Sino-Indian War

What are the possibilities of the 1987 Sino-Indian skirmish erupting into a full blown war? Who would win such a war, and would it go nuclear?
 
I doubt it would escalate to full-scale war; it would probably be more of a repeat of 1962. However, the PLA was at it's weakest point in the late 80s: its equipment was almost all obsolete copies of 1950s Soviet stuff, its officer corps was still suffering from the purges of the Cultural Revolution and the Late Mao era (IMHO this is a big reason why the PLA did so poorly in Vietnam'79), and the Indians had access to much more modern equipment. Things might have gotten a little better by 1987, but the PLA didn't take modernization seriously until the early 90s when two pivotal events happened: first, they saw how easily U.S. forces rolled over Saddam Hussein's army, much of it equipped with Chinese weapons, and second, they had to back down during the Taiwan Straits Crisis. A disappointing performance against the Indians might persuade them to start modernizing their military earlier.
 
I doubt it would escalate to full-scale war; it would probably be more of a repeat of 1962. However, the PLA was at it's weakest point in the late 80s: its equipment was almost all obsolete copies of 1950s Soviet stuff, its officer corps was still suffering from the purges of the Cultural Revolution and the Late Mao era (IMHO this is a big reason why the PLA did so poorly in Vietnam'79), and the Indians had access to much more modern equipment. Things might have gotten a little better by 1987, but the PLA didn't take modernization seriously until the early 90s when two pivotal events happened: first, they saw how easily U.S. forces rolled over Saddam Hussein's army, much of it equipped with Chinese weapons, and second, they had to back down during the Taiwan Straits Crisis. A disappointing performance against the Indians might
persuade them to start modernizing their military earlier.

Indian tactical victory before the UNSC steps in IMO. The Bofors guns actually worked quite well militarily, not so much politically. WIth this quick and cheap victory, serious rethinking in Beijing. Rajiv Gandhi gets a very convenient khaki boost as a war leader that guarantees him a second term- '87 is when the politics (but never the policy) derailed IOTL. Hell, perhaps a quick and easy khaki election in '88.
 
Could a defeat in 1987 have discredited Deng badly enough that he would have been unable to nominate Jiang Zhemin as his successor?
Because the PRC was ruled by such a compact clique at that time and was undergoing a crucial phase of economic liberalization, the butterfly potential is near-epic, IMO.
 
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nastle

Banned
depends on where it is fought, if its going to be mostly in the foothills of Himalayas I doubt that modern equipment of indian army would make much difference in such battles.The side which can maintain their lines of LOGISTICS would likely win.CHinease numbers even with obsolete weapons would begin to tell esp their capacity to sustain casulties.Most likely there would be a stalemate after a few skirmishes.Things could get interesting if chinease support the Maoist /communist uprising in Nagaland.
 
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