Word: bordered
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Mood. In the wake of last week's skirmish, Peking charged that the Russians have removed civilians from along their side of the border to carve out a twelve-mile-deep no man's land in order to "intensify the threat of war against China." The Chinese frenetically warned citizens that it was a "false and deadly dangerous idea" to think that such a conflict would be restricted to the border...
...also a dangerous one. With Peking constantly exhorting its citizens to "prepare for the enemy to launch a major war," and Moscow regularly reporting improvements in its civil-defense system, the climate for conflict already exists. In such a climate, a minor miscalculation could turn a border squabble into a major conflict...
...full-scale war ever erupts between the Soviet Union and China, a likely location for the opening battle is the Chinese region of Sinkiang. Occupying almost one-sixth of China's area, Sinkiang contains several volatile ingredients. Unlike other disputed border areas farther east, where the Amur and Ussuri rivers create a natural boundary, the 1,500-mile Sinkiang-Soviet frontier in many stretches is only vaguely demarcated. In addition, the area is the site of one of the most tempting targets in all of China: the nuclear testing grounds...
...those resentments, the Soviets in 1961 encouraged Sinkiang's Moslems to stir up the native groups by comparing their bad treatment under the Chinese with better conditions in the Soviet Union. When the snows melted in the spring, some 60,000 Uighurs and Kazakhs fled across the border. Soviet trucks picked up the refugees, while Russian troops sometimes covered their escape...
Since then, the situation has grown increasingly serious. Soviet radio stations beam programs into Sinkiang exhorting the minority groups to rise up in a war of liberation against the Maoists. The Chinese, badly outgunned along the entire Sino-Soviet border, are at a special disadvantage in Sinkiang. Against some 150,000 to 200,000 troops across the Soviet border the Chinese have only 85,000 to 100,000. The Soviet troops, moreover, are backed up by medium-range missiles...