Beware if China calls for truce! When the ‘pacification of Tibet’ meant its complete annihilation

Today, very few remember that as far back as 776 BC, the Greeks had introduced the Olympic Truce: A truce or ékécheiria (‘laying down of arms’); always announced before the Olympic Games so that all athletes and spectators could travel safely to the Games and peacefully return to their respective countries.

Of course, the truce has been thrown to the wind in Xi Jinping’s China and the International Olympic Committee, which primarily serves its own economic ends, is ever ready to kowtow to totalitarian China for the purpose. The truce has no meaning for Beijing; just look at the number of Chinese military planes entering Taiwan’s air defence identification zone (ADIZ) every day. In January alone, a total of 142 PLA Air Force aircraft were tracked in the ADIZ, including 102 fighter jets, three bombers, and 37 turboprops.

Further Qi Fabao, the aggressive PLA regiment commander who triggered the Galwan Valley border clash on 15 June 2020 (on the occasion of Xi Jinping’s birthday), has been nominated as a torchbearer during the Winter Olympic Torch Relay in Beijing. At the same time, Beijing wants India to remember 1962.

According to The Hindu: “Ahead of the 60th anniversary of the 1962 India-China war which falls in October this year, official Chinese military researchers have compiled a new history of the war reassessing its significance and legacy, bringing the spotlight back to the war amid the current tensions in relations.”

The author is Zhang Xiaokang, the daughter of General Zhang Guohua, who commanded the Tibet Military Command (TMC) and directed the Chinese offensive against India in the eastern sector in October 1962. Her ‘new history of the war’ is titled One Hundred Questions on the China-India Border Self-Defence Counterattack. However, reading extracts published on a Chinese website show that there is nothing new in her book, apart from the usual lies.

For example, Zhang writes that the 27 senior Indian PoW officers (led by Brig John Dalvi) insisted on going on a tour of New China after their release from the PoW camp in Tibet in March 1963. The truth is that they had repeatedly pleaded with the Chinese authorities that they wanted to return to India as soon as possible to be reunited with their families, but the Chinese did not budge.

Another blatant lie is that the officers were paraded on Tiananmen Square on 1 May 1963. It is true that the Chinese brought the PoWs to the Chinese capital on the eve of Workers’ Day, but Brig Dalvi put his foot down and refused to be used by the Chinese propaganda during the 1 May Parade.

There is, however, one confirmation: China decided to call the war a ‘counter-attack’ only after the conflict was over.

According to Zhang Xiaogang, on 3 December 1962, the PLA’s General Staff Department issued instructions about the “Question of Naming the Operation Against the Invading Indian Army”. Orders from Mao clearly stipulated that “with regard to the naming of the counterattack against the invading Indian troops, for the sake of unified use internally and externally, the full name of the counterattack on the Sino-Indian border would be, China-India Border Self-Defence Counterattack”. Thereafter, all accounts, memoirs of officers, etc, have carried this name.

Another book

Far more important and vital to understand the 1962 war with China is another book just published by Stanford University Press in the US: When the Iron Bird Flies: China’s Secret War in Tibet authored by the Chinese scholar Jianglin Li.

Based on Chinese archival documents (mainly from local archives in Tibet, Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai), this “untold story reshapes our understanding of Chinese and Tibetan history”, says the blurb.

The presentation explains: “From 1956 to 1962, devastating military conflicts took place in China’s southwestern and northwestern regions. Official records at the time scarcely made mention of the campaign, and in the years since only lukewarm acknowledgement of the violence has surfaced. When the Iron Bird Flies, by Jianglin Li, breaks these decades-long silence to reveal for the first time a comprehensive and explosive picture of the six years that would prove definitive in modern Tibetan and Chinese history.”

It is what Mao called the ‘pacification of Tibet’. Interesting for us in India, the ‘pacification’ campaign was considered by the Chinese strategists as a rehearsal for the war against India in October 1962. Jianglin explains: “At the end of 1959, Chinese military operations had been ongoing for four years in Sichuan, nearly two years in Qinghai, and nearly one year in central Tibet. PLA troops had occupied cities, towns, and pastoral regions on the Tibetan plateau, pressing Tibetan resistance forces into remote, mountainous regions.”

In January 1960, the TMC ordered: “Clear out the bandit gangs in autumn, clear out the remnants at the end of the year, and basically complete democratic reform.” This refers to the ‘communes’ so dear to Mao, which resulted in tens of millions of deaths in the Mainland.

The military operations were divided into four battle zones.

Though Chinese sources never mention that herders were engaged in military actions in Southern Tibet, thousands of nomads were massacred, simply because “this scarcely populated pastoral area more than 4,000m above sea level abutted Nepal and Bhutan to the south, providing a potential escape route to fleeing Tibetans.” Mao Zedong’s instructions were clear that the tactic for the ‘pacification of rebellion’ was to close the doors ‘to beat the dog’.

The first battle in 1960 prevented Tibetans from escaping across the border into Nepal and Bhutan; with the herders grouped together during the winter; it was easy for the PLA “to round up and wipe out the whole gang”. Tens of such battles are described; during each of these battles, there was an ‘attacking phase’ and a ‘cleanup phase’.

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In most places, the first objective of the PLA troops was to clear the ‘rebel main force’. But there was no ‘main force’ as “the herders were not organised as a formal army. Large groups would break up into small ones during the fighting and escape, fleeing in different directions.”

The book cites hundreds of such incidents: “After resting and reorganising, the PLA launched the second stage, aimed at ‘cleaning up the bandit rebels’ and establishing local government. This phase lasted from March 26 to May 10 [1960]. …the PLA troops fought 13 battles in which 1,379 ‘bandits’ were ‘annihilated’ and 1,245 firearms were seized.”

This battle eventually gave the TMC control over areas south of the Nagchu-Ngari highway and north of the Yarlung Tsangpo River.

The Central Military Commission’s instructions were: “Pacify one area, consolidate one area, and then shift to another area.”

In the Battle of Zone 3, in one clash, “453 Tibetans were killed, 448 were taken prisoner and 887 surrendered, while the PLA seized 197 rifles, 1,280 crude firearms, 3,649 rounds of ammunition, 687 knives and spears, and 432 horses.” Nevertheless, the Battle of Zone 3 was considered a failure, because the troops failed to wipe out the rebels’ main force (which did not exist).

In Zone 1, the TMC believed that there were “more than 14,000 bandit rebels, including more than 5,000 core members possessing more than 5,000 steel guns and more than 100 light and heavy machine guns.”

Jianglin explains that the term ‘core members’ usually refers to people who are capable of fighting, which would be men in the prime of life. The commander of the 54th Army, Gen Ding Sheng treated the Battle of Zone 1 as a mission to be accomplished fully: “The TMC transferred 9 regiments, with a total fighting force of 18,000, to assemble a superior military force for a battle of annihilation in coordination with the air force.”

The author comments: “Sending 18,000 PLA troops to fight 5,000 Tibetans armed with one rifle each and a total of 100 machine guns was of course unlikely to result in any surprises.”

In January 1960, the Ding Command Post (the HQ of Gen Ding) held a special war council in Lhasa to formulate its battle tactics; it was decided to start out by forming a large encirclement with small skirmishes to surround and annihilate the enemy, using the method of “layers of encirclement and peeling the skin one layer at a time” to eliminate the resisting Tibetans… Strike hard in hot pursuit, don’t hesitate to grab one or one thousand, make small victories accumulate into big victories, and don’t let a single bandit slip through the net.”

During many battles, the Air Force was used; Jianglin mentions several: “By 6 am on May 5, all units had arrived at their designated positions. Around 11:00 am, the PLA Xining Air Force Command Post joined the battle. In two days, 16 bombers carried out 32 rounds of bombings and strafings in the area where the Tibetan resistance fighters were concentrated.”

Her conclusions were: “Outnumbered and inexperienced with such fierce battle, the Tibetans were not able to organise effective resistance, and even escape did not seem to be an option. Both Tibetan and Chinese sources state that PLA bombers chased the fleeing Tibetans and showered them with bombs and bullets.” Similar battles took place in many locations.

Just as ‘truce’ does not today have the same meaning for the outside world as for Mao’s children, ‘pacification’ for the Great Helmsman was not what we usually understand. We should be grateful to Jianglin Li for having recorded for posterity, in more than 500 pages, what really happened in Tibet between 1957 and 1962.

The writer is a noted author, journalist, historian, Tibetologist and China expert. The views expressed are personal.

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