Red China: Fixing Frontiers

Red China produced a second surprise last week. At Peking airport. Premier Chou En-lai welcomed Outer Mongolia’s Premier Yurnzhagiin Tsedenbal, 46, who is normally regarded as a Russian puppet. Whisked off in a black. Soviet-made limousine among crowds dutifully waving Chinese and Mongolian flags, Tsedenbal was put through the usual routine of toasts, banquets and fulsome speeches. Then, on the same day that Red China announced plans to define its borders with Pakistan, Tsedenbal and Chou En-lai signed a treaty fixing the 2,500-mile frontier between their two countries.

It was another little lesson aimed at Delhi. At the farewell banquet for Tsedenbal, Premier Chou En-lai smoothly noted that Red China had now solved its border problems on the basis of “peaceful coexistence” with Burma, Nepal, Pakistan and Outer Mongolia, making the point that only two neighbors now remain with whom China has not made a border adjustment: India and the Soviet Union.