Indira Gandhi Period Of India's China Policy

Indian-Sino relation has gone through a tortuous process of friendly, confrontation and normalization for more than 50 years. India was one of few countries which recognized the new China. Then two countries underwent a very friendly period. During this special period, two countries signed some treaties, reached political understanding and exchanged many visits. What' s more, they supported each other in international meetings. So this period was considered as "India-Sino honeymoon" . However, a border war happened at the end of 1950s and the beginning 1960s because of the problem left over by history. Indian government did everything possible to uphold and preserve heritages and privileges inherited from British. Since then, India-Sino relations got into a confrontation period of cold war.Due to border war, India and China entered a "cold war" stage. Meanwhile, India drew close to America and Soviet with the purpose of gaining their support. In January, 24, 1966, Indira Gandhi was elected premier and took an oath of office. Afterwards, she judged the hour and sized up the situation and improved the relation with China for the Indian benefit. As a result, two countries recovered ambassadorial level diplomatic relation in 1976, which has suspended for 15 years. The Janata Party defeated the ruling Congress and the first non__Congress central government resumed power in 1977, but the Janata government took further treasures to alleviate Indian-Chinese relation.Following Soviet invading Afghanistan, Indira Gandhi returned to power in January 1980. India lost a buffer state because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. At the same time, Soviet Violated 1971 Soviet-India treaty without informing India in advance. Therefore, Indian big shots opposed it. But India was supported by soviet in the third India-Pakistan War and still needed economical aid of Soviet, it couldn' t afford to offend it, especially because America considered Pakistan as a "front line" country and renewed military aid with the aim of resisting Soviet going down South. So India Gandhi held a vacillating attitude ?wanting soviet to withdraw but defending its actions. However, she soon realized that her policy of leaning towards the Soviet Union would not serve India' s long-term security interests, and continuted efforts to normalize India-Sino relations would help maintain the strategic balance of the big powers in South Asia. So she sought improved relation with China which brought about preliminary development of Indian-Sino relations.In short, it is wise for Indira Gandhi thaw India-Sino relations step by step. But she still persisted in unreasonable claims on the border problem. If China hadn' t carried it a step forward, the thawing wouldn' t have been very effective. In any case, we should affirm Indira Gandhi' s achievements in the process of the India-Sino relation thawing...