in Tibet were electric...

...When Subandrio went to China to discuss the new problems he was reportedly given as cold a reception as Chinese Communist leaders have ever extended to a high official of a major "neutralist" country...

...When I visited Malaya in early December, the first session of the first popularly elected Parliament of the Federation had just opened...

...I thought, settled...

...The Vice Chancellor of Delhi University, who had been in China and who had in the past been associated with the Sino-Indian Friendship Association and other organizations of the same type, encouraged students of the University to stage a peaceful demonstration in front of the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi...

...The Government of India," declared a note delivered by the Indian Ambassador in Peking to the Chinese Foreign Office on September 10, "would like to emphasize once more that the so-called McMahon Line definitely represents the boundary between India and the Tibet Region of China . . . and they stand firmly by it...

...India had protested several times against Chinese maps showing large portions of the Northeast Frontier area and Ladakh as a part of China...

...We have finished with the Dutch," said these spokesmen, "and now we are starting with the Chinese...

...He said that the anger of the Indian people was justified and added: "It is unfortunate we trusted China...

...Two days previously Chou En-lai, in a personal letter to Nehru, stated: "The so-called McMahon Line was a product of the British policy of aggression against the Tibet Region of China and has never been recognized by any Chinese Central Government and is therefore decidedly illegal...

...Sometime after 1954 the Chinese Communists built a 100-mile road across Aksai Chin in Ladakh, in territory which India regarded as well within her frontiers...

...The implications of these statements were clear...

...Menon rode out the storm of criticism, thanks to the staunch support of the Prime Minister...

...Indeed, as Guy Wint has observed...

...In the new mood prevailing throughout India Nehru seemed to be lagging behind public opinion, an unusual but not unprecedented situation in recent years...

...In a sense, Tibet was Asia's Hungary...

...When Parliament assembled in mid-November for the first time after the incidents of the preceding August, man) prominent speakers attacked the policy of the Government as too weak and pusillanimous toward China...

...I can assure you we have taken all measures to protect our border to the best of our ability...

...In varying degrees the leaders and peoples of the "neutralist" states of Southeast Asia shared India's indignation and apprehensions...

...On December 14, 1958, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru addressed a personal letter to Premier Chou En-lai, complaining about the frequent evidences of what others called "cartographic aggression," and claiming that in 1956 Chou En-lai had assured him that China proposed to recognize the so-called McMahon Line as the border between India and "the Tibetan Region of China...

...This image was assiduously cultivated for four years, and won considerable confidence and support in the countries along the Asian rim...