President Xi Jinping Comes Calling-On

One of the most important event of the year 2014 has been the State visit of President Xi Jinping to India in September.
My article President Xi Jinping Comes Calling-On, published in The Indian Defense Review (Issue Vol. 29.4 Oct-Dec 2014), is reproduced below.
As I concluded, it was a mixed bag.

Here is the link to the web edition of the Indian Defence Review...

All started well when President Xi Jinping of China landed at the Sardar Vallabhbhai International Airport at Ahmedabad on September 17. He and Peng Liyuan, his beautiful wife (and renowned former Opera singer) had a taste of Modiland. They seemed to enjoy the dynamism and culture of Gujarat as well as its delicacies on the banks of a clean Sabarmati river.
Both India and China wanted to show the world that the two most populated countries of the planet can work together harmoniously. Modi Sarkar had done its homework by sending National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval to Beijing. After meeting President Xi, Doval told the Indian media that the bilateral relations were poised for an ‘orbital jump’. A good sound bite indeed!
The day he arrived, President Xi wrote an op-ed in The Hindu: “As the two engines of the Asian economy, we need to become cooperation partners spearheading growth. I believe that the combination of China’s energy plus India’s wisdom will release massive potential.”
The bar seemed to have been placed very high.

Was Ambassador Wei Wei sacked?
In Ahmedabad, everything went as scripted, though nobody noticed an extraordinary event which occurred a few days before the President’s arrival. Wei Wei, the Chinese Ambassador to India was suddenly transferred (or sacked?) and replaced by Le Yucheng from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
To replace the chief emissary a few days before his Head of State arrives for such a crucial visit must be a first in the annals of diplomatic history. What was behind this abrupt move? Although it may never be known, this happened at a time when speculations were rife about the fate of the Chinese Ambassador to Iceland who ‘disappeared’ somewhere in China. He was apparently too close to the Japanese. There is probably no link between the two but Wei Wei’s sudden ‘departure’ is rather strange.

The Border Issue
The second issue which did not go according to the planned programme was the sudden deterioration of the situation on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Chumar in Southern Ladakh. Differences in ‘perception’ about where the LAC lay were known to exist, particularly in this area but as Xi arrived in Ahmedabad, more than one thousand five hundred Chinese troops belonging to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the People’s Armed Police Force (PAPF) crossed the LAC and stood a few metres away from the Indian jawans. The situation has never been so tense for years. Why this show of force at a time Xi Jinping, who is also Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), was trying to instill trust in the bilateral relations? Was there a better way to sabotage the Presidential visit?
Selling the Chinese Dream
President Xi’s visit to India was the last leg of a four-nation journey. The visit to Pakistani was called off due to internal turmoil there. The Chumar intrusions were all the more surprising after Xi had gone around selling “The China Dream”.
He had announced the tenor of visit in his The Hindu op-ed, when he wrote, “As two important forces in a world that moves towards multi-polarity, we need to become global partners having strategic coordination. According to Prime Minister Modi, China and India are ‘two bodies, one spirit’. I appreciate this comment. Despite their distinctive features, the ‘Chinese Dragon’ and the ‘Indian Elephant’ both cherish peace, equity and justice. We need to work together to carry forward the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence (Panchsheel) and make the international order more fair and reasonable.” He concluded, “I look forward to an in-depth exchange of views with Indian leaders…and to injecting new vitality to our strategic and cooperative partnership for peace and prosperity.” It is also clear that President Xi was keen to sell the ‘China Dream’, an important component of which appears to be that China is a peaceful and reliable neighbour.
If this was the case, then why to blatantly cross the LAC on the second day of the visit? This has remained unexplained in the unfolding of the events. In Sri Lanka too, Xi spoke of “The Dream” and in an article in The Daily News, Xi affirmed, “Let Us Become Partners in Pursuit of Our Dreams.” In the recent months, whenever he got a chance, Xi spoke of “The Dream”. For example, at the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA), he said, “The Chinese people, in their pursuit of the Chinese dream of great national renewal, stand ready to support and help other people in Asia to realise their own great dreams.” So, why send 1,500 soldiers across the LAC in Southern Ladakh?

The Border Issue
Many observers said that Xi wanted to press some ‘acupuncture’ points on the border, to make his Indian interlocutors aware that the issue is still pending. The border issue is indeed not a new one, it is ‘left-over from history’, as Chinese leaders say. In The Hindu, President Xi had however asserted, “Progress has been made in the negotiations on the boundary question, and the two sides have worked together to maintain peace and tranquility in the border area.” It is true that there is a historical background.
In April 1960, the Chinese Premier Zhou En-lai had spent a week in Delhi to discuss with Prime Minister Nehru “certain differences relating to the border areas which have arisen.” The Joint Communique issued on April 26, 1960, had stated, “The two Prime Ministers had several long frank and friendly talks between themselves.”
It was decided that Chinese and Indian officials would “meet and examine, check and study all historical documents, records, accounts, maps and other material relevant to the boundary question, on which each side relied in support of its stand, and draw up a report for submission to the two Governments.” Five rounds of extensive discussions took place during the following months, with no progress. For the past 54 years, nothing seems to have changed, though as Xi arrived, the situation suddenly took a turn for the worse.

Did Something Go Wrong?
Last year, at the time of the Depsang incident, it was believed that Chinese intrusions could be due to the unfortunate initiatives of some local PLA commanders. I was then told, “It cannot be. PLA generals are a disciplined lot and Chairman Xi is fully in command.”
This time, the same thought again came to my mind. Were some very senior PLA generals unhappy about the thaw between India and China? Or perhaps disturbed about Xi’s fight against corruption? And does it mean that Xi Jinping, the Chairman of the CMC, does not have full control over his Generals? Is it possible that China was speaking with different voices?
An indication that everything may not be rosy for Xi is General Fan Changlong’s visit to Tibet. The General is the Senior Vice Chairman of the CMC and a Member of the Politburo of Communist Party of China. On August 17, The Tibet Daily carried an article saying that General Fan had come for an investigation tour to Qinghai and Tibet. The newspaper reported that Fan “emphasized that the entire army and the armed police must further implement the spirit of the series of important talks by Xi Jinping, must stick to the goal of strengthening the army in this new situation, concentrate on developing skills of war…”
However the main emphasis of his visit (only very briefly reported in the Chinese press in English) was that, “the entire army and the armed police must resolutely implement the strategic deployment by the Central Party and Xi Jinping, staunchly endorse the investigation of the case filed against Zhou Yongkang and the right decision made by the Central Party after carrying out investigation on Xu Caihou.”
Why come to Tibet, just to tell the officers posted on the Plateau to, “…be in unanimity with the Central Party in your thoughts and actions and obey the orders given by the Central Party and the CMC?” while opposing Zhou Yongkang.
The unusual part of the semi-clandestine visit was that Fan was accompanied by no less than three Military Region (MR) Commanders, Lt. General Liu Yuejun, Lanzhou MR, Lt. Gen. Zhao Zongqi, Jinan MR and General Li Shiming, Chengdu MR. What the Commander of Jinan MR was doing there is not clear, though having been earlier posted in Tibetan Military District, Zhao certainly understands the ground reality on the plateau. The point is that this trip to the “Roof of the World” was important enough to bring along three MR Commanders.
Fan admonished the officers posted in Tibet, “make full efforts to correct and control all the inappropriate activities around you, fight corruption, punish corruption severely, always maintain the characteristic, objective and the inherent quality of the people’s party. The leaders among the cadres must build the pillar of a strong ideological line and spread the glorious tradition of our party and our army.”
It means that there are probably senior followers of Zhou Yongkang in Tibet, and they may not be easy for Xi to control. Interestingly, Chinese media reports did not mention which units General Fan visited, how long he stayed in Tibet, where he went. The semi-clandestine visit could be another indication that something is not well in the Middle Kingdom.
A month earlier, China Military Online had reported that Xu Qiliang, the second CMC Vice Chairman had inspected some garrisons in Xinjiang and Tibet, “General Xu Qiliang visited the officers and men in frontier areas, and held talks with the leaders of the units garrisoning in Hotan [near the Aksai Chin], Ngari [near Demchok] and Lhasa areas,” said The Tibet Daily. Xu Qiliang also paid a visit to Shenxianwan (North of the Karakoram Pass and the Depsang Plains) at the altitude of 5,380 metres and the Khurnak Fort (opposite the Indian troops posted on the Panggong tso) where he inspected a squadron of speed boats and inquired “about the soldiers’ work, study and life.”
What is the significance of these visits? It is difficult to give a definitive answer, except that the seniormost Chinese generals are aware of the situation on the Indian front. For India, the question mainly revolves around the exchange of maps of the LAC. Coming out of the meeting with Xi, the Indian Prime Minister suggested, “…a clarification of LAC would greatly contribute to our efforts to maintain peace and tranquility. I have requested President Xi to resume the stalled process of clarifying the LAC.” Xi answered about finding an agreement on the border, but nothing about the LAC. It is telling.
 ‘Exchange of maps’ of the contentious LAC was also not mentioned in the Joint Statement and Xinhua just said that both sides “agreed to properly manage and control the border disputes between the two nations, maintain peace and security in the border regions, and find a solution at an early date.” This does not augur well for the future.

Meetings of the Chief of Staff
A couple of days after his return from India, President Xi Jinping met with the PLA’s Chiefs of Staff in Beijing. He stressed again the loyalty of the senior officers, “Headquarters of PLA forces must have absolute loyalty and firm faith in the Communist Party of China, guarantee a smooth chain of command and make sure all decisions from the central leadership are fully implemented”, he said. Since this came soon after the Delhi visit, the Indian press emphasized only his words about a regional war, “All PLA forces should improve their combat readiness and sharpen their ability to win a regional war in the age of information technology.” But this is not a new doctrine as it has been expounded in detail in successive White Papers published by the Chinese Ministry of Defence.
Perhaps more interesting is one of the latest statements, “Military commanders should have a better understanding of international and domestic security situations as well as the latest military development.” It signifies that some commanders needed to be briefed about the international situation and the relations with the neighbours. A statement issued by the Ministry also said, “All PLA forces should follow the instructions of President Xi and update their operations to meet new goals and missions set by the CMC.” Once again, does it mean that some officers do not follow the instructions of Chairman Xi? Could some commanders have taken initiatives on their own when their Supreme Commander was on a diplomatic trip? It is difficult to be affirmative but certainly a possibility to envisage.

Purging General Xu Caihou’s friends
And then the heads started rolling! On October 01 this year, The South China Morning Post reported that two generals close to General Xu Caihou – Major General Gao Guanghui and Major General Xu Yuanlin, “…have been moved from their posts, possibly for failing to pledge allegiance to Xi Jinping.” What does ‘fail to pledge allegiance’ signify?
It is difficult to say for certain but a Hong Kong paper elaborated, “The fate of two major generals linked to a high-ranking PLA officer under investigation for corruption is in doubt amidst a reshuffle of personnel that suggests that disloyal officers are being purged.” For us in India, the most interesting case is that of Major General Xu Yuanlin who was, till recently, posted in the political department of the Lanzhou Military Command (MR). Nobody seems to know his whereabouts. Just three months ago, he had succeeded Lt. Gen. Fan Changmi as Head of Ideological Education for Lanzhou MR.
On conditions of anonymity, a retired PLA Colonel told The South China Morning Post that for Xu and Gao had been forced in to retirement to assist the investigation of Xu Caihou or they may be undergoing shuanggui themselves, as many senior officers promoted by Xu Caihou. Shuanggui is an internal disciplinary process for party members suspected of corruption.
The same Colonel stated, “But I don’t think all senior military officials promoted during Xu’s era will be kicked out. Some were elevated on account of their personal capabilities but I think Xu and Gao were purged for refusing to show allegiance to President Xi Jinping.”
Another possibility is that the leadership has decided to “kill a few chickens to scare some monkeys.” It is a well-known strategy leaders go after ‘lower’ cadres/officers in order to control more powerful leaders. In this case, the monkey is probably Zhou Yongkang, the former security czar and previously member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo.

Promotions and Demotions
In the meantime, China is slowly but surely tightening her grip on Tibet. The latest sign is the ‘elevation’ of the status of the Political Commissar of the Tibet Armed Police. On October 07, The Global Times announced, “China’s Central Military Commission upgraded the political status of the Political Commissar of the Armed Police Corps of the Tibet Autonomous Region, indicating the central government’s determination to safeguard regional stability.”
Major General Tang Xiao, the Political Commissar of the Tibet Armed Police Corps, under the People’s Armed Police (PAP), will now enjoy enhanced powers and status. He will be treated on par with the Head of a Corps-sized military body i.e. he will gain one star and don the rank of Lieutenant General. The Tibet Corps itself will not be upgraded.
The Global Times explains to its readers, “Under the dual leadership of the State Council and the Central Military Commission, the Chinese People’s Armed Police is composed of internal security forces and various police forces, including border security, firefighting and security guard units.” Niu Zhizhong, Chief of Staff of the PAP announced Tang’s promotion at a press conference on October 03. Niu said that ‘better treatment’ for the Head of the Armed Police in Tibet “is a major decision made by Central Military Commission based on the special environment and strategic position of the Tibet Armed Police.” The objective of Tang’s promotion is to better safeguard regional stability.
With the October 3 announcement, Tao Xiao now has official military rank and receives regular military salary. Nothing has been said about the PAP Commander in Tibet, Maj. Gen. Song Baoshan. Why to promote the Political Commissar only? It sounds like a demotion for Song.

Changing Role of the Border Forces
Another indication that the Chumar incident is rather strange is the current propaganda in the Chinese press that the PLA/PAPF were disengaging from the border issue to concentrate on the law and order situation (terrorism) in Xinjiang Military District. On October 10, the China Daily mentioned the changing role of the border defense forces, “The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps is altering its focus from frontier defense to maintaining social stability as China builds good relations with its neighbors to the West, according to Cheng Jiazhu, Deputy Commander of the Corps.”
While celebrating the Corps’ 60th anniversary on October 10, the Chinese newspaper explained, “Founded in 1954, the Corps took on the mission of guarding border areas. Now, it has 176 regiments in 14 divisions scattered throughout Xinjiang’s 14 prefectures and cities. … In pursuit of its initial mission to provide border security, regiments of the Corps settled in the most remote and wild places of the country. It was to fulfill the mission of consolidating border defense, while avoiding commingling resources with locals.” It probably signifies that some of the border forces will be diverted to law and order duties as ‘China builds good relations with her neighbors.’
The incident at Chumar is all the more incomprehensible under these circumstances except if the PLA/PAP knew that it was a short-term operation to frighten some Indian monkeys. If that was intended, the Chumar operation was clearly a failure, as India could react quickly and amass more than 1,000 jawans in a few hours in the newly ‘disputed’ area.

Conclusions
At the Indian Council of World Affairs, the Chinese President hoped that China and India would be the ‘express trains’ driving regional development as well as the ‘twin anchors’ of regional peace. “When China and India join hands for cooperation, it will benefit not only the two countries but also entire Asia and the world at large,” he said adding that, “Nothing is more imperative than to deliver a more comfortable, more secure and happier life to the people.”
Once again, the President’s words do not tally with the situation on the ground, though the issue came to a close on September 30, when the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a press release, “The two sides have reached a consensus on properly resolving the recent stand-off between the frontier defense troops at the border of the two countries. On September 30, the frontier defense troops of the two countries completed simultaneous withdrawal according to the steps formulated by the two sides and restored peace and tranquility in the area.”
The Chinese Foreign Ministry stated that both sides understood that friendly cooperation conformed with their common interests and peaceful and tranquil borders are important for the growth of bilateral relations, but sometimes, there is a gap between the words and the deeds, especially, if there is disagreement amongst the senior officers and if all the generals do not follow the ‘instructions’ of Chairman Xi. This seems to be a serious problem in the Middle Kingdom.
Indeed, Xi Jinping’s visit to India is a mixed bag.

The People’s Liberation Army: Post Plenum III

CMC's Chairman Xi Jinping visiting troops in Inner Mongolia

My article on the People's Liberation Army after the Third Plenum of the 18th Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee (held from November 09 to 12, 2013) appeared in the Indian Defense Review (Issue Vol. 29.1 Jan-Mar 2014).
It is also posted on the Review's website.

The new leadership in Beijing had decided to bet on development and reforms…

The Central Committee’s Third Plenum
“China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is striving to maintain its glorious wartime reputation by advancing military reform and putting paid to the ethos of decadence,” said an editorial of The PLA Daily, the day after the Third Plenum of the 18th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee (a four day-conclave held from November 09 to 12, 2013). The Party had just delivered two new Leading Groups: one on reforms (it was expected) and more surprisingly, a National Security Committee (NSC).
The new leadership in Beijing had decided to bet on development and reforms, “The general objective of the approved reforms is to improve and develop socialism with Chinese characteristics …development is still the key to solving all problems in China,” affirmed a statement of the Central Committee. Xi Jinping and his colleagues seem to have seen the clouds gathering in the Middle Kingdom’s sky; for the present Emperors, the only way to avoid the fate of former Soviet Union (where the internal security apparatus had become weak, corrupt and ineffective), was to act fast; reforms needed to be introduced at once, or else the Communist Party’s days would be counted.
The Third Plenum admitted that the forthcoming reforms would decide the destiny of modern China. The statement concluded with “the need to deepen reforms in order to build a moderately prosperous society, and a strong and democratic country, as well as realize the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation.”
Xi Jinping’s reforms may remain a dream; Sinocism, an excellent newsletter which analyzes the current events in China, commented: “The decision is impressive and shows that the leadership is both aware of and committed to deep reforms. …the truly hard part is not the drafting but the implementation of changes that will affect interests throughout society. But at least Xi has clearly articulated [his] resolve and vision for reform.”
Is it enough?

Click here to continue reading...

China innovates

J-31 Prototype

I am posting my article entitled Chinese innovations published in the Indian Defence Review (Vol 28 (4) - Oct-Dec 2103)
 
The Chinese Dream
A few months ago, The People's Daily provided some details on the Chinese Dream, so dear to President Xi Jinping. The mouthpiece of the Communist Party first explains why a Dream: “The concept of Chinese dream has been widely spread for some time. In the context of weak economic recovery, complicated security situation and accelerated adjustment of international order, the world needs dreams indeed. ”
But who is this Dream for?
Beijing answers that it is for peace, for the world: “The Chinese dream is a dream for peace. Adhering to the peaceful development is China’s choice of the times. China stands for peace settlement for global disputes and issues and the new security concept of mutual trust, mutual benefit, equal and cooperation. The country strives for development under peaceful global circumstance and promotes world peace by self-development. China has actively participated in the dialogue and cooperation for international security. It has contributed to world peace.”
But there is more to the Chinese Dream: “The Chinese dream is a dream for cooperation. The interrelation and interdependency of countries have deepened largely, and cooperation and mutual benefits have become a common view. ”
The new Chinese president Xi Jinping dreams of Harmony for China and the rest of the world: “The Chinese dream is a dream for harmony …the Chinese dream belongs to the world.”
Well, it is unfortunate that recent events on the ground do not reflect these high philosophical objectives. The South China Sea, the East China Sea as well as for the Himalayan borders between India and China, (whether it is in Ladakh, Uttarakhand, Himachal or Arunachal Pradesh), have only witnessed tensions, not harmony.

The Chinese Dream passes through an Innovative China
It is certain that India has to learn something from China in terms of ‘dreaming’. But first Delhi should realize the true objective behind the Chinese Dream which is to make of China a dominant, self-reliant superpower.
Very early in its history, the Chinese Communist leadership realized that the great renaissance of the Chinese nation was dependent on ‘innovation with Chinese characteristics’. Beijing has now taken decisive actions to remedy some of the nation deficiencies in this field. India has not yet.
On June 22, 2013, The South China Morning Post affirmed that “China's top science advisers have listed 19 projects as the research priorities of the next decade. They include quantum telecommunications and a high-performance jet engine that could drastically improve the capacity of its indigenous fighter jets. ”
According to the Hong Kong newspaper, the report was prepared by more than 200 experts associated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It was a road map for breaking into the US dominance in domains as diverse as military, space, new materials, energy or agriculture.
Though not all the projects have a direct military implication, ultimately, ALL the projects will help the progress of the Chinese indigenous technology and most of them, will have a dual use.
The South China Morning Post mentioned: “The most eye-catching one is a new jet engine that promises to deliver thrust equivalent to 15 times its own weight. The thrust-to-weight ratio is a key indicator to measure a jet engine's performance. In comparison, the Pratt & Whitney F119 turbofan engine used in the United States' F-22 raptor fighter has a thrust-to-weight ratio of eight and is widely considered one of the most advanced jet engines today.”
This particular field is usually considered to be the weakest in China's aviation sector. Beijing has had to rely on foreign imports (mainly from Russia) for its fighter jets. Even China’s purported heavy-hacking activities have not so far been able to reduce the dependence on the Russian technology.
Of course, the Chinese plans for the new proposed engine have triggered wide-spread skepticism, but the point is that China has the political will and the economic means to jump into such innovative adventures.
The Chinese Dream goes hand in hand with military modernization. It is not new, but in the recent years and months it has been taken up by the new leadership in Beijing with a renewed vigour

The History of the Chinese ‘Innovations’
Following the ‘Two Weapons, and One Satellite’ program included in the science and technology development plan for 1956-1967, China took the decision to overcome deficiencies in areas critical to its national security and in March 1986, initiated the National High Technology Program (known as Program 863 – for 1986/03).
Program 863 was launched to promote China’s high-tech development in key areas such as information technology, biology, aeronautics, automation, energy, materials and oceanography.
Government institutes, university research labs and state-owned company R&D departments were all asked to participate in Program 863; the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) was the main recipient of the 863 funds.
According to a Chinese official document: “In 1983 the United States put forward the Strategic Defence Initiative (i. e. the Star Wars Initiative), then came the EURICA of Europe, …which are all strategic plans aimed at the 21st century. The implementation of those plans has created impacts on the great development of high technologies in the world. ”
It was enough to convince the Communist leadership in Beijing to undertake a similar ‘indigenous program’, especially after four top scientists, Wang Daheng, Wang Ganchang, Yang Jiachi and Chen Fanyun submitted, in March 1986, a letter to leadership in which they suggested that China should adopt appropriate countermeasures to catch up with the development of high technologies in view of the impacts on China of recent world advancements in the fields of high technologies.
Deng Xiaoping immediately instructed the government “Quick decision should be made on this matter without any delay”.
It was done. The 863 Program with the objectives: “to combine military use with civil use, with stress on the latter and limit objectives and concentrate on focal points”, was soon included in the Ninth Five-year Plan.
Fifteen years later, another landmark document was published, “The National Medium- and Long-Term Plan for the Development of Science and Technology (2006-2020)”, is also known as the MLP.
The MLP describes itself as the ‘grand blueprint of science and technology development’ to bring about the ‘great renaissance of the Chinese nation’.
The preamble calls for the Chinese people to “seize the opportunities and meet the challenges brought by the new science and technology revolution …despite the size of our economy, our country is not an economic power, primarily because of our weak innovative capacity.”
An excellent report China’s Drive for Indigenous Innovation prepared by James McGregor for the Global Regulatory Cooperation Project of the US Chamber of Commerce, says: “The MLP blueprint is full of grand visions, good intentions and gilded rhetoric about international cooperation and friendship. …It also sets goals for expanded cooperation with foreign universities, research centers and corporate R&D centers. ”
The MLP defines indigenous innovation as “enhancing original innovation through co-innovation and re-innovation based on the assimilation of imported technologies.”
What ‘assimilation’ and ‘re-innovation’ means is well-known from those who deal with China; “Importing technology without ‘transforming it into Chinese technology’ is not acceptable to China anymore”, the report states. “One should be clearly aware that the importation of technologies without emphasizing the assimilation, absorption and re-innovation is bound to weaken the nation’s indigenous research and development capacity, ” adds the MLP.
The plan is often considered by many international technology companies to be a blueprint for technology theft on a scale the world has never seen before. That is not true innovation, but re-innovation.

A few innovations
When President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao came into office in March 2003 as PRC’s President and Premier of the State Council respectively, innovation in science and technology was at the top of their minds, particularly as Beijing was to be the center of the world for the 2008 Olympics.
Apart from the launch of Shenzhou V, its first manned spacecraft and a first home grown Chinese microprocessor (with the capacity to process 200 million instructions per second, proudly fulfilling a nearly two decade-long national goal) invented by Chen Jin, a 35-year-old Fujian native with a University of Texas PhD working at Shanghai Jiaotong University, there was little innovation in China in 2003.
At the same time, the US employed some 62,500 Chinese-born science and engineering PhDs. Mainland natives were heading many American research labs and university departments; further most of the 60,000 Chinese students living in the US, had been granted residence permits by President George Bush in 1990 in the aftermath of Tiananmen events.
Interestingly, the ruling 9-member politburo standing committee was composed of 8 engineers and one hydrologist; they could therefore grasp the importance of ‘innovation’.
McGregor explains: “With the rallying cry of ‘innovation’, Premier Wen in mid-2003 used his position as head of the Leading Group on Science, Technology, and Education to bring together the two heavyweights of science and technology in China – CAS and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) – to coordinate an old fashioned Soviet ‘big push’ style campaign. ”
Nature magazine had a special issue (Fall 2004) with a collection of essays from prominent Chinese scientists also criticizing the draft plan for giving bureaucrats of the Ministry of Sciences and Technology (MOST) too much power over scientists. They believed that if megaprojects should remain the central focus, money was bound to be allocated to mediocre projects, based on ‘connections’, a well-known Chinese disease.
It was suggested that the power of MOST over research funding should be reduced, and perhaps the ministry should be disbanded altogether.

Assimilating and Absorbing
The idea of Megaprojects for ‘Assimilating and Absorbing’ technology was mooted. It was an import substitution action plan in order to create Chinese indigenous innovations through ‘co-innovation’ and ‘re-innovation’ of foreign technologies.
The megaprojects have an objective of ‘assimilating and absorbing’ advanced technologies imported from outside China to help the country to ‘develop a range of major equipment and key products that possess proprietary intellectual property rights’. The MLP speaks of ‘major carriers of uplifting indigenous innovation capacity’.
While the MLP identified the goals and specific sectors in which government innovation was of strategic importance, the 11th Five-Year Plan issued in December 2007 formally detailed the 16 megaprojects. While 13 were listed, 3 remained classified .
Michael Raska, a Research Fellow at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies (IDSS), quotes Prof. Tai Ming Cheung, a leading scholar on China’s defense industries at the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at the University of California San Diego, suggesting that the three military megaprojects were :

• Shenguang Laser Project for Inertial Confinement Fusion:
• The Shenguang (Divine Light) laser project explores the inertial confinement fusion (ICF) as an alternative approach to attain inertial fusion energy (IFE) – a controllable, sustained nuclear fusion reaction aided by an array of high-powered lasers;
• Second Generation Beidou Satellite Navigation System
• According to Jane’s magazine, by the end of 2012, China had 16 operational Beidou satellites in orbit – six geostationary satellites, five Medium Earth Orbit spacecraft, and five satellites in Inclined Geo-Stationary Orbits covering the Asia-Pacific region. By 2020, Beidou 2 envisions a full-scale system of at least five geostationary and 30 non-geostationary satellites providing a global coverage;
• Hypersonic Vehicle Technology Project:
• Available data show that China has started developing conceptual and experimental hypersonic flight vehicle technologies such as hypersonic cruise vehicles (HCV) capable of maneuvering at Mach 5 speeds (6,150+ km/h), flying in near-space altitudes.  

Michael Raska says: “Taken together, China’s long-term strategic military programs are deeply embedded in China’s advancing civilian science and technology base, which in turn is increasingly linked to global commercial and scientific networks.”
There is no doubt that even the ‘civilian’ innovations are useful to the defence sector in China.

The Chinese impediments
China has its own problems; one is the rigidity of its bureaucracy functioning under the Communist Party. The Chinese are however serious about tackling the babudom. In April 2007, Party leaders nominated a former Audi engineer with great experience, Wan Gang, as MOST minister; it was the first non-communist party member acceding to minister rank in 35 years.
In June 2007m Wan Gang established a ‘Special Projects Office’, the equivalent of an economic zone headquarters to make sure that the megaprojects would not be buried by the bureaucracy. The megaprojects office was to evaluate applications, approve funding and closely monitor the projects. The budget for each project was specific and identified both central and local government contributions.
McGregor says: “This unprecedented high-level hands-on micromanagement demonstrates that the indigenous innovation program is the government’s highest strategic economic priority.”
Of course, the 16 megaprojects (which, as seen earlier have become 19 in 2013) have been a source of controversy and debates both in China and abroad.
Many observers believe that the present Chinese system is not congenial to innovations considering its structure and the restrictions imposed by the unique Party system.
Though Xinhua announced than more than 1.02 million scientific theses have come from Chinese scientific and technical personnel in the past decade, (the second-highest number of such theses worldwide), doubts still persist about the quality of these theses.
The Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (under the MOST) affirms that the quality has risen: “Theses published from 2002 to 2012 have been cited a total of 6.65 million times, ranking sixth in the world. ”
The Institute adds that: “More than 7,920 scientific theses qualify as ‘highly-cited theses’, or those among the top 1 % in terms of citations, climbing one place to rank fifth”, but also admitting that Chinese scientists in 2011 published 141 theses on Nature, Science, Cell and other world-class magazines and journals, moving down a spot from 2010 to rank tenth.”
It is not easy to compete with the West in term of innovation in this domain.
On July 2012, an article in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) entitled “China as an Innovation Center? Not So Fast” warned that ‘innovations’ may take more time.
Anil K. Gupta and Haiyan Wang admitted that the Chinese ‘inputs’ in the field of innovation were very impressive, the R&D expenditure increased to 1.5% of GDP in 2010 from 1.1% in 2002, and should reach 2.5% by 2020. Its share of the world's total R&D expenditure grew to 12.3% in 2010 from 5.0% in 2002, placing it second only to the U.S., whose share remained steady at 34-35%.
But though data looks impressive, “Yet there's less here than meets the eye. Over 95% of the Chinese applications were filed domestically with the State Intellectual Property Office. The vast majority cover Chinese ‘innovations’ that make only tiny changes on existing designs.”
It does not mean that China is not trying hard to innovate. The regime gives itself the means to succeed one day.

An example of China’s re-innovation
The China Brief of the Jamestown Foundation recently mentioned China’s deployment of the world’s first operational anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) which was confirmed “with unprecedented clarity by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). The ASBM’s development path was unusual in many respects, but may increasingly represent the shape of things to come for China’s defense industry.”
The US Department of Defence annual report to Congress on China’s Military spoke of the status of China’s DF-21D ASBM: “China continues to field an ASBM based on a variant of the DF-21 (CSS 5) medium range ballistic missile that it began deploying in 2010. Known as the DF-21D, this missile provides the PLA the capability to attack large ships, including aircraft carriers, in the western Pacific. The DF-21D has a range exceeding 1,500 km and is armed with a maneuverable warhead.”
For the US DOD, “it gives the PLA the capability to attack large ships, including aircraft carriers, in the western Pacific Ocean”.
But where does this technology come from?
The same article of The China Brief answers this question. Chinese sources themselves have credited the US Pershing II missile with influencing the development of China’s DF-15C and DF-21 ballistic missiles: “Following the Pershing II’s deployment, initial ‘research work’ reportedly was completed in the early 1990s and incorporated into China’s Dongfeng (DF) missiles via a ‘warhead that possesses terminal homing guidance and maneuvering control capability’”.
When they first saw missiles of the DF series, experts realized the relation with the Pershing II. An article published in Hong Kong by a mainland-owned daily stated: “When they saw the new-type intermediate-range missile in China’s ‘Dongfeng’ family during the latest military parade held on the National Day, people would certainly like to compare it with the ‘Pershing II’ missile, wouldn’t they?” This is called re-innovation.

Can India achieve such a feat?
Especially in the defence sector, India depends in a large measure on imports. For many, the main reason is the lack of large-scale Research and Development (R&D). We shall take the example of HAL.
A few months ago, Dassault Aviation, the constructor of the Rafale selected in the MMRCA project, expressed some doubts about the capacity of HAL to absorb French technology; without even speaking about ‘innovations', can HAL ‘digest’ the French technology?
A source who has been associated for decades with HAL explained that tremendous efforts need to be made in the domain of ‘research’, if India is serious about catching up with China and the West in the domain of ‘innovation’.
Today HAL hardly does any R&D other than development connected with a production project. There is no doubt that government- or private-funded laboratories are needed for developing technologies which are comparable to the ones in the West. Unfortunately top ranked Indian students after graduation head for USA where they receive generous offers providing them satisfaction both in remuneration and the quality of work. It is these very talented young persons who need to be retained to do innovative work in Indian laboratories. This will happen only if India is able create world class laboratories and offer competitive remuneration.
Is the Indian system able to be a top-class innovator, is the question?

India’s babudom
India is suffering from the same disease as China, but despite the bureaucratic deficiencies, the leadership in Beijing has a tremendous political will (and adequate economic means) to change this scenario in the years to come; it does not seem the case in India, at least under the current political equation.
Take the case of the HAL’s HPT 32 Deepak trainer plane being discarded by the IAF, which ultimately selected (and now inducted into IAF) the Pilatus PC 7 from Switzerland. The alternative proposal from HAL for the HTT 40 (Turbo-prop trainer) was also not considered as it was still at the initial design stage. This raises serious doubts on the state of Indian research, once again without mentioning ‘innovations’. The lack of good leadership and weak design ability are some of the main HAL’s problems.
When Steve Jobs passed away, experts debated why China did not produce its own Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or Mark Zuckerberg? One contributor to Forbes explained that the emergence of such ‘innovative’ entrepreneurs “does not blend well with China’s culture of Confucian conformity to existing norms. Throughout China’s history, the established order saved little respect for inventors, entrepreneurs, and business pioneers.”
There is some truth in this, but the Confucian conformity added to the Communist bureaucracy and the supreme importance of the Party’s diktats is today balanced by a tremendous will to ‘innovate’ in order to materialize the Chinese Dream.
The Indian Dream has unfortunately not even been formulated as yet. It is a great pity, because the ingredients (brains) are very much present.

The Chinese Dream is Over: The Seven Perils

One more article which appeared in Uday India and the Indian Defence Review, The Chinese Dream is Over: The Seven Perils.

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The Advancing Borders of the Chinese Empire

The advancing Chinese LAC

My article The Advancing Borders of the Chinese Empire is posted on the website of the Indian Defence Review.

The incidents in the Depsang Plain, near the Karakoram Pass in April or more recently, in Chumar in South Ladakh, are the continuance of Nehru’s blind spot for China. There is today a huge difference of ‘perception’ on the location of the Line of Actual Control which over the years has been moving towards the South and the West. The 1959 LAC was indeed far more advantageous for India than the present LAC.

At the end of August 1959, a serious border incident occurred in the Subansiri sector of the then NEFA. According to a Note sent by the Indian government to its Chinese counterpart, “On August 25, 1959, a strong Chinese detachment crossed into Indian territory (in Lonju) south of Migyitun on the NEFA border and fired without notice on an Indian forward picket. They arrested the entire picket which was twelve strong but eight Indian personnel somehow managed to escape.”
A few days later, the issue came to the Parliament. As the Migyitun/Longju skirmish was being discussed, Nehru’s Government was also asked about a road supposedly cutting through Aksai Chin in Ladakh. For the first time, Nehru conceded that China had built a road. However, he explained that although Indian maps showed the area within India’s territory, the boundary in Ladakh was not ‘defined’. He stated, “Nobody had marked it.” The Prime Minister added that Delhi was prepared to discuss specific areas ‘in dispute or as yet unsettled’, though not the ‘considerable regions’ claimed by Chinese maps.
The Aksai Chin was definitely Indian territory though the area was “Very remote and uninhabited”, said the Prime Minister who, on March 22 that year, had written to Premier Zhou En-lai on the subject. Nehru could not escape and remain vague as he had done in the past. He had to make a detailed statement; he even agreed to release a White Paper on the border issue. Nehru admitted that the boundary in Ladakh was not sufficiently defined and that Aksai Chin was a “barren uninhabited region without a vestige of grass”. He further confessed the road was, “an important connection” for the Chinese though in any case, in comparison with the NEFA, the dispute over Aksai Chin was a “minor” thing. India was, however, prepared to discuss the issue on the basis of treaties, maps, usage and geography.
Nehru admitted that the boundary in Ladakh was not sufficiently defined…
It was a real bombshell for India. The cat was out of the bag!

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The Henderson Brooks Report again

Lt. Gen. Henderson-Brooks

The Indian Defence Review publishes an article entitled Why Henderson Brooks Report Cannot be De-classified written by Lt. Gen. Prakash Katoch. 
As it quotes me, I am posting it here.
It probably answers my article, 1962 War: Why keep Henderson Brooks report secret?
Unfortunately (or fortunately for me), I am not Assange or Snowden, though I only hope that one day, one Indian General will play the Assange role.
I always wondered why Neville Maxwell, if had a copy of the Report, had not 'declassified' it, posting him on the Net? 

Why Henderson Brooks Report Cannot be De-classified 
Lt. Gen. (Retd) Prakash Katoch

Claude Arpi’s demand to release the Henderson Brooks report is akin to Julian Assange and Edward Snowden seeking asylum in India. Understandably, Wikileaks disclosures of black money stashed abroad by Indians had sent many personalities scurrying for cover. There was flurry of movement to foreign lands, personal jets, and chartered planes, jets lent by birds of same flock, unexplained mysterious absences and what have you. Now that there is some measure of relief, Julian Assange wants asylum here. Where is the guarantee that he will not release another list disclosing how the black money has been siphoned out, to which new destinations, how much has been surreptitiously routed back to India, by whom, and into which developmental, private construction or other projects. Edward Snowden is even bigger threat. That he is already in league with Julian is an established fact, implying Julian can always leak information through Edward. But the bigger threat is what information Edward has swiped from the US NSA’s Prism. Although our Foreign Minister has certified “no data has been stolen” from the Indian Embassy in Washington DC, his own subordinates are not convinced of his credentials as cyber expert. So getting back to Edward Snowden, God knows what secrets this guy may leak out given that even Obama appears so shaken up.

Claude has quoted Neville Maxwell in questioning that even if Jawaharlal Nehru emerges in in bad light in the Henderson Brooks Report, why should it be kept in wraps in a modern democracy like India. He also writes that in 2008, Defense Minister, Mr AK Antony told the Indian Parliament that the Henderson Brooks could not be declassified. Mr Antony claimed that the report could not be made public because an internal study by the Indian Army had established that its contents “are not only extremely sensitive but are of current operational value.” When did the Government of India start seeking military advice on strategic security issues? As to Claude pointing out that the report only generally points out to lack of political direction, which report in India ever has indicted individuals in power?

Claude Arpi has quoted the Henderson Brooks Report in saying, “No major security threat other than from Pakistan was perceived. And the armed forces were regarded adequate to meet Pakistan’s threat. Hence very little effort and resources were put in for immediate strengthening of the security of the borders.” What stands obfuscated was this was ‘whose appreciation’; political appreciation, military appreciation, individual appreciation? Perhaps there could have been no one better to warn Nehru of China’s intentions and in no better form than Sardar Patel’s strategic advice through his letter dated 7th November 1950, excerpts of which are as follows:

“…We have to consider what new situation now faces us as a result of the disappearance of Tibet, as we knew it, and the expansion of China almost up to our gates. Throughout history we have seldom been worried about our north-east frontier. The Himalayas have been regarded as an impenetrable barrier against any threat from the north. We had a friendly Tibet which gave us no trouble. …..Chinese irredentism and communist imperialism are different from the expansionism or imperialism of the western powers. The former has a cloak of ideology which makes it ten times more dangerous. In the guise of ideological expansion lie concealed racial, national or historical claims. The danger from the north and north-east, therefore, becomes both communist and imperialist…….for the first time, after centuries, India’s defence has to concentrate itself on two fronts simultaneously….. we shall now have to reckon with communist China in the north and in the north-east, a communist China which has definite ambitions and aims and which does not, in any way, seem friendly disposed towards us…….”

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The Bangalore Aeroshow 2013: Musings

Tiger Moth aircraft trainer (in the 30s & 40s)

My refections on the Bangalore Aeroshow 2013 are posted on the site of the Indian Defence Review.
The press reported that Air Vice Marshal Zheng Yuanlin was leading a five-member delegation at the Aeroshow, following a formal invitation extended by India a month earlier.
But, who is Zheng Yuanlin?
According to "The Chinese Air Force: Evolving Concepts, Roles, and Capabilities: Evolving Concepts, Roles, and Capabilities" published by the Department of Defence of the United States: "Major General Zheng Yuanlin (郑元林) is also a rising star in the PLAAF, as seen from his fast upward advancement in the last 3 years."
The US publication informs us further:

In 2008 he was commander of the 13th Division (the PLA’s strategic transportation division). The next year he became commander of the PLAAF’s Wuhan Base at deputy corps rank. The following year he was appointed deputy chief of staff of the PLAAF Guangzhou MR. He was in Guangzhou for barely a year before being brought back to Beijing to be an assistant chief of staff of the Air Force.
Zheng has excelled both as a transport pilot and transport commander.
He was selected as one of the best air force commanders in 2007, following his command of Il–76s deployed in the Sino-Russian Peace Mission 2007 exercise in Russia. During the catastrophic snow and ice storm in South China in January 2008, he was placed in charge of the PLA’s air relief missions. In a week, the 13th Division’s Il–76s conducted 75 emergency sorties and carried about 800 tons of goods to 19 airports in eight provinces. In the Wenchuan earthquake rescue operations, the 13th Division made a huge contribution.25 It was very difficult for large transports to take off and land in concentrated sorties, in tough weather conditions (e.g., visibility less than 100 meters), and on airports with only rudimentary facilities. Even so, operations were conducted with complete safety. Just days after he arrived in Beijing to take his current job, the Yushu earthquake struck; again the PLA entrusted him to command relief operations by both the 13th Division and the Chengkong Division.
Given that he is both in his early 50s and in the right place at the right time — on the verge of the forthcoming massive leadership reshuffle — it might be expected that his future is a bright one. But he faces a serious obstacle: in the entire PLAAF history of pilot cadre management, an airlift pilot has never risen very far in the leadership. As in other air forces, young and accomplished fighter pilots form the traditionally favored cadre. Within the PLAAF, the fighter divisions comprise over 55 percent of the total, attack aircraft divisions 30 percent, and bomber/transport divisions just 15 percent. Three transport divisions (the new division in the Chengdu AF Region, and the 13th and 34th Divisions) form a “minority” in the PLAAF structure. As a result, given the PLAAF’s past tradition, it will be interesting to see how far Zheng goes.

Major General Zheng was very discreet during the show,

Officials attending the inauguration

My article: The Bangalore Aeroshow 2013: Musings
The thought that kept coming to my mind while walking kilometers under the hot sun of the Yelahanka Air Force Station, near Bengaluru (where the 9th International Exhibition on Aerospace, Defence & Civil Aviation was held between February 6 and 10), was what happened 50 years ago on the Himalayan slopes.
India was taken by surprise and treacherously attacked by the People’s Liberation Army and badly thrashed in the NEFA sector as well as in Ladakh. Mao Zedong used the pretext that India would have crossed the McMahon line in the Tawang area to teach Nehru (and India) a lesson.
One of the features of this tragic event was that India did not use its Air Force during the one-month conflict.
Why? Some historians have said that it was because the ‘leaders’ in Delhi feared that Kolkata (Calcutta then) would be bombed; others wrote that the services of the IAF were not utilized in the combats because the ‘leaders’ thought that China, a friend, a brother, would never attack India. The argument did not hold, as even after the attack, the IAF was not used.
The truth is probably that the ‘generals’ in the Army Headquarters (as well as the IV Corps Commander in Tezpur) were so arrogant that they believed that the Indian Army did not need the ‘external aid’ of the Air Force to capture the Thagla ridge. Such foolishness!
We know what happened on October 20 and the following weeks.

Rafale from Dassault Aviation

While walking from stand to stand at the Aeroshow, I kept reflecting about those dark days and feeling that India has taken a great leap forward since then.

Today, in case of a conflict, the Air Force would certainly make a difference and though both A.K. Antony, the Indian Defence Minister and the IAF boss, Air Chief Marshall N.A.K. Browne denied that the Air Force modernization and build-up was directed at anybody in particular, it is clear who is India’s main potential enemy and in which direction, the defence preparedness needs to be focused.
One of the principal lessons of this Aeroshow is perhaps that India is now a major world power, forcing major foreign armament suppliers to line up to offer their latest gadgets which could make a difference in case of a conflict with China (or even Pakistan); and now, the Air Force would be used.

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Why the Henderson-Brooks Report has never been released

In its April-June 2012 issue (Vol. 27.2), released on March 29, The Indian Defence Review published my article on the Henderson-Brooks/Bhagat Report.
The article is also available on the Indian Defence Review website (with end-notes).

Soon 50 years will have passed since China entered NEFA and Ladakh. This event has so deeply traumatized India that the Sino-Indian conflict has remained a scar in the nation’s psyche, partly because we do not know what exactly happened.
It is today possible to get some hints of what took place from Indian official sources (for example, the Official History of the 1962 War  prepared by the Ministry of Defence and a number of White Papers published by the Ministry of External Affairs), as well as from memoirs written by the main actors like Brig John Dalvi, Maj Gen Niranjan Prasad, Maj Gen DK Palit or Lt Gen B.M. Kaul and also from CIA , Russian and Chinese sources. However, the main Indian report prepared by Lt Gen Henderson-Brooks and Brig (later Lt Gen) Prem Bhagat is unfortunately still the most secret document of the Indian Republic.
Having lost any hope that the famous document will one day be declassified, I have tried to guess: “What on earth has stopped the Government to declassify the Report?”
Though portions of it were read out in the Parliament by the Defence Minister Y.B. Chavan in 1963, the gist seems to be missing.
A book helps us to understand the background of the Henderson-Brooks Report. Between 1962 and 1965, R.D. Pradhan was the Private Secretary of Y.B. Chavan who after the debacle of October 1962 took over as Defence Minister from the disgraced V.K. Krishna Menon.
Pradhan’s memoirs , give some insights on the reasoning of the then Defence Minister: “For Chavan the main challenge in the first years was to establish relationship of trust between himself and the Prime Minister. He succeeded in doing so by his deft-handling of the Henderson-Brooks’ Report of Inquiry into the NEFA  reverses.”
The Private Secretary elaborated on the Defence Minister’s sentiments during the following months: “During the conduct of the enquiry Chavan was apprehensive that the committee may cast aspersions on the role of the Prime Minister or the Defence Minister.” Pradhan adds: “His [Chavan] main worry was to find ways to defend the government and at the same time to ensure that the morale of the armed forces was not further adversely affected. For that he repeatedly emphasized in the Parliament that that the enquiry was a fact-finding one and to ‘learn lessons’ for the future and it was not a ‘witch-hunt’ to identify and to punish the officers responsible for the debacle.”
It is clear that Chavan’s main objective was to defend the government, in other words, ‘defend Nehru’ and the political coterie around him who were responsible for the death of nearly 2000 Indian officers and jawans.
Chavan’s Secretary concludes: “It was a tribute to his sagacity and political maturity that he performed his role to the full satisfaction of the Parliament and also earned the gratitude of the Prime Minister.”
He obviously managed to absolve Nehru of any wrong doing even though the Prime Minister was one, if not the main culprit.
In 2008, answering a question on the Report, Defence Minister A.K. Antony told the Indian Parliament that the Henderson-Brooks Report could not be made public because it was an internal study for the Indian Army and its contents “were not only extremely sensitive, but are of current operational value.”
At first sight it seems strange that this 49 year-old report is still of ‘operational value’. Was it a manual of what should NOT be done in case of a conflict with China or any other country? All the more reason to study it!
Were the officials who drafted the Minister’s reply aware of the other report, quoted earlier, the Official History of the Conflict with China (1962) prepared by the same Defence Ministry, detailing the famous ‘operations’ in 474 foolscap pages?
In 2005, under the Right to Information Act, veteran journalist and former MP Kuldip Nayar saught the following information: “May I request you to make me available a copy of the Report by the retired Lt. Gen Henderson-Brooks on the China-India War in 1962. This is now 43 years old and should have been formally available in the Archives of India, some 30 years after it was submitted to the Government of India. ”
The Respondent, the Ministry of Defence dragged its feet for months and tried to take refuge behind the Section 8 (1).
The stand of the Defence Ministry was explicitly given during a hearing of the Commission on March 7, 2009: “Disclosure of this information will amount to disclosure of the army’s operational strategy in the North-East and the discussion on deployments has a direct bearing on the question of the demarcation of the Line of Actual Control between India and China, a live issue under examination between the two countries at present.”
The fact that it has a “direct bearing on the question of the demarcation of the Line of Actual Control” may give us a hint in which direction to look to find an answer to our query.
In a ‘decision notice’ dated March 19, 2010, the Central Information Commission said: “We have examined the report specifically in terms of its bearing on present national security. …The disclosure of information of which the Henderson Brooks report carries considerable detail on what precipitated the war of 1962 between India and China will seriously compromise both security and the relationship between India & China, thus having a bearing both on internal and external security. We have examined the report from the point of view of severability u/s 10(1). For reasons that we consider unwise to discuss in this Decision Notice, this Division Bench agrees that no part of the report might at this stage be disclosed.”
It seems strange as large parts had already been disclosed by the Defence Minister himself as well as by Neville Maxwell, the author of India's China War  who had the ‘privilege’ to access a copy of the Report from which he abundantly quoted in his book.
Looking for hints why the Henderson-Brooks report has never been released, the following sentence give some indications:”There is no doubt that the issue of the India-China Border particularly along the North East parts of India is still a live issue with ongoing negotiations between the two countries on this matter.” It is perhaps where one needs to look.

What does the Chinese side say
Another clue is that China has always said that it is India which attacked first. According to Chinese historians who wrote the history of the 1962 conflict, a first key meeting was held in early October 1962 (probably on October 6) in Beijing.
Defence Minister and Deputy Central Military Commission Chairman, Lin Biao reported on the situation in the Tibet and the Xinjiang Military Regions. Lin said that the Indians continue to ‘advance’ and often open fire on Chinese outposts.
The Chinese military intelligence had correctly gathered that the Indian forces were planning an attack on Thagla Ridge on 10 October .
Mao told his colleagues: “It seems like armed coexistence won't work. It’s just as we expected. Nehru really wants to use force. This isn't strange. He has always wanted to seize Aksai Chin and Thagla Ridge. He thinks he can get everything he desires.”
The Great Helmsman continued: “…Since Nehru sticks his head out and insists on us fighting him, for us not to fight with him would not be proper. Courtesy emphasizes reciprocity.”
Mao seems to believe that India attacked first, though there was no question of the India Army ‘attacking China’ with no food, no clothes, no armament or ammunition supply, the Chinese perceived the situation differently.
Was the Communist leadership just looking for a pretext? Probably, but what could be this pretext?

Why did China really believe that India attacked?
The answer is to be found in the books written by the Army officers who have been the unwilling actors in the ‘blunder’, namely Maj Gen Niranjan Prasad, the GOC of 4 infantry Division, Brig John Dalvi, the Commander of 7 Infantry Brigade and Brig D.K. Palit, then Director of Military Operations at the Army Headquarters in Delhi.
Niranjan Prasad in his book The Fall of Towang  explains why he decided to write his memoirs: “…to remove some of the misconceptions regarding that operation.”
The version of Niranjan Prasad is important as he was the link between the ‘bosses’ in Delhi (often dictating orders to lower subordinates from the Army HQ) and the troops struggling on an undefendable ground in the NEFA. Having suffered the humiliation of the defeat, he does not have to spare the real culprits, the politicians.

Where is the McMahon Line?
In his Fall of Towang, the Commander of 4 Infantry Division describes the setting of the operations thus: “The McMahon Line from just north of Khinzemane, as drawn by Sir Henry McMahon in 1914 with a thick blue  pencil on an unsurveyed map, was not an accurate projection of the Himalayan watershed line. Much of the territory in those days had not been explored and McMahon was only guessing at geography when he drew a thick blue [red] line from Khinzemane to the Bhutan-Tibet-India tri-junction to its east. In this process the position of Thagla  ridge was, to say the least, left ambiguous. The story goes that the officer surveying the area had completed an admirable task of delineating the watershed up to this point when a pretty Mompa girl claimed his attention and the work was left uncompleted. Whatever the reason, the survey authorities, ignoring physical features on the ground, joined Point MM 7914 to the India-Bhutan Tibet tri-junction by a straight line. Stranger still, the Government of India had not corrected this obvious mistake even in 1962. Clearly someone in External Affairs had not done his home work. This lapse cannot be easily excused or explained away; it was largely responsible for the critical dispute which later developed and eventually led to war.”
Though the Thagla ridge was the logical border if one follows the watershed principle as well as the ownership of customary pastures’ rights, the fact remains that the old map which was the reference for India’s position on the ‘genuine ’ location of the border, showed the Thagla ridge and the Namkha Chu , north of the 1914 line. As Maj Gen Prasad said, it had unfortunately not been corrected after India’s independence.
The Chinese probably may have known the doubts of the local Army commanders. In his memoirs, Prasad recalls: “From our own Signals channels I had received reports of a pirate radio operating somewhere in our area, but when we referred this to higher authorities the matter was dismissed.”
It could explain how Mao was aware of Operation Op Leghorn to evict the Chinese from the Thagla ridge in October 1962 .
Another possibility was that some Monpa villages had been ‘bought over’ by the Chinese.

Operation Onkar
It is necessary to return two years earlier in history to understand the situation on the eve of the tragedy. The Government of India had mooted a new policy; to quote the Official Report of the Ministry of Defence: “In NEFA, ‘Operation Onkar’ was launched in 1960. According to this plan, there was to be a large expansion of the Assam Riffles, and units were to be posted all along the frontier and also in the areas not occupied till then. Those post were to be manned by Assam Riffles personnel but were to be established under Army supervision. The siting of these posts and their exact location was, however, decided mainly by the Intelligence Bureau and not the Army.”
It became the famous ‘Forward Policy’. It was the brainchild of Krishna Menon, the Defence Minister with the full support of the Prime Minister who however said that posts should not be established in ‘disputed areas’.
The Official Report continues: “In the wake of this order, efforts were further intensified. In the Eastern Sector some Assam Rifles platoons were placed under 4 Inf Div in May 1962 which speeded up the establishment of forward posts ‘as close to the border as possible’ under ‘Op Onkar’. By 20 July 1962, a total number of thirty four posts (8 in Kameng, 8 in Subansari, 7 in Siang and 11 in Lohit Frontier Divisions) were established in NEFA along the border with Tibet. Those posts included one at Dhola, established a little south of the Namkha Chu on 4 June 1962.”
The local Commanders (Corps, Division and Brigade) were not happy and they made it known, but nothing could stop the folly of the ‘authorities’ in Delhi.
Brig Dalvi recalled: “It is known that many generals, including General Umrao Singh, opposed the indiscriminate opening up of more posts. Who forced him to open Dhola? Surely India was not landed in the straits of 1962 by an unplanned and thoughtless drift into a disputed area because of an archaic map? The opening up of posts in undisputed areas cannot be questioned. The setting up of posts in disputed territory is a different matter. It is an act of rashness...”
As the local GOC, Maj Gen Niranjan Prasad noted that the local officers had no choice, they could perhaps have resigned, but in an almost war situation, it is not an easy decision.
As mentioned, a post was established at a place known as Tse Dong (Chinese: Che Dong), at the bottom of Dhola peak, on the southern bank of the Namka Chu by Captain Prasad. The post later entered in history as the ‘Dhola Post’.
Though Captain Prasad's maps showed the McMahon Line as passing to south of the Thagla ridge, the political representative present in his party, assured him that the ridge was part of the Indian territory; however when the young Captain came back to his base after setting the Post, he reported the matter to Divisional Headquarters, which in turn cabled the Corps and Army Headquarters. By then, it was July 20.
General Prasad extensively debriefed Captain Prasad  and “became convinced that the Thagla ridge was indeed the main watershed”.
Brigadier Dalvi wrote later that the setting of the Dhola Post was one crucial factor for the subsequent conflict.
In his Himalayan Blunder, he questions how the Dhola Post came into existence: “We seemed to have ventured most casually into a potentially explosive commitment. Instead of working in water-tight compartments, we should have alerted the whole Army and prepared for a clash.”
Who was informing the ‘civil supremacy’? The Intelligence Bureau and its Director had probably no clue about the Chinese preparations and even less about the political upheavals  going on in Beijing.

Visit of the Director of Military Operations
On 14 August, 1962, Brigadier  D.K. Palit, Director of Military Operations visited the Corps Headquarters in Tezpur.
He told the brigade commanders and the staff that according to Intelligence input “there was little or no probability of the Chinese resorting to armed hostilities”. About the issue of the Thagla ridge, he said that though the Divisional Headquarters had sent its report August 4, the Army Headquarters in Delhi had only received it the day before he left for Tezpur (14 August morning). He promised to look into this and send an answer ‘as soon as he could’.
Prasad recorded in his Memoirs: “I told the Director of Military Operations that the establishment of Dhola Post could lead to very serious consequences if in fact it lay north of our claim line. I asked for a clear cut definition of our claim line and emphasised that our posts should be shed in relation to that line. He promised to examine the case on return to Delhi and to give me an answer as soon as possible.”
In his insider’s assessment of the conflict, War in the High Himalayas, Brigadier Palit recalls the encounter: “On my return to Delhi I referred the Thagla dilemma to the Director of Military Survey. The latter commented that as the existing maps of the area were 'sketchy and inaccurate, having been compiled from unreliable sources', the map co-ordinates of the new post quoted by the patrol leader were of doubtful accuracy. He confirmed that the recognised border was the watershed, but qualified this statement by adding 'the exact alignment of [this] will depend on accurate survey'. This, he added, would take two to three years to complete.”
As Palit commented that was ‘not greatly enlightening’. He decided to get the opinion of the Ministry of External Affairs and more particularly, the Historical Section of the Ministry which answered: 'We may permit the Army to extend the jurisdiction, if they have not already done so, up to the line suggested by them [Thagla ridge].”
Wanting to clarify the exact position, Palit went to meet Dr S. Gopal , the Director of the Historical Section, who had been part of the group of Officials who met the Chinese on five occasions to discuss the border issue in 1960. Palit recalled that he went to see the historian “in order to double-check before I passed on this decision to HQ 4 Division”.
Gopal explained to him that since the boundary talks with the Chinese in 1960, the Government of India had been aware that the actual terrain in the area of the tri-junction was different from that depicted on the quarter-inch scale map Simla sheet.
The point given by the Chinese for the tri-junction was 91° 40’ East, 27° 48’ North . Gopal noted on the file: “This point was further north of the tri-junction shown on our maps and nearer the point now suggested by Army Headquarters. Furthermore, the Chinese had been told [during the talks of 1960] that the alignment [of the McMahon Line] followed Thagla ridge, which is also the ridge shown by Army Headquarters in the sketch.”
But Palit adds: “What Gopal had not told me — and I found out only later —was that the Chinese had not accepted our arguments and had counter-claimed Thagla ridge, as well as the valley at Khinzemane, as Chinese territory.”
The Director of Military Operations wrote that he sent Gopal's remarks to HQ Eastern Command in Lucknow for onward transmission to 4 Infantry Division: “but by then it was mid-September and events in that remote region on the border of Bhutan and Tibet had already reached a critical stage”.
It was already too late to go back, at least for the egos of the main actors in Delhi (in the Army HQ and the Governement).

The September 8 Incident
The situation was getting hotter by the day. In Beijing, Mao Zedong had begun his come back to the political stage in Beijing .
In the morning of September 8, 1962, Chinese launched a first offensive precisely against the Dhola Post.
The Official Report said: “troops were noticed moving across the Namkha Chu in the Tawang sector. In a few hours about forty of them crossed the river, virtually surrounded Dhola and threatened the small post manned by troops from 9 Punjab. The Chinese troops also destroyed 2 bridges near the post of the Namkha Chu. …The Chinese settled into positions near and dominating the post, thus repeating the tactics that they had adopted in the Northern sector against Indian posts.”
It was panic in the Indian camp.
While the Indian Army was trying to reorganize itself and hurriedly (and anarchically) send reinforcements to the Namkha river, the Chinese watched from their dominating position and this, for a week.
But as the Official Report recorded: “The Chinese resumed firing after a short interval. After the incidents of the 20 and 21 September, there was intermittent firing on 22-25 September. On 28 September, the Chinese used automatic weapons. The Indian troops retaliated. In those bloody clashes both sides suffered casualties. Suddenly the Chinese stopped firing. But it turned to the proverbial lull before the storm.”
That was it! The point of non-return had been reached. Mao could launch a full-fledged military campaign against India to ‘teach her a lesson’ that she would remember ‘for decades’. He had the necessary pretext: the Indians troops had crossed the Red Line of the 1914 map (though ironically Beijing would continue to treat the Line as ‘illegal’).
On September 16, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing in a Note to the Indian Embassy in China stated: “Indian troops recently again crossed the so-called ‘McMahon Line’, intruded into Che Dong [Dhola Post] of the Le village (approximately 27° 49' N, 91° 48' E) in China and constructed barracks and defence works there in preparation for prolonged entrenchment.”
Beijing added: “After swallowing up by force large tracts of Chinese territory south of the ‘McMahon Line’ on the eastern sector of the Sino-Indian border, the Indian side went further to intrude into Khinzemane north of the Line in 1959 and has since hung on there. And now, it has further intruded into Che Dong [Dhola Post]. These systematic nibbling activities fully reveal how ambitious the Indian side's aggressive designs are. They also show that the Indian side is actively extending the tension to the entire Sino-Indian border. The Indian Government must be held responsible for all the consequences arising therefrom.”
Four days earlier, Niranjan Prasad had received Lt Gen L.P. ‘Bogey’ Sen, the Army Commander based in Lucknow at the Tezpur airport: “He greeted me coldly; and during the drive back to Divisional Headquarters he did not utter one single word and, disconcertingly, ignored all my questions.”
At a conference at Divisional Headquarters, Sen announced that the Thagla ridge was Indian territory and that the Chinese would have to be “driven out, the operation, codenamed Op Leghorn, was to be executed at all costs”.
On 20th September, New Delhi complained that two Chinese soldiers had crept up to an Indian patrol post and thrown two hand grenades.
The next day, Beijing retorted: “Indian troops in the Che Dong [Dhola Post] area of Tibet, China, north of the so-called McMahon Line, into which they had intruded, made a sudden armed attack on Chinese frontier sentries standing on guard west of the Che-jao bridge.”
In these tense circumstances one understands that there were no questions about rethinking India’s position on the border.

A Flamboyant Corps Commander
On October 3, Lt Gen B.M Kaul took over Corps IV, a Corps especially created ‘to throw the Chinese out’. On his arrival in Tezpur, he had a briefing by Naranjan Prasad, the 4 Infantry Division Commander, who recorded: “My proposal was to have stronger posts further away from the border as bases for patrols operating up to our claim line.” Later Kaul addressed the senior officers.
According to Prasad: “At the conference, however, General Kaul's mannerism changed completely . His reply to me was brusque and final: ‘The Prime Minister himself had ordered these posts to be set up and he had based his decision on the highest Intelligence advice.’ Also, explicit in his reply was a warning that failure or dragging of feet in completing the task could result in serious consequences for those responsible in other words, for 4 Infantry Division. So that was that.”
A story of utter confusion!
John Dalvi’s commented: “The [former] Chief of the General Staff, General Kaul too must have been aware of the background to the Dhola area, and the possible military repercussions of treading on dangerous ground. Was Dhola established under Government orders; or was it established by the Army Command purely as 'an operational matter'? Did the Government say that we must hold Dhola?”
Fifty years later, it is still a mystery: who ordered the setting of this particular post. The issue is a sensitive one for the Chinese because it is in the vicinity of this post that the Dalai Lama crossed over from Tibet to India in 1959 , an event that had (and still has) not been digested by the Chinese. In many ways, this was the most sensitive area of the entire India-China border from Ladakh to the Burma tri-junction.
It was a place heavily charged with history.
Though Nehru had apparently declared that posts should be established in places ‘where we are convinced it is ours’, Dalvi commentated: “The Chinese had raised a dispute about the exact alignment of the McMahon Line in the Thagla Ridge area [during the 1960 talks]. Therefore the Thagla-Dhola area was not strictly a territory that ‘we should have been convinced was ours’ as directed by the Prime Minister, Mr. Nehru, and someone is guilty of exceeding the limits prescribed by him.”
Indian historians had good reasons to be convinced that the Thagla ridge was the traditional border between India and Tibet, though the 1914 map shows it a couple of miles southward. One of the main proofs is that the pasture rights on the ridge have always been with the Pangchen villages which belong to the Monpa tribe, while the Lebus villages, north of the Thagla ridge  has always been under the jurisdiction of Tsona Dzong whose population are Tibetans.
But the point that the ‘historians’ did not grasp in 1962 was that the area around Khinzemane and Thagla ridge had a ‘historic’ significance for the Chinese.
Historian G.N. Rao who participated to the Official’s talk of 1960 said that it was a mere theoretical difference, but a difference which was fully used by the Chinese as a pretext to attack India in self-defence, even though the extent of the attack demonstrates that it was just a pretext for Mao to reestablish his position inside the Chinese Communist hierarchy and to ‘teach India a lesson’.
Not only was the Dhola Post disputed by the Chinese but worse, as Dalvi said, it was militarily unsound: “Sometime in July or August 1962 GOC 4 Division represented the unsoundness of the location of Dhola to his superior, but had not received a reply up to 8th September when the Chinese debouched across Thagla Ridge and threatened the post. The name of the person who did not give an answer, or failed to take a decision on this vital issue for over two months, will have to be made known as his was a major contribution to the events of September 1962.”
There are many ‘guilty’ men, generals or civilians in this story, but let us forget them for the time being and return to the front and listen to Dalvi: “We knew (or should have known) that Chinese Officials in the 1960 discussions had not conceded our version of the Line in this particular area.”
This is an important point, because though the Indian presentation was far more accurate than the Chinese one during the 1960 border talks, Beijing had not agreed to the Indian point of view.
This explains the unhappiness of the local brigade commanders in NEFA. Dalvi wrote: “The Thagla Ridge had a tactical significance for the Chinese as it overlooked their forward base at Le Chinese countermeasures would place us at a grave disadvantage, both tactically and administratively.”
India simply tried to bite more than it was possible for her to chew at that time.

The McMahon Line again
In his memoirs, General Prasad comes back on the McMahon Line: “…The McMahon Line generally follows the Himalayan watershed. The line then comes down to Khinzemane [the border post with Tibet, contested by China], and thence, instead of following the main watershed of the Thagla ridge, it is drawn in as a straight line running to the India-Tibet-Bhutan tri-junction. The details of the area shown on maps then existing bore little resemblance to the actual configurations of the ground, presumably because this area had not been explored when the McMahon Line was drawn.”
As we have seen there was a discrepancy between the Line printed on the map and the de facto and historical border which took into account the watershed and the rights of pasturage on the slopes of the ridge.
Just before entering into his narrative of the battle of the Tawang Chu, the Division Commander comes back once again to the incertitude vis-à-vis the line to be defended: “I would like to make a resume of the facts regarding the operational situation as I saw them and as I briefed General Kaul:
(a) The McMahon Line, drawn on the watershed principle but not drawn very precisely, purports to delineate the boundary between Tibet and India.
(b) The maps issued to the Army showed Thagla Ridge and the Namka Chu as lying to the north of the McMahon Line.
(c) The Ministry of External Affairs, in all the intervening years, had made no effort to demarcate the McMahon Line on the ground. The details shown on the maps of the area, particularly west of the Nyamjang Chu river, bore no relationship to the actual topography and this discrepancy had never been corrected.
(d) Despite repeated requests for clarifications from higher authorities, the correct delineation of our claim line and the status of Dhola post was never given to me.
It is in these circumstances that the Indian forces were asked to ‘throw the Chinese out’ of the Thagla ridge.
Brig John Dalvi put it rather bluntly: “It is known that many generals, including General Umrao Singh, opposed the indiscriminate opening up of more posts.”
The Henderson-Brooks Report probably shed some light on some of these issues. This could explain why it is still kept secret nearly fifty years after its publication.
The names of the culprits are known but will probably remain a State secret for the years to come.

After the War
The controversy about the exact location of the border between Tibet (China) and India continued well after the war.
On 14 November, the Indian Prime Minister wrote to his Chinese counterpart: “That the attack was premeditated and carefully planned is clear from the fact that this attack at the Thagla ridge frontier which commenced on the morning of the 20th October, 1962, was not an isolated move; similar attacks against Indian defence posts started simultaneously along other parts not only of the eastern sector of the frontier, but also of the western sector of the frontier.”
Though Nehru must bear the responsibility for the entire painful 1962 episode, he is however absolutely right when he points to the fact that the Chinese attack occurred simultaneously in all sectors. This is certainly proof that the operations had been prepared well in advance  by the Communist regime in Beijing.
The setting up of the Dhola Post was nonetheless the required spark that triggered an all-round attack on India. 
One question remains: did the Chinese really believe that the Indian troops had crossed over to Chinese territory by setting a post on the Namkha Chu?
It is possible; it is at least what the Chinese historians wrote, thereby justifying the massive attack six weeks later. But why the attacks all along the border then?
As mentioned earlier, the Forward Policy of Krishna Menon was a sort of psychological and political compensation: Delhi had made a fool of itself by not having noticed the occupation of the Aksai Chin for several years; something had to be done. It was the rationale of new Policy.
Nehru bluntly told Zhou: “I do not want to go into the history of the last five years and the forcible, unilateral alteration of the status quo of the boundary by the Chinese forces in the western sector, on which a mass of notes and memoranda have been exchanged between our two Governments.”
The Indian Prime Minister was absolutely correct. But the setting of the Dhola Post involved a far more sensitive issue: the welcome of the Dalai Lama in India (at Khenzimane border post, in the vicinity of the Dhola Post).
On November 4, Zhou Enlai answered Nehru: “So far as the eastern sector is concerned, I believe the Indian Government must be in possession of the 1914 original map of the so-called McMahon Line. According to the original map, the western end of the so-called McMahon Line clearly starts from 27° 44.6' N. Yet the Indian Government arbitrarily said that it started from 27°48' N and, on this pretext, it not only refused to withdraw the Indian troops from the Kechilang River [Namkha Chu] area north of the Line but made active dispositions for a massive military attack, attempting to clear the area of Chinese frontier guards defending it. Such was the position in the eastern sector of the Sino-Indian boundary prior to September 8, 1962. How can the Chinese Government agree to revert to such a position?”
The Chinese remained steady on their position.
The successive governments in Nanjing and Beijing have always considered that the agreement between the British and Tibetan plenipotentiaries in March 1914 in Simla was a ‘secret’ agreement: the fact that Tibet was considered an independent nation by the British at that time is unacceptable by China, though it is a fact of history that they themselves acknowledged by sitting at the same table with the British and Tibetan Plenipotentiaries for several months in Simla.
The Chinese Note continues: “The reason why the Chinese Government pointed out the coordinates of the western extremity of the so-called McMahon Line was to show that Indian troops had crossed this line and intruded into the Kechilang River [Tawang Chu] area.”
Here again it is a question of interpretation of the Simla agreement for demarcating the border between Tibet and British India. There are different views on the subject but even if one admits the principle of the ‘highest ridge’, the Himalayas do not always bend to the will of the cartographers.
Once again, Sir Henry McMahon never envisaged that the hurriedly conducted survey  and his drawing of a thick red line on a map could trigger a war.
The ‘massive attack’ supposedly planned by India cannot be taken seriously in view of the total lack of preparedness of the troops in terms of armament, ammunition, clothing and food supply. More than half of the casualties are said to have succumbed to the cold and the shortage of food. Some senior Officers in the Army Headquarters in Delhi may have dreamt to ‘throw out the Chinese’ or take ‘the Thagla ridge’, but it was a pipe dream only.
Further, the position of the Chinese government was ambiguous: on one side they did not recognize the McMahon Line having not been part of the ‘secret negotiations’ between Sir Henry McMahon (and Charles Bell) with Lochen Shatra the Tibetan Plenipotentiary in Simla in February/March 1914, but at the same time Beijing was ready to accept the Line as the Line of Actual Control.
Though India rightly stated that the customary border was the Thagla ridge, it had never been delineated, it was only in 1951 that Major Khating and the Assam Riffles walked to Tawang, and further north.
But Mao had needed a pretext, some Indian Army senior officers and politicians offered it to him, though one thing is sure, with or without pretext, the conflict would be happened anyway.