438 { China’s Quest
of Indian suspicion of China. Desai’s coalition fell apart in mid-1979, and
Indira Gandhi and her Congress Party returned to power in January 1980.
Gandhi set out to “repair the damage” to India’s partnerships with the Soviet
Union and Vietnam, and swung back to a much tougher approach to China.
Beijing’s maladroit handling of Vajpayee’s visit contributed to the collapse of
Deng’s first attempt at rapprochement with New Delhi.
Beijing quickly tried again. With Indira Gandhi back in power, Foreign
Minister Huang Hua attended a Republic Day reception at the Indian em-
bassy in Beijing at the end of January 1980—the first time in twenty years a
Chinese foreign minister had done that. Then, in June 1981, Huang Hua flew to
New Delhi for talks with Foreign Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao. Huang’s key
proposal during the visit was that improvements of bilateral Sino-Indian rela-
tions should proceed where possible and not be linked to continuing disputes
in other areas. This approach can perhaps be called “delinkage.” Huang’s
delinkage proposal represented a response to the objections to China’s mil-
itary ties to Pakistan laid before Chinese leaders by Vajpayee during his
January 1979 visit. More broadly, delinkage stood as a proposed alternate to
India’s policy, in effect since the mid-1960s, of insisting that improvements
in Indian-Chinese relations were contingent on prior settlement of the ter-
ritorial dispute. India’s long-standing policy was that until the border issue
was settled, Sino-Indian relations could not advance substantially. Huang’s
delinkage proposed to turn this around: advancing bilateral relations in areas
where agreement could be reached would improve the situation and reduce
tension, eventually creating an atmosphere in which the boundary issue
might be solved.
Beijing had prepared for Huang’s unveiling of the delinkage approach in
New Delhi by reassuring China’s other South Asian friends that improve-
ments in Sino-Indian relations would not be at the expense of China’s friendly
ties with them. This was a second aspect of Beijing’s delinkage approach: Sino-
Indian ties should be independent of and not affected by ties between China
and other South Asian countries—Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and, espe-
cially, Pakistan. On June 1, 1981, about three weeks before Huang Hua arrived
in New Delhi, Premier Zhao Ziyang visited Pakistan for talks with President
Zia-ul-Haq. After an “extensive exchange of views on international problems
and relations between the two countries,” the two leaders “resolved to con-
tinue efforts to further strengthen friendship and cooperation in all fields
and to preserve peace and stability in South Asia.”^23 At a press conference in
Islamabad, Zhao explained China’s desire for better relations with Pakistan
as well as with India: China hoped to “solve certain problems concerning
bilateral relations between China and India .... in a spirit of mutual under-
standing and accommodation,” Zhao said.^24 From Islamabad Zhao flew to
Nepal and then Bangladesh. In each capital, Zhao’s message was this: China
was willing to continue and advance mutually beneficial cooperation in all