In the embedded video are actual battle scenes from the China-Indian conflict of 1962. Since the Chinese shot this footage, it is obvious that the dialogue has been propagandized.
India’s Nehru government repeatedly rejected China’s requests to negotiate the border dispute over the McMahon Line, which British Explorer McMahon drew on a map during the 19th century.
Instead, the Indian army built bases and outposts in the disputed area.
Chinese troops then strengthened their defenses in the disputed area.
India sent patrols into territory occupied by Chinese troops and the Indian troops were captured.
On June 4, 1962, Indian troops set up outposts deep in the disputed territory.
On September 8, 1962, Chinese troops surrounded the Indian troops to stop further advances.
In the middle of September, Chinese intelligence reported that the Indian army would soon attack.
India’s Seventh Brigade was deployed to the area to launch Operation Leghorn.
On October 9, 1962, he Indian troops crossed the river that divided the two armies and attacked Chinese positions.
The resulting battle caused the Indian Seventh Brigade to collapse and a large number of Indian troops surrendered.
Chinese troops crossed the river and pushed south, but the Indian troops retreated faster.
Heavy Chinese artillery bombed Indian troop positions. Within days, there were many dead and wounded Indian troops.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
In this series, I’ve stitched together three different videos in four parts to show the 1962 border war between India and China.
America is not the first country to attempt nation building (Iraq). The British Empire did it first and left behind a mess in India, the Middle East and Africa.
In the 19th century, with the reckless stoke of a pen or pencil, British Explorer McMahon drew borders on maps creating India.
Due to his arrogance, India has had border disputes and with China, Nepal and Pakistan. Source: Boundaries
In fact, before the British Empire established the Raj, India wasn’t a country and no Chinese government ever agreed to the changes McMahon made along the borders between Tibet and India. Source: Victorian Web
In 1947, soon after the end of World War II, India gained its independence from Britain, and the Indian government refused to negotiate over land that was once was part of Tibet.
After 1949, Mao’s government told India the land behind the McMahon line was part of China and wanted it back.
For the next thirteen years, China and India had many diplomatic conversations about this boundary issue. Zhou Enlai, the first prime minister of the PRC, attempted to convince Jawaharlal Nehru to resolve the boundary issue peacefully.
With the failure of peaceful negotiations, Chinese troops were sent to the McMahon Line.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
Democratic trumpets are sounding the charge against China.
Sinophobes are shouting, “I told you so!”
The Western media is splashing the news on the Internet, across the front pages of newspapers and reporting it on TV and radio.
For example, The Huffington Post says, “Imprisoned Chinese democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo on Friday won the Nobel Peace Prize, an award that drew furious condemnation from the authoritarian government and calls from world leaders including President Barack Obama for Liu’s quick release.”
Outside the Middle Kingdom, the government of China cannot win this public relations battle against democratic nations unified in their condemnation of non-democratic governments—at least those governments that do not have lots of underground oil as the authoritarian government in Saudi Arabia.
I’m sure that Liu Xiaobo believes in his mission as many in the West do that live in democracies.
However, I agree with America’s Founding Fathers, who in 1776 founded a republic—not the democracy the U.S. has today.
President John Adams (1735 – 1826), the second president of the U.S., said, “That the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority is demonstrated by every page of the history of the whole world,” and “Democracy … while it lasts is more bloody than either [aristocracy or monarchy]. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”
Mao was a dictator known as China’s modern emperor.
A few years after coming to power in 1949, Mao launched the disastrous Great Leap Forward followed by the infamy of The Cultural Revolution—both were driven by the mob and the results were about 30 million dead from famine, disease and tyranny.
In fact, before the communists came to power in China, there was more than a century of madness that almost destroyed China, which was caused by the West.
Then in 1982, China wrote the first draft of a constitution designed to build a republic – not a democracy.
Since then, China has been moving slowly down a road toward a more representative republic that fits China’s culture, which will probably never include democratic activists like Liu Xiaobo.
I hope China never becomes the kind of democracy President John Adams warned America against. It may be too late for the U.S. to return to the republic America’s Founding Fathers built, but it isn’t too late for China to avoid the same trap as they mature into a freer republic for the Chinese people.
Right or wrong, China’s central government does not want mob rule and that is the reason they locked up Liu Xiaobo and silenced his voice in China.
It is obvious that The Nobel Peace Prize has become a political tool to spread the mob rule of democracy that America’s Founding Fathers warned us about.
I urge China to release Liu Xiaobo from prison then send him to the democracy of his choice and never let him return.
Once living in Norway or France, maybe Liu Xiaobo will write a book about his experiences then win the Noble Prize for Literature.
I wonder what America’s Founding Fathers would have done with a Liu Xiaobo – probably ignored him as most Americans would have done then.
Nobel Prizes are awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which has been accused of having a political agenda. They have also been accused of Eurocentrism.
For the 2010 Nobel Prizes, there were five committee members, one man and four women.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
After reading chapter 15 in, “Hot, Flat, and Crowded“, I decided to learn more about Thomas Friedman, the author, and discovered he has been the recipient of three Pulitzer Prizes and writes a foreign affairs column for The New York Times.
I’m sure it will come as no surprise to discover that Chapter 15 in Friedman’s book is about China.
He has visited China regularly since 1990—nine years more than I have, and in chapter fifteen he writes in detail why it is so difficult to get things done there.
The China he describes is the one I’ve learned about since 1999 – not the China that the Western media and American politicians paint as dark and forbidding, while they pander to many Americans who suffer from Sinophobia.
Friedman mentions how China’s government is authoritarian but quickly dispels the power of that image by pointing out the lack of control China’s leaders have over the rest of the Communist Party scattered across a country the size of the US with a population five times larger.
China’s leadership in Beijing became aware of the environmental problems years ago, attempted doing something about it and was ignored by most of the 73 million Party members.
Friedman also justifiably pointed out how unfair it is to criticize China for pollution when the Western industrialized countries started long before the Chinese did.
He also says that the West shipped most of its dirtiest manufacturing industries to China.
The chapter concludes with Friedman urging China’s leaders in Beijing to enlist the help of more than a billion people in a partnership that would force the entire Communist Party to obey the environmental laws and clean up China’s air and water.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
The Economist for September 25, 2010, mentions China a number of times proving that China’s growth as a world power is not ending soon.
In Valuable Vale, we learn that China has transformed a Brazilian iron-ore company from a small fry to a giant in a decade with more to come.
“China has propelled (Vale) from insignificance…to a market capitalization of $147 billion. It is now the second-largest miner (on the globe).”
Then some of the yuan that went to Vale to buy iron ore flowed back to China when Vale ordered a fleet of enormous ships from China.
In A Mao in every pocket we discover that China struggles to continue “managing” the value of the yuan since China’s central government still fears the unpredictability of global markets.
However, the way China manages the yuan may be changing since recent currency reforms allowed exporters to price their good in yuan, rather than dollars. Yet, some controls are still in place since “yuan flowed out of China only if goods or services flow the other way.”
In the meantime, pandering to voters, the U.S. Congress is looking for ways to punish China over the way the yuan is managed but only if the proposed bills comply with WTO (World Trade Organization) rules.
Wild is the wind shows that continued growth in the green-energy industry also depend on China. The Economist says that “installations (wind turbines) this year in America could be little more than half what they were last year” and that “the only market that continues to grow is China.”
The evidence shows that China is still crucial to the world’s recovery from the Wall Street, U.S. sub-prime mortgage induced economic meltdown of 2008.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
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