Threat of military clash escalates

The last time the Chicoms went after India and Vietnam, they got their butts handed to them.

The Chinese are widely acknowledged to have given the Indians a beating in 1962. The background is actually a little more complicated. I had assumed that the Chinese were the aggressive party. In reality, it appears that Indian army units were advancing into Chinese-held territory, and the Chinese units were retreating in order to avoid confrontation until Mao gave the order to stop retreating and actively repel Indian units that were edging into Chinese territory. India's 1961 invasion of Portuguese territory in Goa apparently had the Chinese concerned that India was trying to do the same with respect to disputed territory in the Sino-Indian border region. Wikipedia on the imbroglio:

Garver argues that the Chinese correctly assessed Indian border policies, particularly the Forward Policy, as attempts for incremental seizure of Chinese-controlled territory. On Tibet, Garver argues that one of the major factors leading to China's decision for war with India was a common tendency of humans "to attribute others behavior to interior motivations, while attributing their own behavior to situational factors". Studies from China published in the 1990s confirmed that the root cause for China going to war with India was the perceived Indian aggression in Tibet, with the forward policy simply catalysing the Chinese reaction.[2] Neville Maxwell and Allen Whiting argue that the Chinese leadership believed they were defending territory they believed to be legitimately Chinese, and which was already under de facto Chinese occupation prior to Indian advances, and regarded the Forward Policy as an Indian attempt at creeping annexation.[2] Mao Zedong himself compared the Forward Policy to a strategic advance in Chinese chess:
Their [India's] continually pushing forward is like crossing the Chu Han boundary. What should we do? We can also set out a few pawns, on our side of the river. If they don't then cross over, that’s great. If they do cross, we'll eat them up [chess metaphor meaning to take the opponent's pieces]. Of course, we cannot blindly eat them. Lack of forbearance in small matters upsets great plans. We must pay attention to the situation.[2]
India claims that the motive for the Forward Policy was to cut off the supply routes for Chinese troops posted in NEFA and Aksai Chin.[8] According to the official Indian history, the forward policy was continued because of its initial success, as it claimed that Chinese troops withdrew when they encountered areas already occupied by Indian troops. It also claimed that the Forward Policy was having success in cutting out supply lines of Chinese troops who had advanced South of the McMahon Line, though there was no evidence of such advance before the 1962 war. However, the Forward Policy rested on the assumption that Chinese forces "were not likely to use force against any of our posts, even if they were in a position to do so". No serious re-appraisal of this policy took place even when Chinese forces ceased withdrawing.[24] Nehru's confidence was probably justified given the difficulty for China to supply the area over the high altitude terrain over 5000 km from the more populated areas of China.
By early 1962, the Chinese leadership began to believe that India's intentions were to launch a massive attack against Chinese troops, and that the Indian leadership wanted a war.[8][2] In 1961, the Indian army had been sent into Goa, a small region without any other international borders apart from the Indian one, after Portugal refused to surrender the exclave colony to the Indian Union. Although this action met little to no international protest or opposition, China saw it as an example of India's expansionist nature, especially in light of heated rhetoric from Indian politicians. India's Home Minister declared, "If the Chinese will not vacate the areas occupied by it, India will have to repeat what she did in Goa. India will certainly drive out the Chinese forces",[8] while another member of the Indian Congress Party pronounced, "India will take steps to end [Chinese] aggression on Indian soil just as she ended Portuguese aggression in Goa".[18] By mid-1962, it was apparent to the Chinese leadership that negotiations had failed to make any progress, and the Forward Policy was increasingly perceived as a grave threat as Delhi increasingly sent probes deeper into border areas and cut off Chinese supply lines.[18] Foreign Minister Marshal Chen Yi commented at one high-level meeting, "Nehru's forward policy is a knife. He wants to put it in our heart. We cannot close our eyes and await death."[2] The Chinese leadership believed that their restraint on the issue was being perceived by India as weakness, leading to continued provocations, and that a major counterblow was needed to stop perceived Indian aggression.[2]

China's border war with Vietnam was launched in response to Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia, which in turn had to do with the Khmer Rouge's large scale border attacks and massacres of Vietnamese civilians in the Vietnamese-Cambodian border region. While the Vietnamese inflicted significant casualties on the Chinese, in no sense were the Chinese forced to leave Vietnam. Unlike our ROE's in Vietnam, where My Lai-type incidents were the exception, the Chinese are said to have wiped out entire villages that harbored irregular troops. Thus, as they left, there weren't too many guerrillas nipping on their heels, simply because it was understood that the Chinese would re-enter and destroy everything in their path, whether physical structures, farm animals or enemy civilians. In other words, the Chinese are said to have fought the way the Japanese did in WWII - obedience meant good relations insofar as such can been maintained between the invader and enemy civilians, whereas resistance and/or support for irregular forces meant wholesale slaughter of enemy civilians and destruction of physical infrastructure. After a decade or so of border clashes, the Vietnamese ceded what Vietnamese dissidents have estimated to be a few hundred square miles of land to the Chinese via treaty in 2009.

Good afternoon.

The Chinese are widely acknowledged to have given the Indians a beating in 1962

A little background for your purview...

I was a freshman in high school during the Sino-Indian "war." I am a Vietnam era veteran. I have had extensive contact with the Indians, and Pakistanis (later on the latter). I followed the war with the BBC, London Times, the networks, and newspapers at the time, and that's definitely not how it was portrayed. According to those sources, Mao could not either resupply, nor get reinforcements to the border. The Chicom losses were, as compared to the Indians, "staggering." [Sidebar: Wikipedia is not a source you should quote extensively].

The Pakistani officers that I used to interact with told me that war scared them to death.

I understand in regards to your moniker, and posting history where you are coming from. That is not a slight, it's just the way it is. We all have our bias and prejudices.

I'm not going to go into China's "loss" to Vietnam at the moment, I have some other things to do, but wanted to respond to your post.

You did provide a piece of information that I did not know, to wit; the Vietnamese ceded what Vietnamese dissidents have estimated to be a few hundred square miles of land to the Chinese via treaty in 2009. I didn't know that, but it probably makes sense now that the Chicom military is now a force to reckon with.

I appreciate your post to me. Feel free to post to me anytime.

5.56mm

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