Page 2 of
2 China yearns for peace on
southern flank By Peter Lee
The
Tibetan government-in-exile has historically
accepted the McMahon Line - and the loss of what
the Chinese call "South Tibet" - as the cost of
doing business with the Indian government. It was,
however, somewhat jarring for the Dalai Lama to
accept India's control of Tawang instead of
asserting its fundamental Tibetaness.
According to the Times of
India, the Dalai Lama did so in categorical terms:
"My stand that
Tawang is an integral part of India has not
changed," the Dalai Lama said in defense of his
host country. [6]
However, another
outlet reported the Dalai Lama's position as
being somewhat more nuanced.
Instead of tackling the Tawang question head-on,
he hypothesized that the Chinese pullback from
Tawang after the People's Liberation Army occupied
the town in the 1962 border war - meant to
re-establish the ante-bellum status quo as a
prelude to negotiations with India - implied that
Beijing had surrendered its right to contest
Tawang's nationality:
If China
claimed Tawang, then the army should not have
left. The Dalai Lama hinted that China's current
claims are an afterthought. "The then Chinese
government declared a unilateral ceasefire and
withdrew [its forces]. Now the Chinese have got
different views. This is something which I
really don't know. I am little bit surprised,"
he said. [7]
In any event, the Dalai
Lama's visit and his remarks as reported did send
a useful message to China that restoring the
territorial integrity of the Tibetan homeland by
clumping parts of Arunachal Pradesh into the
Tibetan Autonomous Region enjoyed no support from
the Tibetan diaspora and was useless as a
negotiating point. Meanwhile, Pakistan,
hopelessly transfixed on the cleft stick of its
Afghanistan/Taliban/US war on terror disaster,
showed itself uninterested in adding to its
headaches by arguing with India over Kashmir.
Therefore, China's attempts to match India's
"separate negotiations" stance on Aksai Chin and
Arunachal Pradesh were going nowhere.
At
Hainan, the Chinese government appeared more
willing to resign itself to the current border
muddle, while tending to more important elements
of its relationship with India: trade and security
issues.
Calls for democracy in the
Middle East have been unremitting, and the Chinese
government is apparently acting pre-emptively on
the assumption that something similar may break
out in China. Activists, dissidents, and lawyers
have been detained by the bushel-basket, and
Internet censors are working overtime.
Although the examples of
Egypt and Libya have demonstrated that negotiated
forbearance between the Western democracies and
authoritarian governments can evaporate almost
instantaneously as popular unrest manifests
itself, it appears that China decided this is not
the time to be at loggerheads with India. Therefore, four Kashmiri
Indian journalists - of whom at least one had a
passport issued in Kashmir and not New Delhi -
were given conventional visas to go to Hainan,
apparently giving rise to the report that China
was moderating its stance on the "stapled visa"
issue.
The Hindustan Times,
reporting from the China-bashing quadrant,
received a self-congratulatory background briefing
from someone in the Indian government that made
the case that the switch in policy was evidence of
Chinese incompetence:
Indian
officials are smiling like Cheshire cats as
China quietly pulls back on a Kashmiri policy
that roiled relations the past two years ...
Today, Indian officials are coming around to the
view that the Kashmir shift and unshift was
really evidence of incoherence within the
Chinese system. "Beijing is struggling to handle
the demands of an increasingly demanding world,"
said one. China, superpower in the making, was
more stumbling than sinister. ... New Delhi, after a careful
review of the information, has concluded the two
Kashmiri moves arose from decisions at lower
level bureaucrats designed to placate a
weakening Pakistan. Little or no thought was
given about the consequences. Worse,
organizations like the Chinese foreign ministry
who would have known better were out of the
loop. Thus the Northern Command decision was
taken by a low-level national ministry of
defense. "May be the clerk had something against
the Northern Command," said one official.
What there is no doubt
about is that China was completely taken aback
at the strength of Indian response. The Chinese,
say sources, may have concluded the Kashmir
policy would not be a big deal given India's
track record of keeping quiet on many other
issues with China.
Having made a blunder, the
problem say Indian officials was that "Beijing
didn't know how to walk it back."
Initial Indian complaints
bounced off China. The real game-changer was
when, at a foreign secretaries meeting in
Sichuan last year, India hinted it would change
its Tibet and Taiwan policies. India declined to
endorse the one China policy when Premier Wen
Jiabao came visiting in December last year.
[8]
This allegation of Chinese
disorganization and ineptitude may be gratifying
to the Indian diplomatic service, which often
faces accusations of disorganization and
ineptitude itself.
However, the facts of the
case - that stapled visas were given to
weightlifters from Arunachal Pradesh trying to
attend a competition in China (indeed, stapled
visas were given to residents of Arunachal Pradesh
as early as 2007) as well demanded for a general
from Jammu & Kashmir - implies that more than
purported resentment against "Northern Command" by
a disgruntled clerk in the Chinese Ministry of
Defense was at work.
And the intimidating
character of India's representations to Premier
Wen in December 2010 apparently did not deter
China from issuing stapled visas to the two
weightlifters in January 2011, less than a month
after Wen's visit.
As the Economic Times put it:
In spite of
Premier Wen Jiabao's assurance that China will
take serious note of India's concerns over the
issue of stapled visas, the handing over of such
documents to two Arunchalis prevented them from
flying to Beijing on Wednesday.
[9]
Perhaps the purpose of this
backgrounder is to make the case that the stapled
visa issue was merely a blunder and China's change
of posture therefore did not merit any
reciprocation from India.
Also, the concession was
framed in terms of Jammu & Kashmir alone - not
addressing any Arunachal Pradesh factor -
indicating that the Indian government was happy to
advertise that China was backing off on
interfering in Kashmir just as New Delhi and
Srinigar brace themselves for the possibility of
another long, hot summer of rock throwing, head
cracking, and the intemperate use of various
lethal and occasionally lethal non-lethal
ordinance by Indian security forces in Kashmir.
However, if India helps keep
a lid on dissent, criticism, and incitement in the
southwest as China nervously enters its own season
of dissent, with those warm, dry days and nights
so well suited to marching, camping, and other
activities, enduring some self-congratulatory
preening by India - and the erosion of China's
bargaining stance on the contentious border issues
- might be an acceptable price to pay.
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