The question of where India ends and China begins has been the subject of continued negotiations, including between the British Empire and the Qing Dynasty as well as independent India under Jawaharlal Nehru and Communist China under Mao Zedong. Even as I write this, high in the snowy peaks and glacier-fed rivers claimed by both India and China, a tense military standoff in Ladakh between the two armies is well into its second winter. India and China are no strangers to border incidents. The disagreement over where the boundary lies led to a war in 1962 and several altercations since. Despite agreements on confidence-building measures to ensure stability, a final settlement of the border dispute has remained elusive as India and China appear no closer to reaching an agreement.
What is it that makes the de facto boundary between India and China—the Line of Actual Control (LAC)—a magnet for military standoffs? Unlike other international borders and boundaries, the LAC is best described as a concept that differentiates Indian-held territory from Chinese-held territory. The alignment of the LAC has never been agreed upon, and it has neither been delineated nor demarcated. Possibly the world’s remotest and most uninhabitable, the contested territory does not hold significant natural resources or population centres. The terrain varies from dry and desolate in the Western sector to hilly and dense in the Eastern sector.
Nearly thirty years ago, when India and China signed the Border Peace and Tranquility Agreement in 1993, they agreed to maintain the existing status quo on the frontier along the LAC. Over the next two decades, India and China operated to stabilize the LAC and made progress on the boundary dispute by reducing troops in the area and refraining from the use of force. Economic ties strengthened between the two, and the boundary was delinked from other elements of the bilateral relationship. The problem, however, is that the question over where exactly the LAC lies remained unanswered. There are substantial differences between the two countries’ perceptions on where the LAC lies, especially where it passes through Ladakh. The differences in perception often lead to Indian and Chinese patrols coming into contact with each other as they patrol what they consider their territory. Each country’s interpretation of the LAC is based on the amount of territory it believes can be militarily controlled or dominated by patrolling. That means that either side can alter its interpretation of the LAC simply by improving its military position along the frontier.
The number of reported incursions by China along the border began to increase significantly after 2010. Compared to the stand-offs in Ladakh in 2013, 2014, and 2015, the Doklam stand-off in 2017 took considerably longer to resolve. The current stand-off has seen 13 rounds of inconclusive negotiations between military commanders since June 2020. What does this suggest about the role of diplomacy in preventing escalation? At the start of the Modi-Xi era, it was widely argued that with the right combination of resolve and tough diplomacy, India could prevent future military stand-offs with China from escalating. In 2015, both sides pledged to show “mutual respect and sensitivity to each other’s concerns, interests and aspirations”. Yet, personality-centric diplomacy between the two leaders, which included two bilateral summits (2014, 2015), meetings on the sidelines of multilateral gatherings, and two informal summits (in Wuhan and Mamallapuram in 2018 and 2019, respectively), has been accompanied by more frequent, more prolonged, and more dangerous military stand-offs at the border.
It would be simplistic to argue that the existing diplomatic mechanisms to prevent and manage such situations have proved altogether ineffective and therefore should no longer be employed. Diplomacy cannot be based on pessimism; it must be based on realism. To be effective, diplomacy must be a consistent effort, change as interests evolve, and account for multiple realities. First, India cannot ignore agreements already reached and must hold China to key accords. Over the last seven decades, both New Delhi and Beijing have voiced political readiness to resolve the border dispute. For instance, the two countries agreed on the political parameters and guiding principles for settling the boundary in 2005 and began a dialogue at the special representative level to work out a mutually agreeable framework. While the momentum has tapered off, and the two countries appear no closer to finalizing a framework for making progress, this record of agreements cannot be ignored. Secondly, India’s diplomacy going forward will be affected by its view that Beijing’s vision for Asia is hierarchical, with China at the top. Any negotiations with China will be coloured by this view. Third, India, as a rising power, brings its own economic and geopolitical interests to the table, and must protect them. Even with the power asymmetry, India’s interests clash against what it views as China’s growing strategic ambition. Delhi’s diplomacy with Beijing cannot simply be border-centric, a reality that its leadership has acknowledged. As India’s Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar said in May 2021, “…if there is intimidation, if there is continuing friction on the border, then obviously it is going to tell on the relationship”. Finally, diplomacy must take account of the realities on the ground—the nature of borderland terrain and operational imperatives. The longer the LAC remains unclarified, the greater the strain it will place on an already declining India-China relationship.
Shibani Mehta is a Research Analyst with the Security Studies Program at Carnegie India.
The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy or the National University of Singapore.
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Books and Journals
COVID-19 and India-China Equations: Examining their Interface in the Indian Ocean Region
Chinese Studies Journal Vol. 15: 111-132
By Swaran Singh, Professor for Diplomacy and Disarmament at Centre for International Politics, Organization and Disarmament (CIPOD), School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi)
The last two decades have seen the spread of diseases that frequently trigger transnational crises. None of these, however, have inflicted a global ruination and fear like COVID-19. Its onset threatened to reset human life, including interstate relations. This health crisis triggered deep economic recession, led to widespread unemployment, accentuated social tensions and political polarization, and helped reshape geopolitical alignments worldwide. In this crisis, the world’s largest nations, China and India—together home to more than a third of humanity—had a special responsibility. Their effectiveness in combatting COVID-19 at home and in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) was contingent upon their bilateral equations, which had seen irritants and even multiple violent face-offs in the midst of pandemic. The pandemic has not just carried implications for their success or failure at home and abroad but has also become a test case of their mutual, decades-long trust-building efforts and resultant subtle synergies. In face of their different development levels and trajectories and their varying efficacy of their strategies in redressing COVID-19, this pandemic both germinated and showcased strengths of their expanded mutual stakes. This article uses complex interdependence theory to assess how, in midst of the pandemic and border tensions, India and China have managed to come to a modus vivendi. It first outlines a few novel trends that showcase their coordination in providing COVID-19 assistance among IOR nations. It briefly discusses each country’s response to the health crisis, its impact on India China equations, and examines their interface in the IOR to identify sinews of cooperation in midst of confrontations and crisis. It elucidates how prompt and ‘parallel’ India-China assistance in IOR’s fight against COVID-19 revealed signs of expanded interdependence and an improved coordination that can enable them to mitigate and manage their future conflicts.
Compiled and sent to you by Centre on Asia and Globalisation and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.
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