China's long statement on the Indian‐Pakistani war just ended betrays more malaise than belligerence. Peking has ample reason to be disturbed by the triumph of Indian arms over Pakistan, which had received strong verbal and some material support from the Chinese.

The decisive victories of a remarkably strengthened and versatile Indian Army directly reverse the situation of nine years ago, when Chinese forces thrust across the Himalayas, routing poorly prepared Indian troops and humiliating India before the world. Now it is China that has been humiliated because of the failure of its friends in Islamabad.

Although Peking has issued an ominous protest against alleged Indian incursions in the vulnerable Sikkim area, it is unlikely that the Chinese can pose any serious threat to the Indians at the moment. Even if the faction‐torn Chinese Army, believed to be chief target of the latest Peking purges, were in a position to mount a major campaign, it would face the dual inhibitions of frozen Himalayan passes and a bolstered Indian Army, free now to concentrate on its northern borders.

The elimination of Pakistan as a serious military threat to India, the emergence of India as a military power and the vast strengthening of the U.S.S.R.'s position on the subcontinent as a result of unequivocal Soviet support for India have drastically altered the power balance in South Asia to China's disadvantage. Peking must also be uneasy about the possibility that India will now forge ahead economically, providing an example of democratic development that could effectively rival China's bid to serve as a model for developing nations. This is a prospect that the United States has every reason to encourage, although the Nixon Administration seems to have lost sight of this fundamental mutual interest between Washington and New Delhi.

The Chinese statement reveals a particular interest in the separation of East Bengal from Pakistan, which was abetted and confirmed by Indian military action. This secession poses both a threat and an opportunity for Peking. It is a threat because China also encompasses restive nationalities which might wish to assert separate identities.

But, as the statement notes, “India, too, has its own nationality problems, whose complexity and acuteness are rarely seen elsewhere in the world.” The Chinese can be counted on to do their best to exploit these divisions within India as well as to press Maoist subversion in the fertile seedbed of the desperately impoverished new state of “Bangladesh.”