Why was India in a hurry to recognise China after the takeover by Mao Zedong’s Communist Party?

The decision of the Government of India to recognise the People’s Republic of China on 30 December 1949, and to establish diplomatic relations with the new regime on 1 April 1950, was the first diplomatic negotiation between the two sides. Neither side had much accumulated experience with such matters in such an exercise, even though the government of independent India had been in existence since 1947 and the Chinese Communists had had their share of handling foreign powers, including the Soviet Union as well as China’s allies – the Americans and the British – during the Second World War.

India had gained her freedom from the British Empire two years earlier on 15 August 1947 and, by the end of 1949, was in the final stages of adopting a Constitution that would establish the new Republic. The country and its leadership enjoyed respect, legitimacy and international stature.

The new Communist regime in China, by comparison, had “liberated” China by using military force to overthrow a legitimate government (the Nationalist government). It needed recognition from the rest of the world to establish its own legitimacy.

In the pre-independence era, the principal political movements in both countries – the Indian National Congress (INC) and the Kuomintang (Nationalists)…

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