A sense of politics does not generally unfold easily as an unequivocally observable analytic category with significances and meanings that are, of necessity, revealed and concealed. The aim of this chapter is nevertheless to analyse, as clearly as possible, the People's Daily's representations of the border town of Kalimpong in the 1950s and 1960s. Kalimpong, as a meeting point or a metonymic space, came to play a pivotal role in the border politics of the PRC and the ROI for three reasons: (a) Historically a British trade post since the mid-nineteenth century, Kalimpong was favourably located on the Lhasa–Kolkata trade route—the same route used by the People's Liberation Army (PLA) in the early 1950s to transport supplies from China to Tibet after the Battle of Chamdo. (b) A sizeable Tibetan population lived in Kalimpong, especially after the PLA invaded the Kham region, when refugees started to stream into Kalimpong.6 This Tibetan population included residents, traders, refugees and, most importantly for this chapter, influential members of the Kashag (or the Tibetan governing council). (c) A diasporic Chinese population lived in Kalimpong, many of whom were later interned in Deoli after the 1962 Sino-Indian War. Drawing on archival material from the People's Daily, fieldwork notes, along with interviews conducted over a period of six months, and many published primary and secondary sources, we shall attempt to show how Kalimpong functioned as a metonymic ambit in which ROI–PRC relations were to play out in the 1950s and 1960s.

Akin to Pravda's status in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) at its height, the People's Daily, as an official organ of the CCP directly controlled by the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee, provided direct (and sometimes oblique) information on the policies and viewpoints of the government.