Sino-Indian War

The Sino-Indian War was a brief but intense border conflict fought in October and November 1962 between the People's Republic of China and India over disputed Himalayan territory, chiefly the Aksai Chin region in the west and the North-East Frontier Agency, now Arunachal Pradesh, in the east, both areas where the two countries disagreed over the exact line of the former British Indian frontier. Chinese forces launched coordinated offensives in both sectors and achieved rapid and largely one-sided battlefield success against unprepared and poorly supplied Indian defenders, advancing well beyond the disputed line before China unexpectedly declared a unilateral ceasefire in late November 1962. Chinese troops then withdrew to positions close to their pre-war lines in most sectors, retaining Aksai Chin but not the territory gained in the eastern sector. The war shattered India's prior assumption of peaceful coexistence with China, spurred a major expansion of Indian defense spending, and left the underlying border dispute between the two nations formally unresolved to the present.