Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee has salvaged the country’s and his own honour by cutting short his visit to China by a day on account of Peking’s deliberate act of aggression on Vietnam. If he had gone through the programme as scheduled, after knowing of the attack, it would have appeared that he was not particularly shocked by it. That would have compromised both him and his government. But the fact has to be faced that his Chinese hosts had virtually succeeded in taking him for a ride. Several points can be made in support of this assessment. The Chinese authorities had clearly decided to launch an attack on Vietnam around the middle of February when the dates of Mr Vajpayee’s visit were being finalised for about the same time. The magnitude of China’s deployment on the southern border and Mr. Deng Xiao-ping’s statements in Tokyo on February 7 – in it he talked specifically of the need to punish Hanoi – can leave no room for doubt on that count. The Chinese leaders must also be assumed to have known that an attack on Vietnam by them during Mr. Vajpayee’s presence in their country would greatly embarrass India since it has studiously avoided taking sides in the Sino-Soviet and Sino-Vietnamese disputes. Of course, they could not have disclosed their plans to him. But they could have, if they wished, found some pretext to get the visit postponed. They did nothing of the kind. And while in the absence of the details of the discussions between him and his hosts in Peking it is not possible for us to say with assurance that the latter did not indicate their intention to him even at that late stage, that does appear to have been the case. Finally, Mr. Vajpayee first heard of the Chinese attack on Vietnam from an Indian correspondent who had been contacted by his office in New Delhi. The Chinese made no mention of it to him or any other member of the Indian delegation and newspaper correspondents accompanying him. This was truly extraordinary because Peking had by Saturday started broadcasting reports on the armed conflict, the “counter-attack” as it called it. Some indication this of the trust the Chinese place in us and the respect they show for us!
In view of the circumstances in which this first high-level visit in almost two decades has taken place, it is pointless even ask the question whether it has contributed to improved relations between the two countries. It could not have. If anything, it must have done the opposite. For no self-respecting government in New Delhi can possibly ignore the points cited earlier in this editorial and fail to draw from them the inference that the Chinese have been less than fair to it or that, indeed, they have shown scant respect for it. The attack on Vietnam also puts paid to the view that China is a peaceful country which wishes to settle all disputes through peaceful negotiations. New Delhi perhaps did not need this warning to know that it could not afford to lower its guard in the Himalayas. But the development does underscore this point. Meanwhile, the Government of India has done well to use the first opportunity in the form of the President’s address to Parliament on Monday to make its position on the Sino-Vietnam conflict clear beyond doubt. Quite rightly, it has emphasised that China must withdraw its troops from Vietnam as a first step towards restoration of peace in the region.
The Times of India, 20 February 1979