Dragon Fire

Zhongnanhai, Beijing, China

The Indian ceasefire was open-ended and unilateral. President Tao had finished yet another conversation with the Russian President, whose peace brokering had become bogged down in detail.

‘Hari Dixit will not hold on for ever,’ warned Gorbunov. ‘You will have to give him something.’

‘Han Chinese are being slaughtered in Lhasa, Shigaze, Gyangze and Rutog. Those are just the places we know about. The Tibetans are getting their arms from India. They are going into Chinese areas, killing people and burning their houses. If you want, Vlad, send a Russian television crew in to show the world the atrocities that these so-called innocent Tibetans are committing. Do you remember Kosovo, how the Albanians drove out the Serbs after NATO had won their war for them? Well, the Chinese people feel the same about Tibet. We have done more to raise the quality of life for Tibetans than any other nation and we are being repaid with an orgy of killing. As the leader of China, I cannot agree peace with India until that stops. It would be impossible.’

Tao now looked out on the Central Sea from one of his offices, the smaller room which he used for thinking and which was decorated with some of his very personal momentos. It would take perhaps an hour at the most for Gorbunov to talk to Hari Dixit, who would have to call an end to the ceasefire. Just as Tao could not surrender in Arunachal Pradesh while the Tibetan uprising continued, the Indian Prime Minister could not move against the Tibetan fighters while Chinese troops were in Arunachal Pradesh. Both men had painted themselves into a corner, and neither’s bluff had yet been called.

Briefly, Tao wondered whether he could have acted in any other way, but concluded he could not. Ultimately, India was to blame. Had it disbanded the Special Frontier Force years ago, the Tibetans would never have had the resources to stage an uprising. The question now was not to look back, but to devise a way that China could win.

The People’s Liberation Army had grown up on the doctrine of yilie shengyou, pitting the inferior against the superior. Despite the move towards missiles, submarines and high-technology warfare, that doctrine was very much in place. It assumed that China would opt to fight wars which other powers might not. It would take the risk of going into battle when it was not quite ready and win on courage and imagination. Without yilie shengyou, the Communist Party would never have defeated the Nationalists in 1949. After that, the Chinese Communist Party adopted another doctrine, of self-defence counter-attack, meaning that when it thought war was inevitable it should be fought on enemy and not Chinese territory. This was the pattern in the Korean War of 1950, against India in 1962 and against Vietnam in 1979. In China it was known ‘to attack outside the door’ or ‘to strike beyond the gates’. The policy was loosely known as xianfa zhiren, which also meant that China would make the first strike and gain the initiative. But the psychology remained unchanged. China saw itself not as an expansionist power, but an inward-looking nation under threat, merely trying to protect itself.

With that doctrine in mind and Russian President Gorbunov’s initiative stalled, Tao was considering at what level a strike should be made in order to achieve his goal. He needed a quick end to the conflict, preferably one which would bring the international community back on side. It was known as yizhan ershang, winning a victory with one strike. The question facing Tao was where should he deliver that blow.