Talk:Macartney–MacDonald Line

biased view from India

This is a joke, all my modification is based on existing sources.

• China never accepted the line.

"There was no response from Chinese Government"

"1918 map drawn by General Staff of Chinese Army showing whole of Aksai Chin as Chinese"

"a map of Bureau of Survey of Chinese Ministry of National Defence of 1943 which had shown Aksai Chin as part of China"

Verma, Sino-Indian Border Dispute

"no formal acceptance was forwarded from Peking"

"By 1940, Britain still had never attempted to establish outposts or exert authority in Aksai Chin; China still considered the territory theirs, as was reflected on Chinese maps."

"did nothing to clarify or to make official the boundary in the Aksai Chin area" The China-India Border War

• "tacitly accepted" is original research and personal point of view.

NPOV saying is "Britain and India believed ... tacitly accepted ... by China".

Please find source to state the line is accepted by both side officially. Otherwise, can't directly state a controversial statement in wiki.

Agreement on boundary must have official sources from government. In FACT no treaty or agreement was signed. Even Britain and India later take back the propose of MacDonald Line.

• Using source from India is biased

"tacitly accepted" is only seen from some British and India source, never seen in Chinese source. In Chinese source, this line is not agreed by China. like this: [1]

Anybody can't GUESS what the gov think, and again from the above, China never accepted the line. --樂號 (talk) 22:52, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

@樂號: I don't see any connection between the edit you made and the comments here. You deleted a statement sourced to Dorothy Woodman which said that the Johnson Line was accepted by China till 1893. Why did you delete it? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 00:21, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

problems on "Johnson Line"

Users using a doubtful map to claim China "accept" Johnson Line.

again, please find official document to state the line is accepted by both side. Otherwise, can't directly state a controversial statement in wiki.

This map is not official cus it is only from a single book but not other sources.

The main point is, content in this book is unsupportable. Firstly, how come a senior official making such a important decision, but the decision and even name of this senior official never exist in Chinese document?

Any other sources to support the existence of Hung Ta-Chen? Like W.H. Johnson, C. MacDonald, Zuo Zongtang, Sheng Shicai

In Chinese sources only find a guy actually called 李源鈵(Lee Bing Yuan). [2] [3]

What he did was only placed boundary notice on the summit of the Harakoram Pass.

Secondly, this map only showing some proposed lines, not legal or agreed boundary. There is three lines in the map: dark line, thick line and dotted line. why only choosing the dotted line to fit biased statement? west of dark line Kashmir is blank, east of it Xinjiang("New Dominions" on map) and Xizang have more details. thick line is close to proposed MacDonald Line

Finally, here is sources showing Johnson Line is not a agreed border. India–China Boundary Problem 1846–1947: History and Diplomacy by A.G. Noorani. p.37 stating that letter from T.G. Montgomeri to J.T. Walker in 1869 stated the border between Ladakh and Aksai Chin is undefined.

modern scholars such as Larry Wortzel and Allen S. Whiting consider Kongka Pass to be the traditional boundary.

sources stating this line was even never presented to the Chinese, how come they can accept --樂號 (talk) 05:07, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Yes, plenty of sources mention Hung Ta-Chen's map. There are several letters in the Indian Government archives which discuss it. In particular, a letter from George Macartney to the British Resident in Kashmir dated 23 July 1893 states:

P.S. I believe that Huang Ta-chen's maps, which are in a series of 35 sheets, may be purchased at Shanghai.

All of these were exchanged with the Chinese Government during the officials' negotiations in 1960 or so. Unfortunately, the report of the officials was never followed up by China. Instead, it sent its military to occupy Aksai Chin by force.

It is certainly not our job to explain why Chinese sources mention something or not mention something. You need to follow the Wikipedia policies on reliable sources and refrain from making up your own policies. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:31, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

References

Indian proposals

Sourin Roy, former Deputy Director of National Archives of India, notes in his introduction to Karunakar Gupta's book

Hayward (Journal of The Royal Geographical Society, Vol XI, 1870) explicitly states that the boundary line concerned ran along the main chain of the Karakoram mountain. It needs to be added that it is precisely this range which is indicated as the frontier of the Ladakh region in the article on that area embodied in the Imperial Gazetteer of India. and that the map of India, appended to the Report of the Simon Commission (1930), also had shown the very range as approximately making the requisite boundary.

No serious effort was ever officially made to transcend this de facto boundary except perhaps in two notable cases. The first serious effort to propose an advanced line was that made by Sir John Ardagh, which, as has been noted, was nipped in the bud. The second move was made two years later by Sir Claude Macdonald, the then British Minister in Pekin, who proposed a less ambitious boundary which left to China the whole of Karakash Valley and the greater part of Aksai Chin. But this was not accepted by China. Two other proposals were mooted for an advanced line in 1912 and 1915 but were rejected by London.

Of these the Macdonald proposal demands particular attention, because a deliberately distorted version of it came into prominence during the recent border dispute and extravagant claims were put forward on its basis by Nehru himself in his letter to Chou-En-Lai of September. 26, 1959. Somehow, he has given the entirely wrong impression that the proposal explicitly asserted that the Northern Frontier of the Ladakh region ran along the Kuenlun range to a point east of 80° East, where it met the Eastern boundary of Ladakh and that the whole of Aksai Chin lay in Indian territory. Dr. [Karunakar] Gupta holds the Historical Division of Ministry of External Affairs primarily responsible for feeding Nehru with this wrong information and thereby helping him to take up an uncompromising stand.

TrangaBellam (talk) 07:04, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

This is what I call the Beyond-doubt letter. The letter says:

It is incorrect to say that down to 1899 the British Government proposed formally to delimit this section of the boundary but that the Chinese Government did not agree. No proposals were made between 1847 and 1899 for any such formal delimitation. The proposal made in 1899 by the British Government referred not to the eastern frontier of Ladakh with Tibet but to the northern frontier of Ladakh and Kashmir with Sinkiang. It was stated in that context that the northern boundary ran along the Kuen Lun range to a point east of 80° east longitude, where it met the eastern boundary of Ladakh. This signified beyond doubt that the whole of Aksai Chin area lay in Indian territory. The Government of China did not object to this proposal. (Nehru, 26 September 1959)

This was in response to Zhou's statement:

As to the Chinese Government official’s statement made in 1847 to the British representative that this section of the boundary was clear, it can only show that the then Chinese Government had its own clear view regarding this section of the boundary and cannot be taken as the proof that the boundary between the two sides had already been formally delimited. As a matter of fact, down to 1899, the British Government still proposed to formally delimit this section of the boundary with the Chinese Government, but the Chinese Government did not agree. (Zhou, 8 September 1959)

So the whole thing was about the delimited vs not-delimited issue. Nehru's argument can be split down as follows:

• In 1847, Qing China asserted that the border was already delimited.
• In 1899, the British pointed out to them that it ran at 80 east longitude.
• Qing China made no response to it, i.e., it agreed with the British claim.

In The Report of the Officials, this is explained further:

The communication of the Government of India explicitly stated that the northern boundary ran along the Kuen Lun range, and the Government of China did not object to this definition of the boundary. Consequent on a discussion regarding the status and rights of the ruler of Hunza, the British Indian Government, in return for certain concessions, offered to transfer a part of the Qara Qash basin to China; but the then Chinese Government preferred to abide by the traditional customary alignment, thus proving the Indian case that the boundary lay where the Indian Government were now showing it. The Chinese Government did not wish to sign any boundary agreement such as would have been necessary if the traditional alignment had been altered. They preferred to adhere to the traditional alignment rather than sign a boundary agreement to their advantage.

I think all the scholars who couldn't figure this out need to have their heads examined. Of course, I agree that the 1847 Qing assertions had no particular weight. And to that extent the Indian argument is only rhetorical and not really substantive. But all the scholarly commentary about Nehru not knowing what he was talking about is pure hogwash. Pointless polemics. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 08:21, 10 June 2021 (UTC)