CO-OPERATION AND CONFLICT
IN
CHINA'S TERRITORIAL DISPUTES
by
1`.ABOUT THE AUTHOR :
:
M. TAYLOR FRAVEL , is the Cecil and Ida Green Career Development Associate Professor of Political Science and member of the Security Studies Program at MIT. He studies international relations, with a focus on international security, China and East Asia. His current projects examine the evolution of China’s military strategy since 1949 and the relationship between material capabilities and political influence in China’s rise as a great power. Taylor’s first book, Strong Borders, Secure Nation: Cooperation and Conflict in China’s Territorial Disputes, was published by Princeton University Press in 2008 (Series in International History and Politics). His other publications have appeared in International Security, Foreign Affairs, Security Studies, International Studies Review, The China Quarterly, The Washington Quarterly, Journal of Strategic Studies, Armed Forces & Society, Current History, and Asian Survey as well as in edited volumes. His research has been supported by various organizations, including the National Science Foundation, the United States Institute of Peace, and the Smith Richardson Foundation. In March 2010, he was named Research Associate with the National Asia Research Program launched by the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center. Taylor is a graduate of Middlebury College and Stanford University, where he received his PhD. He has been a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University, a Predoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, a Fellow with the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program and a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also has graduate degrees from the London School of Economics and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
2..Sino-Indian relations, also called Indo-China relations, refer to the ties and relations between the People's Republic of China and the Republic of India. The economic and diplomatic importance of China and India, which are the two most populous states and the world's fastest growing major economies, has in recent years increased the significance of their bilateral relationship.
Relations between China and India date back to ancient times. China and India are two of the world’s oldest civilizations and have coexisted in peace for millennia. Trade relations via the Silk Road acted as economic contact between the two regions. However, since the early 1950s, their relationship has been characterized by border disputes, resulting in military conflict (the Sino-Indian War of 1962, the Chola incident in 1967, and the 1987 Sino-Indian skirmish).
Both countries have in recent years successfully attempted to reignite diplomatic and economic ties, and consequently, the two countries' relations have become closer.Today, China is India's largest trading partner,[2] and has recently reverted its stance on India's bid for a UNSC seat, after Chinese assistant Foreign Minister Kong Quan formally declared that China will back India's UNSC bid. Today, India is a main seller of Iron ore to China, and fills the desperate need of natural resources for the nation.
Today, China and India both have close economic and military ties. In 2005, China and India announced a "strategic partnership". China and India continue to strengthen their relations. Trade between China and India continues to grow.]. Many have agreed that Sino-Indian relations have entered maturity period.
3.)A brief summary of the border disputes between the two countries would help in understanding the techniques employed for resolving the disputes both by China and India.
Geographical overview
Map of Eastern and Southern Asia.
(The border between the People's Republic of China and the Republic of India over Arunachal Pradesh / South Tibet reflects actual control, without dotted line showing claims.)
China and India are separated by the formidable geographical obstacles of the Himalayan mountain chain. China and India today share a border along the Himalayas and Nepal and Bhutan, two states lying along the Himalaya range, and acting as buffer states. In addition, the disputed Kashmir province (claimed by Pakistan) borders both the PRC and India. As Pakistan has tense relations with India, Kashmir's state of unrest serves as a natural ally to the PRC.]
Two territories are currently disputed between the People's Republic of China and India: Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh. Arunachal Pradesh is located near the far east of India, while Aksai Chin is located near the northwest corner of India, at the junction of India, Pakistan, and the PRC. However, all sides in the dispute have agreed to respect the Line of Actual Control and this border dispute---- is not widely seen as a major flash point.
4. As China emerges as an international economic and military power, the world waits to see how the nation will assert itself globally Today,China is the new great power of the twenty-first century. Whether its rise will be peaceful or violent is a fundamental question for the study and practice of international relations. Unlike many past power transitions, China’s current economic growth has occurred largely through its acceptance of the prevailing rules, norms, and institutions of the international system. Nevertheless, ambiguity and anxiety persist around how China will employ the military power that its growing wealth creates.
Amid this historical change, one concern is China’s potential for violent conflict with other states over territory. The congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, for example, stated in its 2006 annual report that China might "take advantage of a more advanced military to threaten use of force, or actually use force, to facilitate desirable resolutions . . . of territorial claims."
5 ) .Academic writings on China's territorial disputes typically focus on the legal positions of the claims, the domestic politics of the contending states or in-depth studies of individual disputes.
Drawing on a rich array of previously unexamined Chinese language sources, MrTAYLOR FARVEL in his new book -"Strong Borders, Secure Nation" offers a compelling account of China's foreign policy on one of the most volatile issues in international relations
Fravel uses China, which has had more territories in dispute with neighbors than any other state since World War II, to form and test hypotheses about when states are likely to go to war or cooperate to solve territorial disputes. The result is both the first comprehensive benchmark study of China's behavior along its frontiers and a brilliant contribution to political science.
Fravel's book offers a fresh methodological approach by positing two central arguments:
a)first, that China demonstrated willingness to concede disputed territories for external support in securing its frontier regions when faced with domestic threats and recalcitrant border minorities;
b) and second, and conversely, China's decisions to use force in border disputes reflected a disadvantaged local military balance and an inferior claim posture where it occupied little or none of the lands contested.
In the absence of rising threats or declining claim strengths, the default position taken by the Chinese leadership was the least costly one--to delay resolution of border disagreements indefinitely.
…
6"). " In an international system composed of sovereign states, behavior in territorial disputes offers a fundamental indicator of whether a state pursues status-quo or revisionist foreign policies. Historically, contested land has been the most common issue over which states collide and go to war. If states are likely to resort to force as a tool of statecraft, it will perhaps be most evident in how they pursue territorial goals. As China today remains involved in several disputes, these questions are far from academic. Violence over some areas that China claims, such as Taiwan or the Senkaku Islands, would likely result in hostility between China and the United States, which maintains close ties with Taipei and Tokyo.
Answers to these questions are also hard to find. Although research on China's conflict behavior highlights the role of territorial disputes, they have yet to be examined systematically.
7. Instead, individual studies have weighed the legal merits of China's sovereignty claims or examined specific disputes, such as the boundary conflict between China and India. The few comprehensive studies that do exist investigate only China's compromises in the 1960s and were unable to benefit from the flowering of new Chinese-language source materials in the last decade.
Finally, no study compares China's willingness to compromise or use force in all these conflicts, analysis that is key to understanding China's behavior.
8. COOPERATION AND ESCALATION IN TERRITORIAL DISPUTES :
Mr Fravel feels "" China's behavior is rooted in two theories that explain how states choose to pursue their territorial claims. One theory examines the sources of cooperation in territorial disputes, while the other examines the sources of escalation. As detailed in chapter 1 of his new book, each theory starts with the assumption that states choose among three generic strategies when managing an existing territorial conflict.
They can
(1) do nothing and delay settlement,
(2) offer concessions and compromise, or
(3) threaten or use force.
Most of the time, a strategy of doing nothing is least risky, due to the costs associated with leaders' potential punishment at home for compromising over national sovereignty and the uncertainty of outcomes when a crisis escalates. Factors that increase the costs that a state bears for contesting territory relative to delaying, then, explain why and when states either compromise or use force in their disputes.
A state is most likely to compromise and offer concessions to counter internal or external threats to its security. Compromise is possible because pressing a claim to another state's land carries some price or opportunity cost, usually unrealized military, economic, or diplomatic assistance.
When these costs outweigh the value of the land at stake, compromise becomes more attractive than delay, and a state will trade concessions for aid from a territorial opponent to counter the more processing threat that it faces.
. 9 External threats to the security or survival of the state are one source of compromise.
When engaged in acute competition with a rival, for example, a state can use territorial concessions to form an alliance with a third party against its adversary.
Internal threats to the strength and stability of a state offer a second source of compromise.
When faced with an armed rebellion, for instance, a state can trade territorial concessions for assistance from neighboring states, such as policing the border or denying safe haven to potential insurgents.
Although a state's overall security environment creates incentives for cooperation,
shifts in a state's bargaining power in a territorial dispute explain decisions to escalate these conflicts.
A state's bargaining power consists of the amount of contested land that it occupies and its ability to project military power over the entire area under dispute.These two factors shape a state's ability to control contested land and achieve a favorable negotiated settlement. When a state concludes that an adversary is strengthening its relative position in a dispute, inaction becomes more costly than threatening or even using force to halt or reverse its decline.
A state that faces a much stronger opponent may also use force when an adversary's power suddenly and temporarily weakens, creating a window of opportunity to seize land and strengthen its otherwise weak negotiating position.
10 ) To test these the author uses a "medium-n" research design that examines China's decisions to cooperate or escalate in each of its twenty-three disputes since 1949.
As both types of decision are infrequent, they can all be identified and compared with relative ease. For each dispute, he examines the conditions before and after the change in strategy to identify those factors that vary with decisions to compromise or use force, but not with delay.He then traces the process by which these decisions were made to determine whether these factors have the causal effect that his theories predict.
11. )The chapters that follow exploit untapped Chinese-language sources.
These documents include party history materials, oral histories, memoirs of senior leaders, government training manuals, and provincial gazetteers as well as limited materials from a variety of archives. These sources reveal disputes, boundary agreements, and key turning points in high-level negotiations that were previously unknown outside China.
After outlining theories of cooperation and escalation, he continues with an overview of China's territorial disputes. China's territorial conflicts are intertwined with the varied challenges of maintaining the territorial integrity of a large and multi ethnic state. Ethnic geography, or the location and distribution of ethnic groups, largely defines the different goals that China's leaders have pursued in their country's territorial disputes.
12 The PRC's(Peoples Republic of CHINA) ethnic geography consists of a densely populated 'Han Chinese core, a large but sparsely populated non-Han periphery, and unpopulated offshore islands. In frontier disputes on their country's land border, China's leaders seek to maintain control over vast borderlands populated by ethnic minorities that were never ruled directly by any past Chinese empire.
In homeland disputes, China's leaders seek to unify what they view as Han Chinese areas not under their control when the PRC was established in 1949, namely Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan.
In offshore island disputes, China's leaders aim to secure a permanent maritime presence among unpopulated rocks and islands far from the mainland.
External threats are one mechanism in his theory of cooperation, but internal threats best explain China's willingness to compromise in its many territorial disputes. China has offered concessions in each and every frontier dispute along its land border but not in any homeland disputes, and in only one offshore island dispute.
Ethnic minorities who have maintained strong social and economic ties with neighboring states and harbored aspirations for self-determination live in many of the frontiers near China's borders. When faced with internal threats, especially ethnic unrest in the frontiers, China's leaders have been much more willing to offer concessions in exchange for assistance that strengthens the state's control over these regions, such as denying external support to rebels or affirming Chinese sovereignty over the areas of unrest
13. )In the next chapter , he examines China's efforts to compromise in many frontier disputes in the early 1960s. In 1959, a revolt in Tibet sparked the largest internal threat ever to the PRC's territorial integrity. The outbreak of this revolt dramatically increased the cost of maintaining disputes with Burma, Nepal, and India. China offered concessions in its conflicts with these states in exchange for their cooperation in eliminating external support for the rebels and affirming Chinese sovereignty over Tibet.
In the spring of 1962, China faced renewed ethnic unrest in the frontiers, especially Xinjiang, during the economic crisis following the failure of the Great Leap Forward. This combination of internal threats to both territorial integrity and political stability increased the cost of contesting land with its neighbors. China pursued compromise in disputes with North Korea, Mongolia, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Soviet Union in order to rebuild its economy and consolidate state control by easing external tensions.
14) How similar internal threats explain China's efforts to compromise in frontier disputes in the 1990s is demonstrated in chapter 3.
In 1989, the upheaval in Tiananmen Square posed an internal threat to the stability of China's socialist system of government. This legitimacy crisis, which the weakening of other communist parties worldwide exacerbated, increased the cost of maintaining territorial disputes with the Soviet Union, Laos, and Vietnam. China traded concessions in exchange for cooperation to counter its diplomatic isolation and ensure the continuation of economic reforms. Soon after Tiananmen, ethnic unrest in Xinjiang posed a new internal threat to the state's territorial integrity. The armed uprisings and demonstrations increased the price for pressing claims against neighboring Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. China compromised in these disputes in exchange for assistance to limit external support for Uighur separatists.
Although windows of opportunity opened by a rival's temporary weakness offer one mechanism in his theory of escalation, China's own declining bargaining power best explains its willingness to use force in its territorial disputes. Since 1949, China's leaders have demonstrated a keen sensitivity to negative shifts in the state's ability to control disputed land. In most instances, China's behavior reflects such concerns with its own weakness, as China has used force either in disputes with its militarily most powerful neighbors or in conflicts where it has occupied little or none of the land that it has claimed.
14 ) According to M.Taylor Fravel, although China has been involved in twenty-three territorial disputes with its neighbors since 1949, it has used force in only-- six of them. The strength of a state's territorial claim, defined as its bargaining power in a dispute, offers one explanation for why and when states escalate territorial disputes to high levels of violence. This bargaining power depends on the amount of contested land that each side controls and on the military power that can be projected over the entire area under dispute. When a state's bargaining power declines relative to that of its adversary, its leaders become more pessimistic about achieving their territorial goals and face strong preventive motivations to seize disputed land or signal resolve through the use of force. Cross-sectional analysis and longitudinal case studies demonstrate that such negative shifts in bargaining power explain the majority of China's uses of force in its territorial disputes.
(Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with Chinese President
Hu Jintao at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing
in January 2008. )
15 ) China’s recent conduct with India – unfriendly but just short of being hostile – has been as fuzzy as India’s response to it has been calibrated.
The boundary dispute does not explain, let alone justify, them. as we are unaware of the cause and what we know is very little because there exists not a single Indian work, by any of the few writers familiar with Mandarin, which translates Chinese writings into English, to present to the Indian reader a good glimpse of the mass of literature published in China on the boundary dispute, the decision-making process prior to the war of 1962, China’s self-perception of its rise to power and its perception of India’s growing power.
It is M Taylor Fravel 's view that India has little reason to worry about the alleged Chinese incursions near Mount Gya and that an increased troop density and the resultant increase in problems do not presage an aggressive move by China. He further argues that China has beefed up border security and associated infrastructure along all of its borders--- not just the one with India, although it has settled all its land border disputes, except those with India and Bhutan .
He also suggests that India has tried to make most of the concessions that China was willing to offer, thus influencing the intensity of the conflict.
Dr Fravel believes that while territorial disputes are always intensely emotional, both sides need to sit down and reach a mature compromise on the matter.
16 } Dealing with the genesis of India's border problem with China,he goes back to the period of state formation of both modern India and the People's Republic of China.He clarified that he was referring to the period after which independent states were established in India and in China, and the efforts by the states to define their boundaries.
The primary problem (in the India-China border dispute). is The McMahon Line and other British policies are contributing factors. But even in the absence of the McMahon Line the two States would still need to define their boundary and agree upon that boundary.The McMahon Line provides a reference point for doing so, but, as you know, the history of the Line itself is contested by China today.
He assesses China's boundary dispute with India, along with its disputes with other countries, to reflect on China's outlook on its boundaries, the policy it adopts and the diplomacy it pursues to effectuate its policy.
His impeccable research helps in correcting false notions , for instance, on China's boundary agreement with Pakistan on March 2, 1963. in fact it paved the way for the alliance that grew and is at play now before our very eyes as we wring our hands and scream rhetoric that no one heeds. It is based on a misreading of the facts.
16 Fravel uses China, which has had more territories in dispute with neighbors than any other state since World War II, to form and test hypotheses about when states are likely to go to war or cooperate to solve territorial disputes. The result is both the first comprehensive benchmark study of China's behavior along its frontiers and a brilliant contribution to political science.
By developing theories of cooperation and escalation in territorial disputes, Fravel explains China's willingness to either compromise or use force. When faced with internal threats to regime security, especially ethnic rebellion, China has been willing to offer concessions in exchange for assistance that strengthens the state's control over its territory and people. By contrast, China has used force to halt or reverse decline in its bargaining power in disputes with its militarily most powerful neighbors or in disputes where it has controlled none of the land being contested.
. ) 19. ) Fravel tries to explain why, contrary to realist theory (and conventional wisdom), since 1949 the Chinese government has offered concessions in most settlements of territorial disputes with its neighbors, even when its hard power was on the increase.]
Contrary to the diversionary war theory that leaders facing internal challenges are prone to instigate international conflict to bolster their domestic positions, Fravel instead proposes that internal strife tends to create "diversionary peace" because it creates conditions for leaders to compromise internationally as they see a more urgent need to prioritize domestic security. Many of China's territorial disputes concern areas where ethnic minority groups reside and where central government authority and control have been traditionally weak. In this case, Chinese leaders have proven to be more willing to offer concessions to foreign countries in exchange for cooperation to strengthen control over these minority areas, such as denying support to separatist forces or affirming China's sovereignty over these areas.
20 . ) According to Fravel, leaders can use three strategies to deal with territorial disputes: delaying, escalation and cooperation. A key variable is the salience of the contested land and the greater the importance of the land, the larger the magnitude of the internal threat to make compromise more worthwhile. Regime insecurity is a plausible explanation in territorial disputes because most such disputes involve authoritarian regimes in developing countries, in which leaders will likely find external cooperation particularly important since their state power tends to be limited.
Fravel found China gave 17 substantial concessions in 23 disputes active since 1949, often agreeing to accept less than half of the territory being disputed. In 15 disputes, the compromise created conditions for a final territorial settlement through bilateral agreement. By contrast, the Chinese government never agreed to back down in 6 disputes, choosing a delaying strategy instead.
21 ) Ethnic geography makes the Chinese regime especially vulnerable to internal threats. The new Communist government founded in 1949 was largely staffed by Han people, whereas many minority people did not identify themselves as PRC members and sought independence. While CPC could inherit from Ming dynasty institutions of direct rule in China proper, there were no such institutions in frontier areas, which were historically governed indirectly though arrangements that gave local lords more autonomy in exchange for their loyalty.
Therefore the Chinese government never gave up regaining control of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao because the three areas are part of the Han Chinese core and losing them would undermine the very legitimacy of the Communist regime. By contrast, China has pursued status quo goals in securing boundaries of the late Qing dynasty as defined by unequal treaties that ceded 2 million square kilometers of territory. This was because Chinese armed forces could hardly solve the logistical problem of protecting one of the world's largest border lines, and the presence of minority groups aspiring to secede intertwines with political stability. Suspicion that neighboring countries might manipulate ethnic tensions to create domestic instability propelled the central government to seek cooperation with these countries by offering compromise in border disputes. For example, when a revolt peaked in Tibet in 1959, China moved to compromise with India, Nepal and Burma in exchange for cooperation to quell the revolt. Following ethnic unrest in 1962 in Xinjiang, it began to compromise with Mongolia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Soviet Union. Fravel continues to argue that because similar concerns do not exist in offshore island disputes, regime insecurity is unlikely to create an incentive for China to compromise with respective countries.
22 ) Much of China’s Cold War-era security thinking was heavily dominated by border conflicts and ongoing concerns about the stability of the country’s vast frontiers. These insecurities greatly affected Beijing’s regional relations in Asia and were occasionally the cause of direct and risky conflicts,including with India, the Soviet Union and Vietnam. Adding to the problem of disputed land borders were equally problematic overlapping maritime claims, including the oft-discussed
South China Sea conundrum, which China shared with its neighbours in the Pacific Rim. With the end of the Cold War and the increasing political and military strength of China, it appeared increasingly probable that Beijing would ad0pt a more assertive stance towards addressing its border security, resulting in a much less certain and secure Asian region.
Yet this does not appear to have been the case.
Since the 1990s, China has sought to reassure its neighbours that no expansionist plans were being considered, and border agreements were undertaken with the ex-USSR and others. While some disputes remain, including one relating to the South China Sea and disputed territories in South Asia, Beijing has attempted to keep these differences on the diplomatic level as much as possible. Today, with the exception of the Taiwan case, the growth of Chinese power has arguably coincided with a drastically reduced possibility of border conflicts involving the People’s Republic.
: "Strong borders, secure nation " seeks to explain this seemingly contradictory situation by offering a comprehensive overview of China’s past and present border disputes in explaining why Beijing has taken a much more conservative approach to securing its borders. As noted at the book’s beginning, ‘China has been more likely to compromise over disputed territory and less likely to use force than many policy analysts assert, international relations theories might predict, or China scholars expect’ (p. 3).
The rising China that is described here is not one which wishes to press its many historical border claims but rather one which is committed to the stability ofits frontiers and is willing to compromise if its neighbours do the same.
23 )Although there have been many surveys of specific border disputes involving China,
Fravel’s book is the first for quite some time to address all past and previous border disputes of the People’s Republic and to examine their common patterns of diplomacy and conflict management.
The book draws a direct linkage between Beijing’s concerns about the security of its interior, especially in regions with ethnic minorities along with sensitive borders, and its willingness to compromise in settling a border dispute.
As well, China is described as willing to escalate a border conflict if it viewed the situation as potentially worsening, should no action be taken, or if a window of opportunity appears due to the weakening of an adversary. These hypotheses are then rigorously tested using several past and present border disagreements between China and neighbouring states in East, South and South-East Asia and the former Soviet Union.
Despite the numerous case-studies and geography covered in the work, the historical detail is rich and accessible both to China scholars and others interested in overall issues of border security. Also helpful to the novice reader is a brief description of each of the18 past and present border disputes at the end of the book.
In addition to land based and maritime disputes,a chapter is dedicated to‘homeland’ disputes which include the Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan examples.
The latter case study is described as a series of diplomatic near misses which might have led to overt conflict in recent years.
It is argued that Beijing’s weak influence over Taipei ‘has increased greatly the sensitivity of China’s leaders to any further decline in an already inferior claim and a willingness to use force to signal resolve in the dispute’ .
This work adds a considerable amount to recent studies of Chinese security which go beyond the idea of a ‘China threat’, and succeeds in challenging long held theories about rising powers and frontier security.
24. ) INDIA-CHINA Relations
According to Jing-dong Yuan, who , reported the views of various groups of Chinese analysts whom he met in 2001. identified the unresolved issues between India and China as the six “T's” – territorial disputes, Tibet,
threat perceptions, trilateral relationship between India, China and Pakistan, trade, and
India's accession to the NPT/CTBT.
On the territorial issue, he held that India must first make some concession in the eastern sector,
“in particular the Tawang area”. He added that “resolution also requires that both countries have strong governments… at the moment neither is strong enough to overcome the still-enormous domestic popular sentiment (more so in India than in China) for a settlement”.
Jing-dong was fairly even-handed. “Analysts from the military and the defence industrial complex (in China)
manifest a different strand of thinking on India and Sino-Indian relations. While they by no means openly challenge current government policy, they nevertheless devote greater attention to developments in India's nuclear doctrine and are more sensitive to Indian defence modernisation efforts, occasionally exaggerating the scale and scope of Indian military build-up, for obvious reasons.
The Liberation Army Daily, Conmilit, Ordinance Knowledge, the World Military Review, International Outlook, and the publishers affiliated with the PLA are prominent outlets for the views of such analysts.
“In this context, recent developments in China deserve particular attention. The PLA has increasingly asserted its voice in national security policymaking, especially in the aftermath of the U.S.-led NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organisation] military intervention in Kosovo and the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. Other notable issues include the growing Sino-U.S. confrontation over arms sales to Taiwan, and U.S. plans to develop and deploy theatre missile defence (TMD) systems in North-East Asia, including the integration of Japan and Taiwan into such systems. Even U.S. concern over Chinese nuclear espionage has given the military greater weight in Chinese national security policy making.
“These developments have intensified an internal debate on the relationships between, and balance among, external security environments, economic liberalisation, and military (in particular nuclear and missile) modernisation. The PLA's views increasingly focus on the necessity of building a strong army in light of U.S. hegemonism and the uncertain security environments with regard to Japan, India, Taiwan, and the South China Sea. Within this context, one could suggest that China's nuclear and missile modernisation programmes likely will assume greater importance, with emphasis on survivability of strategic nuclear arsenals and the ability for escalation dominance in regional conflicts. While Beijing may regard its actions in response to U.S. hegemony as irrelevant to Sino-Indian relations, the consequences of some of the policy choices could seriously threaten Indian interests. Most notable is Beijing's resumption (or, as some argue, intensification) of nuclear and missile-related transfers and assistance to Pakistan as retaliation against a particular U.S. policy (e.g. arms sales to Taiwan or theatre missile defence).
“If one accepts the thesis that the PLA is gaining increasing influence in national security policy making, as a number of recent analyses would suggest, then the second, military-oriented school, would be expected to have a greater say in China's policy toward India.”
He notes also an improvement in the relations ( Asian Survey; November-December 2001; pages 993, 998-1000).
25) In this context, Fravel's overview of China's policy on territorial disputes is relevant. “Three main findings emerge from this study of China's territorial disputes.
First, China has not been highly prone to using force in its territorial disputes, the issue over which states are most likely to go war. China has been more likely to compromise in its territorial conflicts and less likely to use force.
“Second, counter-intuitively, political instability within a state can create strong incentives for peace, not war. In China's many disputes, internal threats to regime security explain the majority of its territorial compromises. Ethnic unrest in China illustrates how internal threats to a state's territorial integrity create incentives for it to cooperate with its neighbours. The 1959 revolt in Tibet, for example, altered the context of China's disputes with its Himalayan neighbours, leading to concessions in conflicts with Burma, Nepal, and India in 1960….
“Third, decline in bargaining power in a dispute can create strong preventive motivations to use force in territorial conflicts. In its disputes, China has demonstrated a clear sensitivity to negative shifts in its claim strength, using force when it faced militarily powerful opponents that could weaken its position or when it controlled little or none of the land that it claimed.”
26 ) Chinese policy on Kashmir
Ma Siwei, a Chinese scholar who spent some time at Jawaharlal Nehru University in 1983, wrote an excellent survey of China's policy on Kashmir in which he mentions its overlay with the boundary question. “If China's Kashmir policy at one time focused on consolidating its strategic ties with Pakistan, and at the present is focusing on promoting balanced relations with both India and Pakistan, then, in the future, when the deadlock of the Kashmir issue may be broken through, it is likely to focus on the border issue. This is a question of what China's fundamental interests lying in the final settlement of the Kashmir issue are. In other words, what would China hope to get from and prevent in the settlement?
“ The most important thing which China hopes to get, it could be assumed, is the final acceptance of the status quo of its borders with the two parts of Pakistan-held and India-held Kashmir. On the one hand, under the Boundary Agreement of 1963 between China and Pakistan, the sector of the border west of the Karakoram Pass has been provisionally settled. And the Agreement itself includes such a possibility: ‘Provided that, in the event of that sovereign authority being Pakistan (after the settlement of the Kashmir dispute between Pakistan and India), the provisions of the present Agreement and of the aforesaid protocol shall be maintained in the formal boundary treaty to be signed between the People's Republic of China and Pakistan.'
“On the other hand, under the Line of Actual Control Agreement [LOAC] of 1993 between China and India: ‘Pending an ultimate solution to the boundary question between the two countries, the two sides shall strictly respect and observe the Line of Actual Control between the two states.' It can be believed that China is satisfied with these arrangements and would like to see that both the provisional arrangements would become final settlements one day in the future. However, if the sovereignty over the whole of Jammu and Kashmir goes to either India or Pakistan, it would be likely to make the border question alive once again, and that might not be what China would like to happen. And in case the two parts of Kashmir unite and get independence, then a new question will inevitably be raised: whether or not the new sovereign entity will accept the border legacy left behind by India and Pakistan?
“What China hopes to prevent, it also could be presumed, is the possible adverse impact of the growing Kashmiri nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism on China's Tibetan and Xinjiang areas.In this regard, an independent Kashmir is not the choice which China would appreciate,as it would morally inspire separatism in China and practically provide a model from insurgency to Independence.” Ma Siwei opted for a settlement on the basis of the LOAC. ( China and the Kashmir Issue; Strategic Analysis, March 1995, pages 1592-93).
The 1963 agreement itself provides for its renegotiation if the status quo changes. Hence China's interest in the status quo.
27) . Professor John W. Garver, Professor at the Sam Nunu School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is an authority on China's foreign relations. He has surveyed China's policies in meticulous detail and concluded: “ Beijing has clearly distanced itself from Pakistan as Sino-Indian rapprochement progressed. Beijing has attempted to disentangle itself from the India-Pakistan conflict….
“This shift was manifested first and foremost in a shift in Beijing's position on the litmus-test issue of Kashmir.
During the 1990 crisis over Kashmir and ‘Khalistan'/Punjab, Beijing responded to strong Indian pressure by dropping its long-time endorsement of a plebiscite in the Kashmir region in accord with United Nations resolutions of 1948-49. … It stopped referring to the United Nations and its resolutions in the context of Kashmir (except when Beijing wanted to needle New Delhi, as, for example, in the aftermath of India's ‘China threat' justification of its May 1998 nuclear tests). Beijing, instead, began extolling peaceful settlement of the issue via talks between India and Pakistan.
“With the onset of Sino-Indian rapprochement, Beijing also began expressing private disapproval and public non-endorsement of some of Islamabad's more assertive efforts to challenge India. During the 1990 crisis, militants in Pakistan attempted to force their way across the border into India, and Indian forces responded by firing on them. Tension spiralled rapidly. In this situation, China urged moderation and abstention from violence on all sides. Beijing also declined to support Pakistani efforts to bring the Kashmir issue before the United Nations” (Garver's essay, “The Future of the Sino-Pakistani Entente Cordiale in Michael R. Chambers (ed) Strategic Balances and Alliances; Strategic Studies Institute; U.S. Army War College; pages 398-401). China did not support Pakistan during the Kargil crisis.
In a paper on “The China-India-U.S. Triangle 2001-2007”, read at an international conference in Kochi, India, on January 21-23, 2008, Garver remarked that “China's courtship of India was intended to convince New Delhi that China was not a threat”. But Beijing reacted sharply to India's participation in the Quadrilateral security arrangements in 2007 and to the 0-ship quadrilateral war game in September that year in the Bay of Bengal (pages 24-25 and 31).
29). China looks askance at India's growing closeness of relations with the U.S. and also at its military programme while eager to assure India that its own rising military strength poses no danger to its neighbour. Kashmir and the boundary question are affected by this calculus of power.
The tilt in favour of Pakistan is never absent even amidst professions of even-handedness. Thus after the attack on Parliament House in New Delhi on December 13, 2001, Rong Ying, Deputy Director of South Asian, Middle Eastern and African Studies, China Institute of International Studies, accepted denials by the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammad and made light of evidence: “Some analysts are of the view that the available evidence is generally indirect and circumstantial and has more holes than a piece of gruyere cheese” ( Beijing Review; January 10, 2002).
In the same journal on February 7, 2002, Wang Guoqiang, at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defence University, noted the coincidence of Chinese and Russian interests in South Asia's stability, in the context of Operation Parakaram, only to add: “However, China and Russia have different aims regarding this issue. China's development cannot be isolated from the rest of the world. A sound international environment and a relatively stable security situation in surrounding areas have been important conditions guaranteeing the sustained and rapid development of China over the past 20 years. While promoting western development, a major strategy for ensuring sustainable national development, China has a higher demand on the international security environment especially the situation in regions neighbouring west China. Therefore, it does not expect the deterioration of strained relations between India and Pakistan to produce negative effects on China's development, nor does it want to see the India-Pakistan conflict turning into a war by extremist religious forces, which will affect the internal stability of China. It also hates to see that the escalation of the India-Pakistan conflict will lead to military interference by external forces, which will worsen the threat to the security of China. For Russia, South Asia has always been a key region in its external security strategy.…
30 ) “Therefore, the easing of India-Pakistan tensions and the settlement of disputes through political means are not only in the fundamental interests of the two countries, but also conform to the strategic interests of China and Russia.”
Rong Ying wrote in the same journal on February 28, 2002: “India is one of the biggest munitions market of Russia” with close arms-sales ties with both the U.S. and Russia. “India has always aspired to be a big power.”
The U.S. and, to some extent, Tibet influence Chinese appraisals of India. It is incontestable that its terms for a boundary settlement have mounted. It could not possibly be unaware of the fact that no government in India can yield on the McMahon Line now, 60 years after Nehru's famous declaration on the McMahon Line in Parliament on November 22, 1950, and survive. The agreement of 1954 has no bearing on the western sector since India's maps were revised later that year. It is, however, decisive on the McMahon Line.
What, then, is the objective underlying a clear pattern of conduct that is unfriendly but stops just a bit short of being hostile? Is it to force the pace on the boundary negotiations or to send a message on the power equation in the relationship with the U.S.?
31. )India's calibrated response
Whatever be the reason, India's policy of a calibrated response, while striving to keep the relationship on an even keel, is sound. At the same time, it must adopt a coherent policy on China with a focus on the boundary settlement.
The record shows that Nehru's intercession with the Soviet Union to exert pressure on China in the boundary dispute aggravated the dispute and so thoroughly spoilt Sino-Soviet relations that Moscow all but washed its hands of the affair thereafter. It gave the green signal to China on October 12, 1962, on the war that was launched on October 20
In George Kennan's words, “History does not forgive us our national mistakes because they are explicable in terms of our domestic politics…. A nation which excuses its own failures by the sacred untouchables of its own habits can excuse itself into a complete disaster”
konthai
REFERENCES:
1. Article in Princeton University Press
2. Article in Journal International Affairs 85: 1, 2009
c 2009 The Author(s). Journal Compilation c 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/The Royal Institute of International Affairs
India: the rise of an Asian giant. By Dietmar Rothermund. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press. 2008. 274pp. Index. ￡20.00. isbn 0 300 11309
3. Article in "FRONTLINE"
4. Review in Barnes & NOBLE
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