China's Territorial Disputes (41 page)

Another virtue of disaggregating issues for negotiations, which bears pointing out, is that nationalist groups can usually only engage in the emotional and zero-sum issue of sovereignty. They lack the technical expertise and knowledge, let alone the authority, to deal with joint exploration of resources and related cooperative modes of addressing the dispute. As such, if and when the governments concerned seriously get down to negotiating the specific spheres of joint development, then there is a good chance of shutting the patriotic pressure groups out of the issue altogether. However, the problem with de-linking sovereignty and economics in territorial disputes is that whatever the joint gains achieved through the goodwill generated from promoting economic issues over sovereignty may not be able to overcome the political pressure exerted on leaders by nationalist elements in the disputant countries. By portraying themselves as champions of their countries’ territorial sovereignty, and seizing on nationalist issues and positions which they know few of their fellow citizens can openly disagree with without risking censure, they are able to make use of their compatriots’ territorial concerns to create difficulties for negotiators engaging in territorial or other discussions right from the beginning. If the negotiators proceed with the discussions, they stand to lose popular support within their domestic constituencies; if they yield to domestic pressure and stop the negotiations, they may be accused by their counterparts in the other claimant countries of being unreliable negotiating partners, which may have the effect of decreasing the size of win-sets for future inter-state negotiations.

De-linking the eastern and western sectors of the Sino-Indian boundary for the purpose of negotiations, which was the Indian strategy, obviously did not work, but neither did the Chinese preference for “issue aggregation,” for the purpose of achieving a comprehensive settlement of the border as a package deal, which would have involved trading off NEFA to India in exchange for the recognition of Aksai Chin as Chinese territory. Why then did de-linking the CBM negotiations from the border talks achieve productive results? The most probable answer is that, while the security and welfare of both parties were definitely better off with an arms reduction treaty and respect for the existing line of actual control, the Chinese could gain nothing more from what they had already obtained through military action in the 1962 border war, and the Indians were in no position to change the status quo short of restarting a major war. An agreement will be signed only if it produces a better result than each party could achieve in the absence of the agreement, and this is clearly not the case here. In respect of territorial transfer at least, sovereignty contests over border lands and boundary lines are really a zero-sum game.

Fortunately, de-linking issues may not even be necessary to resolving or reducing the saliency of an outstanding dispute, witnessing how the need for peace, economic opening-up and political reform in both China and the USSR actually provided the rationales propelling the border agreement forward. Perhaps more important than whether boundaries should be lines or zones is that they are recognized as legitimate by the parties concerned, and that clear procedures be established to deal with future territorial disagreements. Bear Island, at the confluence of the Amur and Ussuri, is practically a “neutral-zone” of self-governing, mostly Russian, families who make their homes on the island in the absence of either Russian or Chinese military. Perhaps one day, even the Diaoyu/Tiaoyutai/Senkaku Islands could be converted into a United Nations or international peace park. In response to the Japanese government taking out a one-year lease, until 31 March 2003, on three of the disputed islands from its putative Japanese owner, Taiwanese legislators from the pro-independence Taiwan Solidarity Party to the Kuomintang urged their government to bring the dispute to the International Court of Justice for a final settlement.
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This may be another way of peacefully resolving this long-running and emotional dispute. Indeed, by two agreements signed in April 1996 and April 1997, China and Russia were joined by Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in de-militarizing their common borders and building security. Patterned after the two CBMs signed by China and India in September 1993 and November 1996, the security pacts thus enacted called for the reduction of land forces and the withdrawal of strategic missile, long-range aviation and anti-aircraft units from a 100-kilometer zone on each side of China’s border with the Central Asian republics.
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The success or failure of any negotiating behavior obviously depends heavily on the strategies adopted by the negotiators themselves. In addition, I discovered in my study that the presence or absence of leadership in negotiation affects both the duration and direction of the negotiating process, and is instrumental in determining the ultimate success or failure of the negotiation.

VIIA

The absence of effective leadership in official negotiations means that the initiative in setting the agenda or blocking an agreement will pass from Level I negotiators to Level II opposition forces, both within the governmental institutions and outside in the societal realm. The Japanese government showed uncommonly decisive leadership in 1997 in denouncing several Japanese nationalists who landed on a disputed island, and ordering its Maritime Security Agency to prevent protest boats from Taiwan and Hong Kong from entering its territorial waters, thus limiting the entire affair to three days. In contrast, Beijing, Taipei, the Hong Kong authorities and Tokyo demonstrated few leadership initiatives throughout the 1996 fracas, except to reiterate their sovereignty claims over Diaoyu/Tiaoyutai/Senkaku and to appeal for calm, until the situation was basically beyond their control, and that incident took three very tense months to exhaust itself. The most proactive measures taken by Beijing and Taipei were for the Chinese leadership to arrest anti-Japanese activists and monitor campus activities, and for Lee Teng-hui to talk Taiwanese fishermen out of organizing a flotilla to the islands. Hence, at least in negotiations over territory, having one’s hands tied wittingly or unwittingly may not always be a wise or effective strategy.
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VIIB

While absence of leadership during the negotiation process results in drift and the loss of initiative - witness Nehru’s role in the lead-up to the Sino-Indian War - the presence of leadership does not necessarily equate to a speedy resolution of a dispute. Leadership in a dispute negotiation may either increase or decrease tension, depending on whether the purpose of the leader or leaders involved are really interested in promoting or blocking agreement. While Chiang Kai-shek’s initiative allowed Taipei to participate in the only set of publicized discussions ever to take place on the ownership and resource development of the Diaoyu/Tiaoyutai/Senkaku Islands in 1970-1971, Deng Xiaoping’s permission for the “fishing junks” in 1978 to set off from Chinese ports almost sabotaged negotiations of his country’s Peace and Friendship Treaty with Japan, never mind future talks on territorial compromises.

The effect on international bargaining of leadership orientation is most clearly shown in the Sino-Russian dispute over the Amur/Ussuri islands. What

prevented the resolution of the dispute in the 1960s was not so much the intransigence of Soviet negotiators, but Mao’s dogged determination, nay personal quest, to castigate the Soviet leadership as “revisionist” to countries in the socialist bloc, and to expose Soviet leaders as “social-imperialists” and “new tsars” to the rest of the world. Although Zhou Enlai and subsequently Chen Yi, as foreign ministers of the PRC before the Cultural Revolution, were in charge of the conduct of foreign affairs, and Mao had resigned all government positions in 1959, the paramount leader made virtually every strategically important decision regarding foreign policy issues.
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In this case, Mao was clearly the most important domestic Level II constituency in Chinese domestic-foreign interaction, and he was not accommodating. On the other hand, the border dispute was amicably resolved when the Soviet and Chinese leadership, under Gorbachev and Deng respectively, empowered their deputy foreign ministers and later their foreign ministers to push forward negotiations on surveying, mapping and concluding a comprehensive boundary agreement on the basis of equality in state-to-state relations.

VIIB1

If leaders are only interested in blocking international agreements or avoiding them altogether to let a dispute fester, then they should strive as much as possible to tear one another’s credibility down in the eyes of their own people and the world at large. In a conversation with representatives from socialist countries, who were in Beijing to mediate on the Sino-Soviet rift just weeks before the start of the Sino-Indian War, Mao told his audience that Nehru was “half man, half devil,” and that the task of Communists was to “wash off his face so that it would not be frightening, like the devil’s.”
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Mao was also determined to pursue the ideological breach with Moscow to the finish. Mao’s castigation of Brezhnev and the Soviet leadership in the 1960s as “revisionists” was meant to show them up to the Communist bloc and demonstrate that the true followers of Marx and Lenin were by then the Chinese Communist leadership. Similarly, the use of the terms “social-imperialists” and “new tsars” was meant to portray the Soviet Union as nothing more than a modern version of tsarist Russia, out to conquer lands and subjugate people, in this case Chinese boundary islands and the Chinese people. The Soviet leadership had more than once referred to their Chinese counterparts as “dogmatic” or even as “insane,” pointing to the chaos and destruction they unleashed on their own country and Party in the name of the Cultural Revolution. Given such an acerbic state of relations between both countries, and with such recalcitrant leadership on both sides, it is little wonder that China and the Soviet Union could achieve no satisfactory settlement to their common boundary dispute or indeed on anything else. Then there were events like the massive rock-throwing public demonstrations orchestrated by the governments of both countries in front of each other’s embassies, and the threatening displays of armour, troop movements and armed civilians at the common frontier. Such a deliberate display of force and government orchestration of popular sentiment could only be calculated to exacerbate an already tense border situation and could not be at all conducive to any form of negotiations, let alone on a subject as sensitive as territorial concessions.

VIIB.2

Assuming that leaders are interested in promoting rather than retarding agreement on a disputatious issue, they should also seek to keep the details of sensitive sovereignty negotiations or talks on territorial compromises as secret as possible until some form of agreement is reached, so that forces which might be opposed to the proposed agreement will not be able to join forces. Our Zhenbao/Damansky case clearly shows that an asymmetrical distribution of information domestically, actually increases the chances of a cooperative agreement, while the converse is true for Diaoyu/Tiaoyutai/Senkaku.
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Unfortunately, it may not be possible for bargaining over the final disposition of the South China Sea islands dispute to be kept under wraps, even at Level I, particularly if claims are to be haggled over in a multilateral forum. Yet, fearing betrayal, ASEAN’s member nations are opposed to discussing this issue with China and with one another on a bilateral basis.

It is true that it may not be possible to alter the historical memories or geographical circumstances surrounding a contested claim. However, leaders should also suppress or at least play down the activities of nationalistic and other obstructionist organizations and groups, like the actions of the Chinese government in arresting and driving into internal exile members of a vocal anti-Japanese group led by the activist Tong Zhen, for attempting to incite public sentiment and pressure government officials into taking a confrontational stand against Japanese nationalists on Senkaku. The repeated calls by the Taipei and Tokyo governments for a peaceful resolution of this crisis when it recurred, and the ordering of their coastguards to prevent boatloads of protestors from landing on the islands, also fit into this category. The consistent refusal of the Indian leadership to recognize the Tibetan government-in-exile of the Dalai Lama in Dharmsala, and the many occasions when the police were ordered to break up illegal demonstrations by Tibetan exiles outside the Chinese embassy in New Delhi, contributed in no small measure to the eventual reduction of border tension, given the sensitivity of the Chinese government to the issue of Tibetan separatism. However, governments should also be careful not to overreact with undue force against their own people or those from other disputant states, as this may have the effect of greatly exacerbating tension around an already disquieting issue and playing into the hands of domestic and foreign nationalist groups, particularly if activists are killed and martyrs created. Leaders should also, via strategic use of side-payments, reduce the impact or cost which may fall on certain constituencies or regions, as in Yeltsin’s deal with Nazdratenko on financial subsidies for the region in exchange for political support for the boundary agreement with China.

Another winning strategy for negotiators would be to openly promote the popularity of their negotiating counterpart, to increase their counterpart’s win-set and thus increase both the odds of success and their own bargaining power. To mend ties and settle the border dispute with China, Gorbachev set about creating a constituency for negotiation by expanding the win-set of the Chinese Communist leadership. While Gorbachev’s concession on the
thalweg
principle in July 1986 provided the Chinese with sufficient political space (face) to reopen border talks, his visit to Beijing in May 1989 was a victory for “suasive reverberation,”
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or face-to-face diplomacy