Determined to strengthen India’s ties with its giant neighbour, Nehru left New Delhi’s Palam Airport in the early morning of 15 October 1954 on an Indian Air Force Dakota plane. Despite having a slight temperature due to a cold, he was reportedly in a “very cheerful mood.” Among those who turned out to see him off were the President of India, Rajendra Prasad, Cabinet ministers, chief ministers, service chiefs, members of parliament, government officials, heads of foreign missions, the Chinese vice minister for Foreign Trade and the Chinese chargé d’affairs. The presence of so many notables was no doubt a sign of the importance attributed to the visit.
The Times of India, the country’s largest daily, captured its significance in a brief opinion piece published the following day. Describing the visit as “a mission on behalf of peace and understanding,” it told its readers that one of its key aims was to probe Chinese sincerity about peaceful coexistence and the concept of a peace area. According to the paper, “no sentimental or exaggerated concept of Asianism” should conceal the fact that the two nations held different values. India was a democracy, whilst China was a communist state. The former’s ideational identification with Western democracy and the latter’s ideological closeness with Soviet communism were “far stronger” factors than “race and geography.” Hence, the Indian government had every reason to seek specific assurances on Chinese behaviour. Although “the entire trend of New Delhi’s policy towards China has been to reject any presupposition of hostility,” the Times of India concluded that India would do well to remember that, “unless otherwise proved, there can be no friendship.”
At the heart of Nehru’s trip to China were his talks with Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and other CCP leaders in Beijing. In addition to the capital, he was scheduled to visit Canton (today’s Guangzhou), Shanghai, Nanking (Nanjing), Hankow (Hankou), Mukden (Shenyang), Anshan and Dairen (Dailan). His packed programme also included visits to factories, colleges, theatres, museums, department stores, village cooperatives and municipalities. Accompanied by a small party, including his daughter Indira, Pillai and his special assistant, MO Mathai, Nehru stopped in Calcutta, Rangoon and Hanoi before reaching Canton on 18 October.
In Rangoon, where he received the “wildest demonstration of enthusiasm” from local Indians, he found U Nu and his Cabinet still apprehensive about China and its regional role. Mindful that Rangoon’s approach to China might influence the attitudes of other Asian governments (and hence affect the pace of China’s regional engagement), Nehru sought to ease Burma’s concerns. He reminded Burmese ministers that, despite China being a “communist revolutionary state,” it might still be advantageous “to talk matters over with the Chinese Government in a friendly way.”
In Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh told him he supported the Five Principles and wished to see them applied between Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and other nations. Incidentally, Nehru’s arrival in China was preceded by the visit of a high-powered Soviet delegation led by Nikita Khrushchev. Taking advantage of the celebrations for the fifth anniversary of the establishment of the PRC, the CCP leaders and their Soviet guests pledged to uphold the principles of peaceful coexistence in their relations with other nations. With Beijing fully committed to peaceful coexistence, Nehru’s visit could not begin under better auspices, despite India’s concerns regarding China’s involvement in the Taiwan Strait crisis.
On his arrival in Beijing on 19 October, Nehru was received with “highest honours.” Zhou Enlai and other CCP dignitaries welcomed him. As the two leaders rode from the Hsiyuan Airfield into the imperial city in an open Soviet Zis limousine, they were cheered by an estimated crowd of over 200,000 people lining the road – including a large number of boys and schoolchildren – clapping, cheering and shouting “long live to peace.” Nehru later wrote to Edwina Mountbatten, a close friend and wife of British India’s last viceroy, Louis “Dickie” Mountbatten, that the welcome he received far surpassed the one given, only a few days earlier, to the Soviet delegation.
The British chargé d’Affaires in Beijing, Humphrey Trevelyan, painted a similar picture to his superiors in London. He told the Foreign Office that such a reception was “in striking contrast” to the one accorded to Khrushchev and his delegation, who “had travelled behind curtains and were received only by officials.” Similar scenes of excitement were replicated across the country, in Canton, Dairen, Nanking and Shanghai. Wherever Nehru went, Pillai recounted to the British High Commission in Delhi, he received a “tumultuous reception.” According to Pillai, “even in India where crowds of 500,000 are not uncommon he had never seen such large gatherings of people” made up mainly of youngsters. While stage-managed, such large, enthusiastic gatherings of people impressed Nehru deeply. He attributed such enthusiasm to “a sense of Asian cooperation” and spoke of “an emotional upheaval representing the basic urges of the people for friendship with India” and a welcome that went beyond mere “political exigency”.
Anxious to project an image of a peaceful, friendly and dynamic China, CCP leaders rolled out the red carpet for the first non-communist leader to visit their country. From the carefully organised tours of Chinese cities, factories and even a farm to the lavish daily banquets, they pulled out all the stops to impress their Indian guest. In what was soon to become a well-established Chinese practice of giving visiting Afro-Asian dignitaries special treatment, with the view to instilling in them an image of China “as a peaceful and tolerant nation concerned first and foremost with its own economic development,” Mao and Zhou went out of their way to reassure Nehru of their peaceful intentions. The official CCP line emphasised, among other things, the two countries’ “2,000 years of friendship without conflict” and hailed India’s peace efforts in Korea and Indochina. In short, Chinese leaders viewed Nehru’s visit to China as part and parcel of their charm offensive towards the Third World.
At the same time, however, China had a further motive to keep up its campaign of friendliness with India. The reason was the Republic of China (ROC) or Taiwan. In July 1954, Mao ordered the development of military plans with the ostensible aim of liberating Taiwan. In early September 1954, following a sizeable military build-up along the PRC’s coastal areas, Chinese batteries began opening fire against Jinmen (Quemoy), a small Nationalist-controlled island a few miles off the Chinese mainland. This was in response both to Taipei’s decision to deploy nearly 60,000 troops there and to ongoing US-ROC talks on a mutual defence pact. Although China’s immediate goal was not the takeover of Taiwan, its tactics were nonetheless intended to avoid changes in the regional balance of power that would make this takeover more difficult to achieve in the long term.
As Zhou told his advisers in early September 1954, while the takeover remained declared government policy, such an outcome could only be realised through “a long-term complex struggle.” As a result, unless the United States intervened militarily in the Taiwan Strait, China should stick to “diplomatic struggle,” which necessitated “enlarging the international united front and isolating the US aggressive bloc so as to win eventual liberation of Taiwan.” In this context, as Zhou pointed out on the eve of Nehru’s arrival in Beijing, his visit and the one planned by U Nu for early December were to provide China with the opportunity to further unite the “peace-advocating and neutral forces headed by India” in an effort to “isolate America.” Beijing knew that its bellicose behaviour had raised regional concerns regarding its commitment to peaceful coexistence and that such a perception needed to be rectified.
With this in mind, Mao and Zhou did their best to ensure that the Chinese and Indian governments reached a broad degree of convergence on several regional issues. This task was not beyond their reach, given Nehru’s willingness to reciprocate. In his quest for a more stable regional system, the Indian leader had long argued in favour of engaging with China. According to him, there could be no enduring stability if China remained an outcast on the fringes of the international system. The events leading up to and following the Geneva Conference only served to reinforce his belief that neither the containment nor the ostracism of China would provide a solution to regional instability. Consequently, Nehru and his Chinese hosts were ready to forge closer ties between their respective countries. If, during their June talks in New Delhi, Nehru and Zhou had approached each other with a degree of circumspection, now such caution appeared to have given way to a determined effort to take the bilateral relationship to the next level.
Excerpted with permission from Nehru’s Bandung: Non-Alignment and Regional Order in Indian Cold War Strategy, Andrea Benvenuti, Speaking Tiger Books.
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