Dragon Fire

Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London

It was highly unusual for a senior civil servant, particularly one so closely involved in intelligence work, to call in a television presenter for a classified briefing. But John Stopping, Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, had been instructed to do so by the Foreign Secretary and was relieved, in part, to have known the presenter, Max Harding, from a posting in Moscow nearly twenty years earlier. Stopping chose to meet in his office, not for a restaurant breakfast meeting as the Foreign Secretary had tried to suggest. He was suspicious of the press and would never have agreed to be seen socializing with a journalist.

‘I understand you have the Chinese Foreign Minister, Jamie Song, as a guest on your phone-in show this morning,’ said Stopping, when Harding had sat down. ‘I wondered if you might like some information with which to tease him?’

‘Like what?’ said Harding, who was equally concerned about being fed a line from the British government. Harding was the presenter of Globe Talk, a live interview and phone-in show on BBC World Service Television. When his producer rang up the Chinese Embassy in Portland Place to ask if the Ambassador would come on the show, they called back half an hour later offering Jamie Song in a satellite link from Hong Kong.

‘It will be a BBC exclusive,’ said the Chinese Press Attaché. ‘We have not approached CNN because we feel that China’s position will be better understood in Europe than in the United States. You do not need to submit written questions and he will talk about anything you wish.’

Stopping spread a pile of satellite pictures on his desk. ‘These are surveillance photographs of Chinese military activities over the past few days, and, during a break in cloud cover, pictures of what look like widespread disturbances in Tibet. You can’t use them on the programme and, frankly, without expert knowledge they won’t mean much to you.’

Harding stood up and picked up two photographs. ‘Go on,’ he said.

‘We believe that the Chinese are using the raid on Drapchi prison in Lhasa to make an unnecessary show of force against India. We accept India’s explanation that a unit of the Special Frontier Force ran amok. We hope that a line will be drawn under the incident and relations normalized. These pictures, however, show substantive troop reinforcements moving in right along the border with India. They have become particularly active in the mountain areas towards Sikkim, where India and China have fought several skirmishes, and the route along which we expect Major Choedrak and Lhundrup Togden are trying to make their escape.’

‘Is he still alive?’ interrupted Harding.

‘We assume so. If he had reached India or Bhutan or if the Chinese had caught him I am sure we would know. If your viewers can bear the geography lesson, mingle their thoughts on Tibet with those of Kashmir, where Pakistan and India have been hammering it out for sixty years.’

‘The killing of the Western army commander and the Home Minister and the Indian airstrikes across the LoC?’

‘Yes. We think of Kashmir and Tibet as being on separate flanks of India. But if you look at the map they are frighteningly close to each other. Take in that and then look at the other flashpoints along this border.’ Stopping moved to the coffee table and laid a detailed map of the region over it. ‘Starting in the west, this tiny pocket of land just north of the LoC — fifteen thousand square miles known as Shaksgam Valley — was voluntarily given by Pakistan to China in 1965. The problem is that the territory was not Pakistan’s to give. The whole of Kashmir is claimed by India and there are UN resolutions regarding it. Move a fraction east, and there’s this blob of wasteland in northern Ladakh called Aksai Chin, which China took in 1959 when it was building a strategic highway between Xinjiang and Tibet. It’s about twenty-five thousand square miles, still under Chinese control, but claimed by India. These areas are among the most difficult places in the world to fight a war. No possibility of moving troops through into Ladakh. No land communication whatsoever. It would be easier on the moon, I would think. But if you look here on the map north of Chushul, east of Pangong Tso Lake, these shapes here are a column of tanks being moved closer to the border to threaten Indian positions.’

Harding was taking notes. ‘Give me the origins of the China — India border dispute in a nutshell.’

‘At the time, two bald men fighting over a comb. Or two young cockerels flexing their muscles. Look at it how you want,’ said Stopping. ‘In 1914, when China was in anarchy, Britain signed a border agreement with the Tibetans. It’s known as the McMahon Line and stretches 1,360 kilometres along the eastern section of the border running from Bhutan to Burma. It was also initialled by the Chinese representative at the negotiations, but never accepted by Beijing. The area directly south of the McMahon Line to what was the border of British India remains disputed and makes up much of the new Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh which India announced in 1986.

‘After the Communists came to power, China and India signed a friendship treaty, the Panchisila Treaty or the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. It was 1954, and Mao was too busy consolidating his power to raise the border issue, although he steadfastly refused to recognize the McMahon Line. Then Chinese troops poured into Tibet, and by 1958, the friendship treaty was out the window and the relationship had deteriorated into open animosity.

‘Then came the 1959 Tibetan uprising and the escape of the Dalai Lama to India, which overshadowed everything else. Mao was outraged. The next year, Chou Enlai, Mao’s trusted moderate lieutenant, went to Delhi to thrash out a compromise. They were talking about territory where no sane human being would want to live. No oil. No minerals. Just national pride. The negotiations stalled, and in September 1962 there were the first skirmishes. On 20 October China crossed the McMahon Line on the eastern sector of the border and went into Ladakh to the west in a massive incursion; two days later the Indian army defences collapsed. Fighting continued for a month, then China withdrew back across the line. The Indian parliament passed a resolution saying that India “would recover every inch of its sacred soil lost to China”. That vow hangs in the mess room of the Northern Command headquarters at Udhampur.’

‘This is a lot more than I can say on television,’ said Harding, looking up from his notes.

‘The Foreign Secretary didn’t instruct me to write your script,’ retorted Stopping. ‘Only to explain to you the backdrop of the conflict. And the nub is this. China was not concerned about the geographical boundaries. As I said, the territory itself is worthless and inhospitable. It wanted India to abandon its recognition of the McMahon Line, which implicitly meant it accepted the sovereign authority of Tibet. There’s been a lull since the ’62 war, but the issues are still there.’ He ran his hand along the border. ‘Along this stretch, China claims this disputed area in Kashmir, and ten thousand square miles from the Karakorum pass. It also claims Arunachal Pradesh and does not recognize Sikkim as part of India.’

‘One hell of a lot of areas of dispute between two nuclear powers,’ remarked Harding.

‘That is exactly the point the Foreign Secretary wanted you to understand.’