History cannot and shouldn't be forgotten

Comments on Dibyesh Anand “Moving beyond the Blame Game: China-India Border Relations “, 22/08/2009, http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2009/08/22/moving-beyond-the-blame-game-china-india-border-relations/

I am a Chinese Australian, so my views may be biased in favour of the Chinese or China. I say that upfront so not to be accused that I may mislead people by disguise.

I do not find the statement that "... they avoid a serious engagement with the domestic and international compulsions of the Chinese leadership in 1950s and 1960s" justifies any improper behaviour and actions by India that may have provoked the China-India war in the early 1960s.

At that time, the least China wanted was a war, given its domestic economic problems. So I personally don't think that war was the fault of China.

If that statement by Dibyesh Anand is correct, it was most likely that India wanted to take advantage of that situation at the expenses of China. Of course, the Chinese leadership then could not tolerate violations of its sovereignty and territory integrity – China may be economically weak, but militarily it was not that weak to accept another country’s unfair will. On that one, while I don’t think it is a matter of whether the Chinese current communist leadership allows reflection of what occurred then at the border with India, it is more likely that most Chinese have the view that it was India’s fault that has little to do with current government view or policy.

Dibyesh Anand’s argument about the sovereignty, culture and politics is hardly acceptable by international standard. It sounds like an argument to support for an independent Tibet that does not disadvantage India in any way at the expense of China to lose its territory. I don’t know whether such an argument can receive any sympathy from China. It can only make the China-India border issues unnecessarily more complicated and it is highly likely to be completely rejected by China. I suspect that that argument reflects the fact that it is in India’s but not China’s interest to do so.

To most Chinese, although the war with India may have been won, but they still remember China voluntarily retreated more than they should, either for military reasons or political reasons. While the current political leadership may compromise with India, most Chinese are unlikely to support that approach even though they may be ignored by the political leadership for now.

There have been lot strong complaints about how the border issues with Russia have been settled. Most Chinese are unlikely to forget the border issues with India, no matter how their political leaderships think.