weeks earlier, Chinese prime minister Zhou Enlai had personally told India’s ambassador to China, K. M. Panikkar, that if American troops crossed the thirty-eighth parallel, China would certainly intervene. Zhou’s ultimatum could not have been stated in more emphatic language. India was one of the few non-Communist countries that had formally recognized Mao’s regime as the legitimate government of China, so Panikkar served as a crucially important diplomatic channel. The ambassador immediately cabled Zhou’s words to Prime Minister Nehru in New Delhi, who forwarded the statement straight to
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