China's Territorial Disputes (26 page)

101    “Diplomat on Signing of PRC Border Accord,”
FBIS Daily Report
, Soviet Union, International Affairs, 9, 29 May 1991. Moscow, Radio Moscow in Mandarin 2200 GMT 23 May 1991.

102    Todd Crowell, “Alliances: Two Giants Make Up: Yeltsin’s Coming Beijing Trip Has Major Implications,”
Asiaweek,
19 April 1996.

103    “Churkin on Reports ‘Twisting Facts’,”
FBIS Daily Report,
Soviet Union,1 July 1991. Moscow Radio Moscow in Mandarin 1400 GMT 29 June 1991. See also “Army Paper Cites Churkin on PRC Border Issues,” in FBIS Daily Report, Soviet Union, 3 July 1991. Moscow KRASNAYA ZVEZDA in Russian 28 June 1991, 2nd edn, 3.

104    Moltz, “Regional Tensions in the Russo-Chinese Rapprochement,” 517.

105    
Ibid.,
516-517.

106    “Survey of Leaders on Russian-Chinese Border Demarcation,” in FBIS-UMA-95-196-S,11 October 1995. Moscow MORSKOY SBORNIK in Russian,19 June no. 6,1995, 18-26, 4.

107    “RUSSIA, CHINA: Border Dispute Seen Set To Sour PRC Ties,”
FBIS Daily Report
, Soviet Union, 12 March 1997.

108    
The Current Digest of the Soviet Press,
“Border Dispute Could Explode our Relations With China,” vol. XLVII, no. 6, 1995.

109    
Ibid.

110    
Ibid.

111    Moltz, “Regional Tensions in the Russo-Chinese Rapprochement,” 517.

112    Won Bae Kim, “Sino-Russian relations and Chinese Workers in the Russian Far East: A Porous Border,”
Asian Survey,
December 1994, vol. XXXIV, no.12,1066.

113    Eric Hyer, “Dreams and Nightmares: Chinese Trade and Immigration into the Russian Far East,”
Journal of East Asian Studies,
summer/fall 1996, vol.X, no. 2, 295.

114    Andrei Admidin, “Utilization of Foreign Labour Force    in    the    Russian Far    East:

Problems and Prospects,” mimeo, Economic Research Institute,    Khabarovsk,    1993,

Table 2.

115    
Economist,
“Beneath the Smiles,” 3 September 1994, 39.

116    Boris Reznik, “Chinese in the Far East: Guests or Masters    of    the    House?,”
Izvestia,
7

December, 4;
Current Digest of the Soviet Press,
1993, vol. XLV, no. 49.

117    Hyer, “Dreams and Nightmares,” 298.

118    Yang Shouzheng, “Development of Sino-Soviet Economic and Trade Relations and Its Impacts in Northeast Asia and Asia-Pacific Region,”
Foreign Affairs Journal
, December 1990, no.18, 27.

119    The figures of $4 billion and $6.16 billion are provided by Charles E. Ziegler, “Russia in the Asia-Pacific,”
Asian Survey,
June 1994, vol.34, no. 6, 539. The rest of the data are given by Hyer, “Dreams and Nightmares,” 300.

120    Tsuneo Akaha, “Russia in Asia in 1994,”
Asian Survey,
January 1995, vol.35, no.1, 104.

121    Hyer, “Dreams and Nightmares,” 301.

122    Alexander Isayev, “Russian-Chinese Trade in 1996 Grew By 25 Percent to 6.84 Billion Dollars,”
Novosti,
5 February 1996.

123    Ziegler, “Russia in the Asia-Pacific,” 539.

124    Moltz, “Regional Tensions in the Russo-Chinese Rapprochement,” 91.

125    
The Straits Times,
“Hu Jintao Looks to Russia as Strategic Partner against US,” 29 May 2003.

126    Gilbert Rozman, “Troubled Choices for the Russian Far East: Decentralization, Open Regionalism, and Internationalism,”
Journal of East Asian Affairs
, summer/fall

127    Rozman, “Troubled Choices for the Russian Far East,” 560.

128
Ibid.,
541.    
'

129    
Ibid.
, 548.

130    Scott Atkinson, “The Struggle for the Soviet Far East: Political, Military, and Economic Trends under Gorbachev,”
Soviet Union/Union Sovietique,
1990, vol.17, no.

3, 223.

131    Peter Kirkow,
Russia’s Provinces: Authoritarian Transformatm versus Local Autonomy?
(New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998), 131-132.

132    
The Current Digest of the Soviet Press,
“Referendum on Demarcation of Russian-Chinese Border Proposed,” 1995, vol. XLVII, no. 12.

133    “Survey of Leaders on Russian-Chinese Border Demarcation,” in
FBIS-UMA-
95-196-S,11 October 1995. Moscow MORSKOY SBORNIK in Russian, June 19 no. 6,1995, 18-26,10.

134    
The Current Digest of the Soviet Press,
“Russia and China will Have Friendly Borders,”

1995,    vol. XLVII, no. 34.

135    “Russia, China Discuss Border Issues,”
Rossiiskaya Gazeta,
17 September 1995. The Deputy Chief of FBS quoted was General Mikhail Shakalevich.

136    From an ITAR-TASS news agency report summarized in the Open Media Research Institute’s
Daily Digest of News on Russia, Transcaucasia, Central Asia, and the CIS
, 17 October 1995, no. 202.

137    
Mainichi Daily News,
23 December 1993, 3.

138    From an ITAR-TASS news agency report summarized in
China News Digest,
13 March 1995.

139    
The Current Digest of the Soviet Press,
“Cossack Mounted Patrols On Russian-Chinese Leader Intend To Thwart Demarcation Efforts,” 1996, vol. XLVIII, no.15.

140    “RUSSIA, CHINA: Border Dispute Seen Set To Sour PRC Ties,”
FBIS Daily Report,
Soviet Union, 12 March 1997.

141    Stephanie Ho, “China/Tumen River Area,” Voice of America, Beijing, 23 April

1996,    9.57 a.m. EDT (1357 UTC).

142    “Survey of Leaders on Russian-Chinese Border Demarcation,” in
FBIS-UMA-
95-196-S,11 October 1995. Moscow MORSKOY SBORNIK in Russian, June 19 no. 6,1995, 18-26, 29.

143    Mikhail Khantsankov, Nyaisimaya Gazeta, 25 August 1993, 4,
FBIS Daily Report,
Central Eurasia, 15 September 1993, 89.

144    Sergey Chechugo, “Russia Gives Up Its Positions In Pacific Rim Under Pressure,”
Far East Russian Magazine
, July 1995, no. 1.

145    
Vladivostok News,
“Cossacks to Disrupt Border,” 17 April 1996, issue 117.

146    
The Current Digest of the Soviet Press,
“Pavel Grachev Creating Security System in Northeast Asia,” 1995, vol. XLVII, no. 20.

147    
Vladivostok News,
“Border Dispute Tests Governor’s Wits,” 17 April 1996, issue 117.

148    
Kommersant-Daily
(Moscow), 25 January 1996, translated in
FBIS,
Arms Control,8 February 1996, 63.

149    
Vladivostok News,
“Border Dispute Tests Governor’s Wits,” 17 April 1996, issue 117.

150    
Ibid.

151    “Russian-PRC Border Demarcation, Economic Accords Detailed,” FBIS-SOV-97-315,17 November 1997. Moscow Delovoy Mir in Russian 11 November 1997, 1.

152    Pavel A. Minakir, “Economic Reform in Russia,” in Mark J. Valencia (ed.)
The Russian Far East in Transition: Opportunities for Regional Economic Cooperation
(Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1995), 49-64.

153    All composite trade data for the following paragraph: For 1950-1955 data, G. Grause,
History of Economic Relations between Russia and China
, trans. M. Roublev (Jerusalem: Israel Program for Scientific Translation, 1966), 284. For 1956-1971 data,
The USSR National Economic Yearbook,
1956-1971. For 1972-1973 data,
Facts on File Yearbook,
1972-1973. For 1974-1982 data, the yearly
Soviet Foreign Trade Yearbook.
For 1983-1989 data,
China’s Custom Statistics.
Data for 1983-1987 are given in Renminbi, 1988-1989 in US dollars. Conversion to ruble done by author according to Peter Havlik, “The Exchange Rate Policy of the CMEA Countries and Problems of Convertibility,”
Soviet and Eastern European Foreign Trade,
fall 1990, vol.26, no. 3, 71, table 1 (Official Exchange Rate).

154    Wishnick,
Mending Fences,
170.

155    Anders Aslund,
Gorbachev’s Struggle for Economic Reform
(Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), chapter 1;and David A. Dyker,
Restructuring the Soviet Economy
(London: Routledge, 1992), chapters ^6.

156    Steven M. Goldstein, “Nationalism and Internationalism: Sino-Soviet Relations,” in David Shambaugh (ed.)
Chinese Foreign Policy - Theory and Practice
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 253-254.

157    Wishnick, “In the Region and in the Center: Soviet Reactions to the Border Rift,” quoting N. V. Sverdlov, Reactor of the Khabarovsk Pedagogical Institute, at a meeting of the Khabarovsk region and city party officials on 22 September 1969.
http://www.gwu.edu/~narchiv/CWIHP/BULLETINS/b6-7a15.htm
(accessed 4 July 2003).

158    Wishnick, “In the Region and in the Center: Soviet Reactions to the Border Rift.”
http://www.gwu.edu/~narchiv/CWIHP/BULLETINS/b6-7a15.htm
(accessed 4 July 2003).

159    Lyle J. Goldstein, “Return to Zhenbao Island: Who Started Shooting and Why it Matters,”
China Quarterly,
December 2001, nos. 168, 995, 997.

160    Janice Gross Stein, “The Political Economy of Security Agreements: The Linked Costs of Failure at Camp David,” in Peter B. Evans, Harold K. Jacobson and Robert D. Putnam (eds)
Double-Edged Diplomacy
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 77-103.

161    
Cheng Ming Monthly
(Hong Kong), February 1990, 8.

5 The McMahon Line/ Aksai Chin dispute

Introduction

At the heart of relations between China and India for the last four decades lies the boundary dispute that brought forth tension and hostility and ultimately led both countries to war in 1962. The Sino-Indian boundary question has historical roots involving aspects of international law as part of British imperial frontier policy in India in the last century, which is an interesting field of inquiry in itself. However, we will make reference to history and law only if they enlighten our quest to explain why the negotiating process to fix the boundary between the two countries failed, but curiously led to fruitful confidence-building security measures and the near-dissipation of border tension in the last decade. Compared to the previous two cases, then, the territorial dispute between China and India may be regarded neither as a complete failure or a resounding success; it is somewhere in between, which like the other cases, makes it an excellent study of the goals and constraints of China’s policy, strategy, and behavior toward the resolution of territorial disputes.

Sino-Indian relations before March 1959

The government that took power in India in 1947 quickly realized that among its inheritance was the problem, unresolved since the last century, of its mountainous borders with Tibet, which soon became China’s problem as well when the PLA entered Tibet in 1950 to establish its authority there. Stretching to almost 2,000 kilometers, the international border between China and India lies for the most part along the towering ranges of the Karakoram in the western sector, and the Himalayas in the eastern sector, interspersed with a few valleys and passes, and almost year-round covered with snow. Adding to the difficulties of locating or defining the frontier is the fact that the demarcation lines drawn on the maps of British India were the results of agreements between the colonial British authorities of India and the Tibetan government, which China had always considered an unacceptable colonial imposition.
¹

A major part of what would become the disputed Sino-Indian boundary took shape at a conference in Simla from October 1913 to July 1914, with the foreign

secretary of British India Henry McMahon as host and mediator. Throughout the nineteenth century, as British power was expanding from Assam northwards up the foothills of the Himalayas, the Tibetan authorities still insisted on collecting their customary taxes and dues from the tribes and monasteries in that area. When a Chinese warlord from Sichuan entered Tibet in 1910 and sent probes into the foothills, the British authorities in India were alarmed that the unsettled borders with Tibet might constitute cause for future Chinese intervention in the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA), as the foothills were known administratively. Following the collapse of the Qing dynasty, the British sought to organize a conference with the participation of the self-proclaimed independent Lamaist State of Tibet and the republican Chinese government to determine Tibet’s boundaries with both British India and the rest of China. The conference at Simla resulted in a tripartite agreement, which, although initialed on 27 April 1914 by all three representatives of Britain, China and Tibet, was immediately repudiated by the Chinese government. Although China had denied the binding force of the Simla Convention on itself, Henry McMahon returned to New Delhi, secure in the understanding that the existing boundary between Tibet and India from Bhutan to Burma now lay along the crest of the Assam Himalayas, henceforth referred to as the McMahon Line (see Figure 5.1). China has always maintained, before and after the conference, that the true boundary between India and Tibet as part of China lies along the foothills of the Himalayas and not at the crest.