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Sino-Indian Boundary Dispute: Present Imperfect and Future Tense?

Jabin T Jacob
Hermès Fellow, Sciences Po, Bordeaux, France
and
Research Fellow, IPCS
e-mail: jabin@ipcs.org

INTRODUCTION
 
On 2 and 3 June 2010, the University of Westminster held a conference titled, ‘Revisiting the China-India Border Dispute’ bringing together scholars from China, India, Australia and the United States to examine the issue in depth and to assess the possible direction the dispute would take in the future as well as feasible solutions. The scholars included Alka Acharya (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi), Dibyesh Anand (University of Westminster, London), James Clad (National Defense University, Washington DC), John Garver (Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta), Jabin T Jacob (IPCS, New Delhi), Neville Maxwell (Australian National University, Canberra), Zorawar Daulet Singh (Centre for Policy Alternatives, New Delhi), Tsering Topgyal (London School of Economics) and Liu Xuecheng (China Institute of International Studies, Beijing).

WHOSE FAULT WAS 1962?
 
The conference examined the history of the dispute in detail and was notable for introducing greater nuance to widely accepted beliefs about the confrontation between the two Asian giants. Maxwell was unwavering in his criticism of Jawaharlal Nehru for bringing about the conflict and held the Indian government responsible for the fact that the dispute continues to be unresolved, Garver and Acharya were willing to go beyond oft-repeated assertions to examine internal domestic politics in the two countries and their influence on the eventual conflict. Garver, for instance, pointed out that Mao Zedong following the setback of the Great Leap Forward and the consequent reversal of his radical policies was looking also to create an atmosphere conducive for the radicalization of the Chinese revolution. Mao was engaged in opposition to the Soviet revisionists and Nehru with his own unique views of world politics was no less a part of this problem. As a consequence, Mao gave specific instructions to Chinese official mouthpieces to specifically attack Nehru by name.
 
Acharya, meanwhile, pointed out that the Indians under Nehru clearly misread the signals they were receiving from Beijing and did not expect armed Chinese actions and dismissed the notion that Nehru’s forward policy signaled any genuine intent for war with China. As an internationalist who had spent several decades formulating his ideas about the world and in particular Asia’s role in the world, it was impossible to believe that Nehru countenanced war with China as a possible course of action. Why did Nehru believe that the Chinese would not use force? According to Garver, Nehru was taken in by Nikita Khrushchev’s assurances in this regard and also believed that in a world with nuclear weapons, the Chinese would not attack for fear of the conflict spreading. However, Nehru ignored the lesson of the Korean War, which was a limited conflict that took place despite some of the combatants possessing nuclear weapons.

WHAT EXPLAINS THE PERSISTENCE OF THE DISPUTE
 
As to why the dispute remains unresolved, Garver suggested that issues of national identity, territoriality and security remained primary Chinese concerns. Beijing, according to him, sought to keep the dispute unresolved as a way of keeping India “sober,” to “deter” India from taking any action with respect to Tibet that would be counter to Chinese interests. While China has given up claims to other territories that it claimed it lost under unequal treaties and because of imperialism such as Korea (by the Treaty of Shimonoseki with Japan) and Mongolia (under threat from the Soviet Union), only in the case of Tibet did the international situation allow it to reestablish and maintain authority. This was the way history played out and it had to be accepted.
 
Liu, while criticizing British perfidy in creating the conditions for the dispute, argued that while acknowledging history was necessary, China and India ought to pay attention also to the current situation on the ground. After the first exchange of maps on the Western sector, no further exchange was possible because of the reality that there were actually three different Lines of Actual Control in vogue – that before 1962, immediately after the conflict, and the one that was extant now. He appeared to suggest that both sides had moved and shifted their positions on the LAC in the decades since the conflict.
 
Acharya argued that the appointment of the Special Representatives in 2003 signaled the beginning of a “course correction” in Sino-Indian boundary negotiations. The Agreements of 2003 and 2005 were an acknowledgment that the resolution of the dispute required a political approach that could move beyond a reliance on complicated and contradictory understandings of history. She argued that more important than the notion of boundaries as fixed and inviolable lines that needed to be defended by force against any intrusion, border regions needed to be viewed as ‘spaces’ or ‘frontiers’, where historically, peoples’ ideas and cultures have interacted and must continue to do so.
 
TIBET AT THE CORE
 
Topgyal and Jacob addressed the centrality of Tibet to the Sino-Indian boundary dispute in greater detail. The former highlighted the close linkages between the vagaries of the Sino-Indian relationship and the dynamics of the Sino-Tibetan relationship. For instance, the breakdown in Sino-Indian border negotiations in 1986 that followed charges by both sides of troop-buildup along the LAC coincided also with the breakdown of the Sino-Tibetan dialogue. Similarly, the Dalai Lama’s visit to Western countries, allowed in 1987 for the first time by India also possibly encouraged the series of pro-independence protests in Lhasa that lasted until 1993. Jacob meanwhile, advocated a different non-military ‘forward policy’ to be employed by China and India towards each other that would allow them to maintain peace and stability in their border regions. The Tibetan protests in March 2008 that convulsed not just the TAR but also Tibetan areas in the neighbouring provinces should be proof enough that Beijing’s policy of relying on the economic development of Tibet is not sufficient to mitigate separatist tendencies in the region. Rather, India had a role to play in the political stabilization of Tibet and China’s new ‘forward policy’ towards India should open up Tibet to greater and freer interactions with its neighbour in the religious, cultural and economic spheres. Since India had already accepted Chinese sovereignty over Tibet, there is no political challenge to Beijing’s authority and India’s own new ‘forward policy’ towards China should involve a greater opening up to Chinese trade and investments in India in general while also cooperating in the economic development of Tibet, a process that could have positive spillover effects in India’s own border regions. Tibetans, meanwhile, will need to choose a new kind of freedom that can evolve from such Sino-Indian cooperation. This new ‘freedom’ could very well substitute for or encompass the Dalai Lama’s own notion of ‘autonomy’ under Beijing instead of full independence.

FUTURE OF THE DISPUTE

Clad and Singh looked at the continuing Sino-Indian boundary dispute from a broader international perspective. While circumstances were not necessarily new and different, armed conflict, Clad argued, was always possible despite the economic relationship between potential adversaries. History provides enough examples of these. He also believed that China kept the boundary dispute alive partly owing to its close relationship with Pakistan. Singh pointed out that while both China and India had a strong and growing bilateral relationship with the United States, even as their own bilateral relationship remained weak by comparison, the two nations would both suffer if they over-leveraged against each other with the United States.

Was the 1962 conflict inevitable? Most participants agreed that it was not – nations and leaders have choices and any number of events could have happened and alternative choices made that need not have led to conflict. However, on the questions of whether the dispute would be resolved anytime soon and what impact it would continue to have on Sino-Indian ties, the field was more evenly split with many arguing that by rejecting the package deal, not once but twice, India had lost the opportunity to settle the dispute, while others (Chinese and Indian) argued that the two countries could find it in themselves to rise above the dispute and cooperate on issues of bilateral, regional and global importance.

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