Having thus achieved their immediate objective, Chou En-lai had called the Indian Charge d’Affaires in Peking and told him that China was declaring an immediate ceasefire from midnight the next day. Owing to the complex cipher procedures—and what must rank as one of the most inexplicable and absurd delays of all times—this information was not transmitted to the Indian government in time, leaving them to learn of the Chinese announcement from the newspapers almost forty hours later.
