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Clueless on China
Brahma Chellaney Friday, July 9, 2010 0:14 IST
Yet another round of India-China border talks took place in Beijing a few days ago. The unending and fruitless talks on territorial disputes underscore the eroding utility of this process.
It is approaching three decades since China and India began these negotiations. In this period, the world has changed fundamentally. Indeed, with its rapidly accumulating military and economic power, China has emerged as a great power in the making. Not only has India allowed its military and nuclear asymmetry with China to grow, but New Delhis room for diplomatic maneuver is shrinking.
Power asymmetry in inter-state relations does not mean the weaker side must bend to the dictates of the stronger or seek to propitiate it. Wise strategy, coupled with good diplomacy, is the art of offsetting military or economic power imbalance with another state.
But by staying engaged in the useless border talks, knowing fully well that Beijing has no intention of settling the territorial issues, India plays into Chinas hands. The longer the process of border talks continues, the greater the space Beijing will have to mount strategic pressure on India and the greater its leverage in the negotiations.
After all, China already holds the military advantage on the ground. Its forces control the heights along the long 4,057kmHimalayan frontier, with the Indian troops perched largely on the lower levels.
Furthermore, by building new railroads, airports and highways in Tibet, China is now in a position to rapidly move additional forces to the border to potentially strike at India at a time of its choosing.
Diplomatically, China is a contented party, having occupied what it wanted the Aksai Chin plateau, which is almost the size of Switzerland and provides the only accessible Tibet-Xinjiang route through the Karakoram passes of the Kunlun Mountains.
Yet it chooses to press claims on additional Indian territories as part of a grand strategy to gain leverage in bilateral relations and, more importantly, to keep India under military and diplomatic pressure.
At the core of its strategy is an apparent resolve to indefinitely hold off on a border settlement with India through an overt refusal to accept the territorial status quo. In not hiding its intent to further redraw the Himalayan frontiers, Beijing only helps highlight the futility of the ongoing process of political negotiations.
After all, the territorial status quo can be changed not through political talks but by further military conquest. Yet, paradoxically, the political process remains important for Beijing to provide the façade of engagement behind which to seek Indias containment.
Beijing originally floated the swap idea giving up its claims in Indias north-east in return for Indian acceptance of the Chinese control over a part of Ladakh to legalise its occupation of Aksai Chin. It then sang the mantra of putting the territorial disputes on the backburner so that the two countries could concentrate on building close, mutually beneficial relations. But in more recent years, in keeping with its rising strength, China has escalated border tensions and military incursions while assertively laying claim to Arunachal Pradesh.
The present border negotiations have been going on since 1981, making them the longest and the most-barren process between any two countries in modern history. The record includes eight rounds of senior-level talks between 1981 and 1987, and14 joint working group meetings between 1988 and 2002. The latest discussions constitute the 14th rounds of talks between the designated Special Representatives since 2003.
The Peoples Daily the Communist Party mouthpiece that reflects official thinking made it clear last summer: China wont make any compromises in its border disputes with India.
What does India gain by staying put in an interminably barren negotiating process with China? By persisting with this process, isnt India aiding the Chinese engagement-with-containment strategy by providing Beijing the cover it needs? While Beijings strategy and tactics are apparent, India has had difficulty defining a gameplan and resolutely pursue clearly laid-out objectives.
Staying put in a barren process cannot be an end in itself for India.
India has retreated to an defensive position territorially, with the spotlight now on Chinas Tibet-linked claim to Arunachal Pradesh than on Tibets status itself. That neatly meshes with Chinas long-standing negotiating stance: What it occupies is Chinese territory, and what it claims must be on the table to be settled on the basis of give-and-take or, as it puts it in reasonably sounding terms, on the basis of mutual accommodation and mutual understanding.
As a result, India has been left in the unenviable position of having to fend off Chinese territorial demands. In fact, history is in danger of repeating itself as India gets sucked into a 1950s-style trap. The issue then was Aksai Chin; the issue now is Arunachal.
Clueless on China - dnaindia.com
