ABSTRACT
On 20 October 1962, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) launched a major offensive at several points along the entire disputed frontier with India. PLA troops pushed across the McMahon Line at the eastern sector, and China’s Xinjiang border troops eliminated 43 checkpoints which India had established since the spring of 1962. The war of ‘self-defence and counterattack’ marked the ultimate end of ‘Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai’, the Sino-Indian friendship proclaimed in the mid-1950s.
