China had begun preparations at least five months before launching the first attack on the high altitude Indian military positions near Aksai Chin region in 1962, an account of the war written by a Chinese translator with the People’s Liberation Army has revealed. Zhi Fangyang who worked as a translator of Hindi to Chinese was the only Hindi expert to be deployed in the region and maintained a diary of the events beginning with his deployment in June and the war in October 1962.
“At the beginning of June 1962, regular field troops entered Xinjiang and strengthened border guards that were only responsible for guarding missions. 273 Field Hospitals also entered the Shache near Yecheng, Xinjiang from the inland, and established a number of depots between Yejiang and Northern Xinjiang,” said Zhi, noting that he and another colleague, who specialised in Urdu, were among a handful of language specialists who were deployed for the operation near the difficult Aksai Chin region.
Zhi said Mao Zedong had planned to deal with the Sino-Indian border disputes with a “two-handed preparations which mainly relied on peace negotiations to be supplemented by military means”.
He praised Mahatma Gandhi but blamed the past colonial rulers of India for the border problems saying, “The Sino-Indian border issue was a time bomb placed by the British Empire. The Dalai Lama detonated the bomb as a fuse and awakened the Indian Nehru authorities.”
Zhi wrote that Prime Minister Nehru in a hurry launched the “forward policy”in the 1950s to take the area from China but the Chinese had already made their moves.
After months of preparation, the war was finally planned for October 16 but was delayed a bit. Zhi wrote that for weeks the leaders motivated soldiers with speeches against the “reactionaries” to prepare them mentally for the final battle.
On October 20, the war began. The Chinese soldiers took position at midnight and waited for the orders and a sustained artillery firing of fifteen minutes was planned to launch the “counterattack”.
“I watched this breathtaking scene with cold eyes. This is not a firework at the party or a virtual war scene in the movie. Not easy, but extremely heavy. After a while, you can see the corpse, flesh and blood scattered in and out of the bunker. The war is cruel, the dead and wounded can only escape from disaster! At the beginning of the battle, I heard a short burst of light machine guns from the opponent’s position, but they were soon silenced. It is estimated that their machine gunners could not withstand the attack of the powerful Chinese artillery and were already killed. The fifteen-minute artillery preparation actually lasted for ten minutes,” recorded Zhi.
The war lasted from October 20 to November 21.
