Sino-Indian Friendship in the Nehru Era

Abstract

This paper focuses on Sino-Indian relations in the early Nehru era, i.e., the friendly relations between China and India from 1947 to 1958. It reveals that in the early part of Nehru's period, China and India had intimate bilateral relations characterised by mutual support and cooperation in many decisive national, regional and international issues, such as establishment of diplomatic relations, admission of PRC to the United Nations, the Korean crisis, friendly exchanges in the Initiation Phase from 1947 to 1953 and the Panchsheel Agreement, Indo-China issue, Asian-African conference, Taiwan and Goa questions, and mutual visits of high-ranking leaders in the Honeymoon Phase from 1954 to 1958. Furthermore, it discusses the factors contributing to the intimacy and cordiality of Sino-Indian relations in the early years of the Nehru era. These include the internal context, external context and personal factor. The internal context comprises both the historical conditions and the existing realistic situation that China and India faced. The external context was constituted by the circumstances of the global Cold War, marked by the American-Pakistani alliance, American-Chinese enmity, and Indo-Pakistani hostility, whereby Sino-Indian friendship came into being logically. The personal factor stemmed from Nehru's ideas and his stand on Sino-Indian friendship.