Beginning in the 1950s, China and India competed for the leadership of non-Western states emerging from colonialism. At the same time, there existed unresolved border contests and competition for influence in the Himalayan kingdoms that separated the two. But the two sides professed friendship for each other via Panchsheel, Hindi-Chini bhai bhai, the Bandung Conference, and state visits. These symbols of peaceful coexistence were fleeting, however. Mutual suspicions between India and China existed during, before, and after the 1962 war.

Beijing supported revolution throughout Asia—especially in Korea and Indochina. It also did so in other neighboring states, such as Nepal and Burma under the fig leaf of party-to-party relations. The “dual-track approach” of simultaneously supporting a given country's government and communist party allowed China to play a double game, despite the Panchsheel principles. The Chinese Communist leadership made overtures to countries inside and outside the border region to reverse international isolation brought about by the 1960 Sino-Soviet split and the 1962 border war. This realist foreign policy was dismantled during the Cultural Revolution. It was then that Beijing began backing insurgent groups throughout India's northeast.