To understand the lead-up to the Sino-Indian War, we must examine how each side dealt with and perceived its frontier. After the People's Republic was founded on October 1, 1949, Chinese leaders focused on domestic consolidation. The new Chinese state pledged to unify the nation, which included peripheral areas. On October 6, 1950, the People's Liberation Army invaded Tibet as part of this effort, and Tibet became incorporated into China in 1951. Beijing drew attention to instances in which the Indian military encroached on territory claimed by China, while keeping apprised of more subtle activities such as espionage. Tibet transitioned from a periphery of China to a central battleground. Thus, as historian Srinath Raghavan argues, “the origins of the [1962] war lay in two intertwined issues: the boundary dispute and Tibet.”

The Himalayan kingdoms and Burma also entered the frontier/foreign policy calculus of the People's Republic. These areas’ porous borders and connections to India in addition to their harboring enemy agents were a constant vexation. The Chinese Communist leadership used moral and material support to these governments to mitigate Indian influence. Furthermore, the People's Republic settled its borders with Nepal and Burma not only to regulate the inflow and outflow of people, but also to pressure India to negotiate its northern boundary. The People's Republic also backed communist groups throughout the border region in case actions taken through official channels failed to produce results.

Beginning in the 1950s, China and India competed for the leadership of non-Western states emerging from colonialism. At the same time, there existed unresolved border contests and competition for influence in the Himalayan kingdoms that separated the two. But the two sides professed friendship for each other via Panchsheel, Hindi-Chini bhai bhai, the Bandung Conference, and state visits. These symbols of peaceful coexistence were fleeting, however. Mutual suspicions between India and China existed during, before, and after the 1962 war.

Beijing supported revolution throughout Asia—especially in Korea and Indochina. It also did so in other neighboring states, such as Nepal and Burma under the fig leaf of party-to-party relations. The “dual-track approach” of simultaneously supporting a given country's government and communist party allowed China to play a double game, despite the Panchsheel principles. The Chinese Communist leadership made overtures to countries inside and outside the border region to reverse international isolation brought about by the 1960 Sino-Soviet split and the 1962 border war. This realist foreign policy was dismantled during the Cultural Revolution. It was then that Beijing began backing insurgent groups throughout India's northeast.

How India handled the border issue in the postbellum contrasted with the approach by the People's Republic. A trend of frontier military neglect by India reversed with the onset of the 1962 war. The shock of defeat compelled Indian policymakers to develop a lean, well-trained fighting force. Consequently, India's defense budget increased from five billion rupees in 1962–1963 (1.5 trillion rupees adjusted for inflation) to seven billion rupees in 1963–1964 (2.2 trillion rupees adjusted for inflation). To place these figures into perspective, India's defense budget in 1950–1951 only amounted to 1.64 billion rupees (704 billion rupees adjusted for inflation). Partly due to this increased defense budget, India made up for its defeat in 1962 by achieving victory over Chinese forces in 1967. Indian leaders comprehended the impracticality of attempting to match China's army size, instead focusing on ways to make the border with China impenetrable.

In addition, India expanded development aid to political entities along the Sino-Indian frontier. Indian leaders remained convinced that Beijing endeavored to bring the Himalayan kingdoms and Burma into its orbit. New Delhi combatted Chinese incursions through countersubversion efforts. Certain techniques India used to project itself at the frontier were novel, but New Delhi's overall frontier strategy deviated only slightly from that of the pre-1962 era. The key change was its level of assertiveness.

Like the People's Republic, India regarded control over its frontier as a fundamental part of nationhood. India fortified its border with Pakistan not long after the 1947 partition. China's advance on and infiltration of India's peripheries began to dominate Indian thinking prior to the 1962 war, however. Indian leaders posited that Beijing was chipping away at important buffer zones while diminishing India's sphere of influence. Domination of Tibet by the People's Republic as well as Beijing's overtures to the Himalayan kingdoms and Southeast Asia shaped this perspective.

Indian officials had much to consider about how to respond to China. Some adopted a realist approach early on, arguing that India needed to recognize the Chinese threat and secure the border region. Some attached great significance to Hindi-Chini bhai bhai and eschewed confrontation, while others held moderate or ambivalent views. In the end, the Indian government used military contingency plans, economic development, careful management of the frontier town of Kalimpong and Tibetan border crossers (e.g., the Dalai Lama), and high-level diplomacy to deal with an increased Chinese presence at the frontier. These measures succeeded to varying degrees.

Border Security through Military Means

Concerned Indians interpreted the October 1950 Chinese invasion of Tibet as an event that foreshadowed future border problems. Poet, nationalist, and mystic Shri Aurobindo stated in November 1950 (three weeks before he died) that the People's Liberation Army had entered Tibet to extend China's frontiers and threaten India in the future.

In 2020 and 2021, Indian and Chinese troops fought in areas along their disputed border, including the Galwan Valley and Pangong Lake. In 2017, China and India had a dust-up over a frontier area called Doklam (Donglang). These confrontations were far from isolated incidents. Rather, they comprised part of a series of border disputes between India and China dating back to the 1950s.

This work explores the evolution of the Sino-Indian border conflict— broadly defined—from 1950 to 1970.1 These dates are chosen for several reasons. The year 1950 was a watershed moment in Sino-Indian relations due to the Chinese invasion of Tibet. Furthermore, beginning with this year allows us to evaluate each nation during its infancy (the Republic of India and the People's Republic of China were founded in 1947 and 1949, respectively). The book ends in 1970 since the international scene changed in 1971 with the onset of the Indo-Pakistani War and ping-pong diplomacy. These dates also mark roughly ten years before and after the Sino-Indian Border War. Using ten years before and after as markers makes sense so that we can understand what events contributed to the conflict as well as what the medium-term ramifications of it were.

I specifically examine how conflict at the frontier destabilized spheres of influence and caused the countries involved to reassess their allies and rivals. This contest was a revival of the nineteenth-century Great Game, garnering the interest of political entities both inside and outside the border region. A range of actors viewed the border conflict as an opportunity to pursue their foreign policy goals, which comprised trade, security, and prestige.

It was not only India and China that engaged with their shared frontier prior to 1962. Although far from their main concern, English-speaking Western countries analyzed developments in that region and at times offered support to India, Tibetans, the Himalayan kingdoms, and Burma. The West's historical relations with political entities along the Sino-Indian frontier informed Cold War policies. The United Kingdom's relations with Tibet date back to the eighteenth century when British officials viewed it as both a curiosity and a potential trading partner. These views evolved during the nineteenth century as Britain came to regard Tibet as an important pawn in the Great Game. Britain specifically promoted Tibetan suzerainty to establish it as a buffer zone, as first exemplified by the 1907 Anglo-Russian Treaty. International relations scholar Dibyesh Anand argues that Britain used the ambiguous terms “Chinese suzerainty” and “Tibetan autonomy” to “deal with Tibet as a de facto independent buffer state without having to offend China and other Western powers.” By the mid-1940s, this need evaporated and Britain in practice recognized Chinese sovereignty over Tibet—thereby revealing its desire to strengthen Sino-British relations.

Britain's interest in Nepal stemmed from its enlistment of Gurkhas (i.e., Nepalese soldiers for hire), who served throughout the British Empire since the nineteenth century.

The war ended for the 1ère Armée more with a whimper than a bang. While Sixth Army Group had succeeded in eliminating the Colmar Pocket, morale in the 1ère Armée at the end of a tough winter campaign was low, especially as soldiers felt that the French population had disengaged from the war. Operation Cheerful saw the French army invading Germany as part of the Sixth Army Group, directed by de Gaulle to seize objectives to force the Allies to designate a zone d’occupation française. The liberation and occupation of Germany had witnessed a recurrence of violence inflicted on the civilian population by French soldiers as in Italy, earning for the French the nickname “Russians of the West.” De Gaulle’s post-Liberation celebration of victory sought to diminish the role of the Allies and the 1ère Armée, while celebrating that of the resistance and Leclerc’s 2e DB. None of this served either to repair French civil–military relations, badly damaged by the war, or to acknowledge the role played by the empire in France’s liberation, all of which stored up future tensions. Incorrigible to the last, de Lattre settled into an extravagant lifestyle at his headquarters in Lindau, which flouted the conditions of post-war austerity, and caused de Gaulle to recall him to France. Committed to the retention of empire as a symbol of French grandeur, de Gaulle insisted that France reclaim its Indochinese “balcony on the Pacific.” However, the fact that the French colonial infrastructure had been obliterated by the Japanese, allowing Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh, with Chinese complicity, to fill Vietnam’s political vacuum would have made it difficult in the best of circumstances for a debilitated France to reassert its sovereignty in Southeast Asia. France’s return to its far-away colony was hobbled by an absence of a viable policy for Indochina, a situation worsened by political instability in Paris following de Gaulle’s surprise January 1946 resignation, a dysfunctional command tandem in Saigon that yoked two headstrong commanders in d’Argenlieu and Leclerc, each with different priorities, and political concessions made by France’s negotiators led by Salan under pressure from Leclerc to catch the tides to launch Operation Bentré – the reoccupation of Vietnam north of the 16th parallel.

While the French longed for Liberation, they also feared its destructive and divisive potential. Given diminutive conventional French forces, de Gaulle counted on popular resistance to symbolize the participation of the French people in their own liberation. However, the fear that a “national insurrection” would cause great slaughter, and benefit the communists, caused planners to define down the concept. The STO crisis and emergence of the maquis phenomenon seemed to offer political opportunities to various players. However, the réduits maquisards played at best a marginal role in the Liberation, while their destruction offered another “black legend” of betrayal by the Gaullists and the Allies, one promoted by the PCF. The liberation of Paris served as one of the Second World War’s iconic moments, both as a milestone in the rollback of Nazi power and as a consecration of France’s republican resurrection. De Gaulle’s GPRF moved rapidly to assume the levers of national power, forcing a resistance that had consecrated, democratized, and legitimized him to step back into the ranks. De Gaulle’s acclamation removed any lingering reservations, even in Washington, that he was the legitimate leader of France. The levée was finished, the emergency over, and former FFI would henceforth fight the Germans “amalgamated” as soldiers in the regular army, not serve the political ambitions of resistance leaders and communists facilitated by the interface services.

As a mechanism of social control, the post-Liberation amalgame of l’armée d’Afrique and the FFI of the internal resistance might be considered a partial success, insofar as it formed part of a larger Gaullist strategy to reestablish a legal state and curtail the temporary anarchy of the Liberation. But it failed to repair French civil–military relations, further strained by defeat and widespread military support for Vichy. Some of the more politicized FFI rejected l’amalgame altogether, to remain politically active in Paris, Toulouse, and elsewhere. L’amalgame’s military utility is more debatable. In one respect, l’amalgame was the only option open to the GPRF to replenish its exhausted Anfa divisions desperate for replacements. Optics were also a factor, as one goal of l’amalgame, and its corollary the blanchiment – that is substituting FFI for Senegalese in de Lattre’s 1ère Armée – was to reinforce the Gaullist mantra that France had been liberated by its own people, not by empire and the Allies. But insofar as it was a product of military necessity, l’amalgame lacked means. In the straightened circumstances of the Liberation, training for France’s new soldiers was ad hoc and piecemeal, with weapons in short supply and logistics dependent on the Americans at the very moment the 1ère Armée was to face one of the most challenging campaigns of the war in Alsace. In this respect, l’amalgame might be considered a “semi-failure.” The experiment of amalgamating FFI units as distinct organizations had been completely abandoned by early 1945, as the CFLN transformed itself into a provisional republic (GPRF) that began the divisive process of purging Vichy aparatchiks from the government and military, and punishing French women who had fraternized with German occupiers. It remained to be seen in the invasion of Germany whether France could field only une armée en trompe l’œil. In the meantime, many of the Vichy loyalists were evacuated to Sigmaringen, accompanied by a rump of Francs-Gardes and their families. Few of the collaborators who evacuated to Germany to be integrated into what became the Charlemagne Division Germany survived.