Normalization with the Asian Powers } 439
fields. Any improvements in Sino-Indian ties would not be at the expense of
China’s cooperative ties with other South Asian friends.
China also notched up its assistance to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons pro-
gram. According to a memorandum drafted many years later by Abdul
Qadeer Khan, the mastermind of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, in
mid-1982 Pakistan began enriching weapons-grade uranium in its centrifuge
plant using uranium hexafluoride supplied by China.^25 President Zia feared
that India or Israel would preemptively strike Pakistan’s nuclear facilities, and
asked Deng Xiaoping to “loan” Pakistan enough bomb-grade uranium to fab-
ricate several bombs to deter a preemptive strike. Deng reportedly approved
the request, and fifty kilograms of highly enriched uranium (enough to fabri-
cate two bombs) were carried by a Pakistani C-130 cargo aircraft to Pakistan.
Along with the lead-lined boxes containing 1-gram ingots of highly enriched
uranium came a blueprint for a simple atomic bomb of a design type already
tested by China. We do not know the reasons why Deng approved the trans-
fer; it was probably to strengthen Pakistan’s deterrent capability against India
and the Soviet Union and to lessen the likelihood that China might be re-
quired to fight a war to defend Pakistan. US intelligence became aware of the
transaction and confronted Zhao Ziyang about it during his January 1984
visit to the White House. Zhao denied the charge: “We do not engage in nu-
clear proliferation ourselves, nor do we help other countries develop nuclear
weapons.”^26 Zhao thus fulfilled a diplomat’s duty to his country. Washington
knew Zhao’s claim was false, but the need for continuing Pakistani and
Chinese cooperation to sustain the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan
led Washington not to press the issue.^27
Another major element of Beijing’s push for rapprochement with India
in the 1980s was to revive and then withdraw the east-west swap proposal
for settlement of the territorial dispute proposed by Zhou Enlai and rejected
by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1960. The reader will recall from an earlier chap-
ter that Zhou had unofficially proposed a package deal, with China giving
up its claims in the eastern sector and accepting the McMahon Line there,
while India would give up its claim to Aksai Chin in the western sector. In
this fashion, the existing line of actual control would form the basis for the
boundary, neither side would have to give up territory actually under its con-
trol, and each side would retain the territory most important to its national
security. This proposal seemed eminently reasonable from the Chinese side,
and Nehru’s rejection of it in 1960 had been a major factor in the deteriora-
tion of relations leading to the 1962 war. Now, in 1980, after a hiatus of twenty
years, Beijing revived the swap proposal. It would remain on the table for
about five years.
In December 1980, some six months before Huang Hua’s visit to New
Delhi, Deng Xiaoping gave an interview to the editor of a prominent Indian
defense journal outlining a compromise settlement along the same lines as