Page 1 of 2 China yearns for peace on southern flank
By Peter Lee
Beijing embarked on a well-received charm offensive at the BRICS summit at the
city of Sanya on China's Hainan Island. Chinese President Hu Jintao and Indian
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met on April 13 in a sidebar of the gathering of
leaders from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa for a mini-reset of
the oft-contentious relations between the two regional powers. [1]
China is obviously eager to repair some of the PR damage from the pummeling it
took as the designated neighborhood bully on Diaoyutai Island, rare earths and
South China Sea dust-ups.
But it also looks like the People's Republic of China (PRC) yearns for
stability on its borders - and in the Tibetan Autonomous Region - as it
nervously eyes the wave of popular protests
sweeping the Middle East. Particularly in Syria, there is distinct - though
vociferously denied - evidence that Bashar al-Assad's external enemies, both
exiles and foreigners - are taking advantage of the unrest and the regime's
faltering and brutal response to stoke violence, spread disinformation, and put
the boot in on a hated foe. [2]
If and when popular unrest comes to China, Beijing would appreciate New Delhi's
forbearance in making sure that its domestic political problems are not
exacerbated by snowballing unrest in Tibet, fed by emigre agitation and the
temptation of geopolitical competitors to meddle at China's expense.
The most significant Chinese concession at the Hainan forum was China's
reported (in the Indian press) backpedalling on the arcane issue of stapled
visas for residents of Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh.
The Chinese practice of stapling a piece of paper with a visa in a passport
(instead of stamping it directly in the book) for some residents of Kashmir and
Arunachal Pradesh seeking to visit China dates at least to 2007.
It apparently was part of a Chinese campaign to formalize its position on the
festering border conflicts between India and China by demonstrating in concrete
form China's position that the status of these territories was disputed and not
subject to the normal consular relations between the two countries.
India's stated posture has always been to refer the Sino-Indian border debate
to the McMahon Line. The drawing of the McMahon Line was a bit of British
mischief that shaved off parts of Tibet and present-day Pakistan, and included
them in British India in order to create buffer zones.
Negotiated at the Indian town of Simla in 1914, the McMahon Line was apparently
an egregious exercise in imperial cartography, defining the border only with a
thick red line on a map without reference to the usual local landmarks employed
to demarcate a border.
The negotiation of the Simla Accord gives a certain amount of aid and comfort
to advocates of Tibetan independence because Sir Henry McMahon allegedly
exceeded his instructions and concluded a deal with the Tibetan representatives
after the Republic of China envoy left the talks.
By accepting the McMahon Line, the Tibetan team gave away a piece of territory
in return for the transitory pleasure of negotiating directly with the British
Empire. Having obtained the border deal it wanted, the British government
occasionally but emptily asserted its right to deal with Tibet directly.
However, in 2008, a British Foreign Office statement officially repudiated the
implication of Tibetan independence contained in the Simla Accord.
No Chinese government has accepted the McMahon Line as the proper demarcation
of the border. India, however, has embraced it.
Today, China occupies a fair amount of wasteland known as Aksai Chin in
northern Kashmir that holds a strategic railroad linking Xinjiang and Tibet -
claimed by India - and India occupies largely ethnic-Tibetan mountainland south
of the McMahon Line in the northeastern province of Arunachal Pradesh - claimed
by China.
Much is made of the militarization of the border as a source of tensions, but
it is possible that the opposite is true. As the border regions on opposite
sides of the Line of Actual Control are integrated by new roads and railroads
and secured by mobile, better-equipped military forces, the incentive to meddle
across the border is reduced.
Belligerent posturing is, of course, another matter.
Indian recalcitrance seems to have something to do with assuaging the military
establishment's still-burning resentment over getting thumped in the 1962
border war - which was fought largely in Arunachal Pradesh - and the popularity
of sticking it to Beijing as a national pride/electoral strategy. The fattening
of defense budgets on the Indian side in response to the perceived Chinese
threat is also, of course, not unwelcome.
The logical solution to this issue would seem to be an exchange of claims on
these marginal lands - China keeps Aksai Chin and India holds on to Arunachal
Pradesh. But it hasn't happened yet, despite the creation of resolution
mechanisms and over a dozen meetings in recent years.
The whys and wherefores have ignited entertaining and informative Internet
flame wars between Indian, Chinese, and Tibetan advocates. [3]
However, a close look at the evidence appears to indicate that China has put an
Aksai Chin for Arunachal Pradesh swap on the table for years - starting with
Zhou Enlai in the 1950s - but the Indian government has found it in its
interests to insist that the fate of the two regions be negotiated separately.
As India formalized its control over Arunachal Pradesh - it is now incorporated
as an Indian state and not a border territory - the prospect of swapping
recognition of Aksai Chin has become more remote. Instead, it became possible
that India would simply hold on to Arunachal Pradesh and not bother to
acknowledge the Chinese claim over Aksai Chin at all.
It appears that in 2010 the Chinese government was feeling its oats and decided
it would try to play the separate negotiations game, too. If India insisted on
discussing the problems separately, then China would try to get some two-on-one
action on the Aksai Chin by pushing for India to talk with Pakistan on the
overall Jammu & Kashmir issue.
China's search for alternate leverage led it to escalate its claims to both
Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh by harping on the ongoing visa issue.
In July 2010, the Chinese government apparently attempted to issue a stapled
visa to Lt Gen B S Jaswal, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the
Kashmir-based Northern Command, although it had given him a stamped visa in
2008. This emerged from the journalistic sausage-making machine as "China
refuses visa to Indian general", and resulted in the breakdown in the
high-level military exchanges between the two countries. [4]
In addition to the stapled visa shenanigans, China infuriated the Indian
government by trying to interfere in Asian Development Bank deliberations on a
US$2.9 billion Indian hydropower finance package because it included a $60
million Arunachal Pradesh component.
China also staked a claim to Tawang, a small market town of inordinate
importance in Arunachal Pradesh because it was the birthplace of the sixth
Dalai Lama and the place where the 14th Dalai Lama found Indian refuge after
fleeing Lhasa in 1959. Tawang also hosts a large Gelugpa monastery that is
reputedly the second-largest such installation in the world after Lhasa and
enjoys the active patronage of the Dalai Lama.
In response, India rolled out the big guns.
Manmohan Singh made a high-profile visit to Arunachal Pradesh in October 2010
during the parliamentary election campaign, eliciting much unhappiness from the
Chinese government. In November 2009, the Indian government allowed the Dalai
Lama to make a rare visit to Arunachal Pradesh, and also to Tawang.
In an apparent recapitulation of the Tibetan delegation's sellout to the
British at Simla in 1914, the Indian media reported that the Dalai Lama
declared that Arunachal Pradesh and Tawang were "part of India".
The reference to Tawang is particularly striking because the Tibetan
government, in its pre-exile days, had made repeated and intermittently
successful efforts to maintain administrative control of Tawang, despite its
location south of the McMahon Line.
In 1947, the Tibetan government wrote the Indian government to assert Tibetan
authority over Tawang. But in 1950-51, the Indian government moved into the
region and, from a facts-on-the-ground standpoint, settled the question of who
ran Tawang for once and for all. [5]
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