314 { China’s Quest
According to Kissinger, the real Chinese concern during the 1971 crisis
was the precedent being set by which countries could be dismembered by
Indian-Soviet collusion.^58 Beijing’s specific worry was Tibet. Chinese rule in
Tibet was extremely cruel during the Cultural Revolution—indeed, during
the entire 1959–1978 period. Tibetan traditions were ruthlessly repressed
by PLA occupation forces. Policies of “militant atheism” were imposed on
a deeply religious people. The economy was ground down by collectivized
agriculture, suppression of private economic activity, isolation from India,
and forced agriculturalization of traditionally herding peoples. Tibetans were
very poor, far worse off than people in China proper. Han Chinese cadres
ruled over sullen and impoverished Tibetans. Any manifestation of protest
was met with draconian punishment. Under these conditions, Tibet’s indig-
enous population would almost certainly have welcomed Indian forces as
liberators.
As noted earlier, following the 1962 war India had built up a division-size
(about 10,000 men), professionally trained and armed force of ethnic Tibetans
commanded by Indian Army officers. In peacetime, the Tibetan force helped
patrol India’s border with Tibet. But in wartime it was configured to under-
take deep-penetration commando operations into Tibet, possibly in coordi-
nation with India’s regular forces. In fact, during the 1960s India’s Intelligence
Bureau and America’s Central Intelligence Agency had drafted plans for
the liberation of Tibet.^59 The Dali Lama’s government in exile in northern
India might return to Tibet with a joyous welcome from the long-oppressed
Tibetans, and build up indigenous Tibetan military forces around a core
already formed from Tibetan refugees in India and armed by the Soviet
Union. India’s military forces had been transformed from the 1962 debacle
by a decade of buildup. Those forces had just tested and vindicated in East
Pakistan the strategy of intervention in support of indigenous insurrection.
The Soviet Union would have been tempted to support such an Indian move
in 1971–1972, since Beijing was finally moving toward the alignment with the
United States that Moscow had long dreaded. Of course, if Soviet support for
India in a Sino-Indian war meant, for Moscow, confrontation with the United
States, that would be a very different matter. PRC alignment with the United
States made Soviet-Indian intervention in Tibet far less likely.