440 { China’s Quest
Zhou Enlai in 1960.^28 Two days after the interview, Xinhua confirmed that
Deng’s offer was policy. In Beijing, six months later, Huang Hua proposed the
resumption of boundary talks, in hiatus since 1960.
In 1981 as in 1960, New Delhi rejected Beijing’s east-west swap offer.
Disputed territory in both sectors, east and west, was legally Indian terri-
tory, New Delhi insisted. The Chinese offer was like a thief entering a person’s
house, stealing that person’s wallet and coat, and then once caught in the
act, offering to return the wallet if allowed to keep the coat. It simply was not
acceptable. Foreign Minister Narasimha Rao explained the Indian view to
parliament in July 1980, shortly after Deng’s interview with the Indian de-
fense journal:
The Government of India has never accepted the premise on which it
[the swap proposal] is based, namely, that the Chinese side is making
a concession in the eastern sector by giving up territory which they
allege is illegally incorporated into India. Nevertheless, we welcome
the prospect of the eastern sector being settled without any particular
d i fficu lt y.^29
From Beijing’s point of view, New Delhi was pocketing China’s proposed
concession and asking for more. Deng Xiaoping’s 1980 proposal, like Zhou
Enlai’s 1960 one, had been carefully unofficial—comments to journalists.
There was no record of either in the official negotiating record. They could be,
and were, easily withdrawn.
Boundary talks began in December 1981. They continued for thirty-plus
years without substantive result. After several rounds, Beijing accepted New
Delhi’s proposal of a “sector by sector” approach. This meant that Chinese
concessions in the eastern sector would no longer be linked to Indian conces-
sions in some other sector. Consequently, starting with the sixth round of
border talks in November 1985, Beijing began stressing the need for Indian
concessions in the east. Chinese negotiators, and scholars elaborating on
China’s negotiating position, pointed to the Tawang sector in NEFA as the
area in which Indian concessions were most clearly required by the strong
documentary evidence that this region had historically been under Tibetan
administration. Dropping a willingness to cede NEFA and demanding in-
stead Indian concessions in the Tawang area represented a major hardening
of China’s position. Indian cession of a southward salient around Tawang
would diminish India’s already precarious ability to defend its northeastern
states by putting Indian protectorate Bhutan between two salients of Chinese
territory. Figure 16-1 illustrates the geopolitics of the Sino-Indian security sit-
uation in this region.
This toughening in China’s negotiating position was soon followed by a
militarized confrontation in a canyon north of Tawang and south of Thagla
ridge in a region known as Sumdorong Chu. A 1980 review of Indian military