China, India resume Himalayan dance
By Pallavi Aiyar
HONG KONG - After a year-long hiatus, border negotiations between India and
China resume this week in Beijing. The latest round of talks, the 12th since
special representatives were appointed in 2003 to hammer out a solution to the
almost half-century-old dispute at a political level, will take place against a
geopolitical tapestry of burgeoning complexity.
On the one hand, booming bilateral trade, increasing people-to-people contact
and a sustained exchange of high-level visits indicate a maturing of ties.
India-China trade for the first six months of the year was worth US$29 billion,
a 69% rise over the figure for the same time period in 2007.
This year Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Beijing
and the leaders of the two countries have also had ample opportunities to meet
on the sidelines of multilateral forums. In addition, the second in a series of
joint military exercises is currently being planned, a development that is rich
in symbolism - alluding to a new phase in cross-border ties between armies that
fought a war in 1962.
On the other hand, the past two years have seen resurgent suspicions and areas
of tension emerge in the cross-Himalayan diplomatic dance in which the
neighboring countries are engaged.
In India, the sincerity of China's intentions have been called into question
following a series of alleged incursions across the eastern sector of the
border by Chinese troops and a perceived hardening of Beijing's stance on
Arunachal Pradesh. These have now been compounded by the claims of some senior
Indian officials, including New Delhi's special representative to the boundary
negotiations, M K Narayanan, regarding Beijing's obstructionist stance at the
Nuclear Suppliers' Group meeting in Vienna earlier in the month.
China denies these charges. But, in turn, strategists in Beijing are concerned
about the implications of New Delhi's increasing closeness to Washington, as
embodied in the India-US civilian nuclear energy deal. The worry is that India
might ultimately become part of an alliance of like-minded democracies aimed at
containing China.
This year has also seen Tibet re-emerge as fodder for the more hawkish amongst
Beijing's policy pundits. Despite India's official stance on the matter,
according to which the Tibet Autonomous Region is explicitly recognized by New
Delhi as part of the territory of China, there are those within the strategic
establishment in Beijing who remain less than convinced regarding India's
intentions towards the region.
These suspicions were stoked following the March riots in Lhasa this year. The
fact that some Indian analysts put forward the idea that New Delhi would be
better placed to achieve its strategic objectives vis-a-vis China by holding
Beijing hostage to its "Tibet card" set alarm bells ringing north of the
border.
From cross-border incursions to the Tibet issue, all roads emanating from
Sino-Indian discord converge on the unsettled boundary.
"The border issue remains the most important one in China-India ties," said
veteran India watcher Ma Jia Li, a professor at the China Institute of
Contemporary International Relations. "If it cannot be settled by this
generation of leaders then the whole relationship is negatively influenced."
But despite the acknowledged centrality by all sides of the boundary
negotiations, expectations regarding any substantial progress are minimal.
India says China is illegally occupying 43,180 square kilometers of Jammu and
Kashmir, including 5,180 square kilometers ceded to Beijing by Islamabad under
the Sino-Pakistan boundary agreement of 1963. China, in turn, accuses India of
possessing some 90,000 square kilometers of Chinese territory, mostly in
Arunachal Pradesh.
The neighbors have spent more than a quarter of a century discussing the
dispute. Before the special representatives were appointed to give a political
element to the negotiations, eight rounds of border talks had already been held
between 1981 and 1987 and an additional 14 joint working group meetings between
1988 and 2003.
But round after round of negotiations at varying levels over the past 25 years
has not resulted in the two sides even being able to agree on the Line of
Actual Control or the verification of alignments of respective areas on
mountain tops, rivers and lakes.
What is being discussed in the ongoing discussions between the special
representatives is in fact far from a resolution of the border. At issue
instead is the devising of an agreed framework for a settlement of the boundary
on the basis of the "political parameters and guiding principles" that were
finalized during Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to India in 2005.
The idea that has long been discussed as the basis for a border settlement is
that of a territorial "swap" with New Delhi recognizing Aksai Chin in the west
as part of China and Beijing doing the same for India and Arunachal Pradesh in
the east. But while this solution had been put forward by China in the 1950s,
even before the 1962 war and was reiterated later by Deng Xiaoping, New Delhi
rejected it at the time.
More than two decades later, there are some indications that India is finally
ready to consider the "swap" solution. In the meantime, however, Beijing no
longer seems as keen on the idea, with the area of Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh
having emerged as a particular sticking point. The Chinese now say that given
Tawang's centrality to Tibetan Buddhism - the sixth Dalai Lama was born there -
it is impossible for them to give up claims to the region.
India, on the other hand, has firmly ruled out any concessions on Tawang since
this is an area with a settled population. "Tawang is an area with substantial
settled populations. Not a small number. It flies in the face of guiding
principles and political parameters," M K Narayanan said in an interview in
August this year.
Indeed, according to the parameters for the settlement of the dispute
established in 2005, any final agreement needs to take account of the
"interests of the settled populations" of the two countries. This was widely
interpreted in India as a Chinese concession on Tawang.
But, it wasn't long before Chinese leaders began to insist that the point
regarding settled populations was not a sacrosanct clause.
"From China's point of view the issue of population is an important one, but it
is not the sole criteria for deciding anything," said Professor Ma. The South
Asia expert believes that while China does not want the whole of Arunachal
(despite the statement of the former Chinese ambassador to India, Sun Yuxi, to
the contrary), the border will remain an intractable thorn in the side of
bilateral relations in the absence of some genuine give-and-take.
Ma points to the fact that this year China has put to bed its long-standing
border dispute with Russia, with both sides giving up some of their territorial
claims. While Russia ceded 174 square kilometers of territory to China, Beijing
gave up around half of its claims on Russian-controlled land to reach a
settlement.
He said, however, there were many within the Chinese establishment who doubted
the will and, more importantly, the ability of Indian authorities to negotiate
a border deal and then successfully sell it to the Indian public. The difficult
domestic passage of the India-US nuclear deal that almost led to the toppling
of the government is often pointed to in Chinese circles as an example of the
"weakness" of Indian leaders.
In their turn, many in the Indian establishment perceive the Chinese stance on
Tawang, and more broadly Arunachal, as disingenuous yo-yoing designed to keep
India second-guessing and on its back foot.
This week's talks will be further complicated by the fact that they will take
place around the same time as a visit to Beijing by the new president of
China's all-weather ally, Pakistan. While in China, Asif Ali Zardari is widely
expected to push Chinese leaders for a nuclear deal along similar lines to the
India-US one.
Although it is Beijing's official position that its relationship with India and
Pakistan are delinked, China's response to Pakistan's quest for nuclear energy
assistance will likely impact on the manner in which India approaches future
negotiations with its northern neighbor, including on the border.
Ma says he remains optimistic of the talks between the special representatives
despite the bumps along the road. "We are both keen to find solutions, we just
need to be creative," he said.
However, the professor's optimism does not appear to find much resonance with
foreign policy analysts on either side of the border. Instead, the consensus
seems to be that India and China will have to find ways of living with an
unsettled border for the foreseeable future.
The current challenge for the foreign policy establishments in Beijing and New
Delhi is thus the management of relations in the absence of a border agreement
as much as it is to try and find a solution to the dispute.
Pallavi Aiyar is the China correspondent for the Hindu and author of
Smoke and Mirrors: An Experience of China (Harper Collins India, May 2008) . For
a review of the book, see
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