China's Territorial Disputes (42 page)

Aside from settling the border disagreement, the purpose of Gorbachev’s goodwill visit to China was both to strengthen his own domestic standing in order to push through difficult political reforms and economic restructuring at home, and also to strengthen moderate forces in China partial to his reform program and sympathetic to his need for stable external relations and open borders. His aim happened to coincide with those of the premier reformist leader of China at that time, Zhao Ziyang, who was also pushing through a similar program in China against great opposition, and trying to concentrate power in his own hands. Gorbachev’s leadership on both counts succeeded in normalizing Sino-Soviet relations by personally breaking the deadlock over the border question, shaking the Chinese assumption that any Soviet leader since Khrushchev was bound to be unrelentingly hostile toward their country, demonstrating the irreversibility of his goodwill by his public pronouncements, and employing his image of personal integrity and political openness to create or mobilize favorable public opinion in China toward his visit to that country. Given the high visibility of the Chinese reform movement, Gorbachev probably hoped that a high-profile visit there would provide him with a boost to the momentum of his economic and administrative reforms back home. From this aspect, the result of his visit to China was uncertain. On the other hand, Gorbachev’s “suasive reverberation” struck such a chord with Chinese students, intellectuals and journalists that Deng, after the Tiananmen Square incident and the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, and although he recognized the need to “normalize” ties with the Soviet Union lest China be left out of the fast improving Soviet-American relations, referred to the corrosive effects of Gorbachev’s reform policies as constituting “a great danger from the north,” against which China’s Communist leadership must be vigilant.

Zhou Enlai’s last visit to India in April 1960 to try to resolve the boundary dispute was unsuccessful because by then, the Indian mass media, politicians and citizenry as a whole had perceived his visit as an occasion for the enemy to present an ultimatum to extract an agreement on his terms. The spectacle of Zhou flying around the region to conclude boundary agreements with India’s neighbors only encouraged the Indian view that he was attempting to crudely induce or implicitly threaten India into reopening border negotiations. On the other hand, Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to China in December 1988 was generally credited by officials and commentators on both sides as changing the course of Sino-Indian relations, from one characterized by a boundary stalemate to the building of trust and cooperation in the military, economic and socio-cultural spheres. Rajiv managed to refocus the elite and masses of both countries from suspicion and prejudice to peace and cooperation through high-profile “reverberation.” Further bilateral visits by Indian and Chinese leaders affirmed their respect for the line of actual control as the
de facto
boundary on the ground, and promoted the agreements on the CBMs. Indeed, Vajpayee’s visit to China in June 2003 broke new ground in sealing efforts to deal with the border issue at the highest levels of government yet. By naming Chinese vice-foreign minister Dai Bingguo and India’s National Security Adviser, Brajesh Mishra, as special envoys in charge of boundary negotiations, both China and India have signaled that they are keen to find a solution to the border dispute soon.
²¹

There can no gainsaying the positive or negative role played by leadership in diplomacy. For all the factors that determine the outcomes of bargaining, while international negotiations may still succeed in spite of unfavorable societal preferences, dicey political coalitions, and difficult ratification procedures, they will certainly fail if leadership in pushing an agreement at home and abroad is not forthcoming. Hence the indispensable role of leadership in international negotiations is perhaps the most significant finding in the application of two-level game analysis to my cases of territorial disputes. Leaders perceive and interpret constraints and opportunities in their international and domestic environments, make decisions, and manage domestic political pressures on their foreign policy choices. Glaringly, the presence or absence of leadership, and its orientation toward confrontation or cooperation, appears to have been neglected or at least grossly understated by Putnam, who has appeared more concerned with the strategies to be adopted by leaders and negotiators in his original formulation of two-level games. Theoretically speaking, this is his most serious oversight.

Putnam also did not place enough emphasis on the roles played by “nationalists” or other organized subnational or regional forces mobilized around a political cause, to obstruct or hasten a negotiation. Putnam anticipated but underestimated the ability and willingness of domestic forces to act as a longterm and recurrent informal constraint on inter-state bargaining. The findings here that public opinion can act as a domestic constraint on the ability of international negotiators to reach agreement are supported by Peter Trumbore, who tested the two-level game framework with evidence from the last two decades of the Anglo-Irish Peace Process over the future status of Northern Ireland.
²²
He has discovered from public opinion polls taken in both the Irish Republic and the United Kingdom that, when there is a lack of congruence between the public’s preferences and the decision-makers’ preferences, public opinion can act as a constraint when the public has the power to directly ratify an international agreement. However, when the public’s power to ratify an agreement is limited to its ability to influence decision-makers’ preferences, the intensity of the issues under negotiation will play a critical role in determining whether public preferences serve as a constraint on decision-makers. This is indeed the case regarding the events examined here. Aside from these observations, the major propositions of the two-level game framework have been largely borne out by the case studies on China’s territorial disputes with her neighbors.

7 Testing the propositions of the two-level game

hypothesis

1    Irina Komissina and Azhdar Kurtov, “Resolving Border Disputes in the Asia-Pacific Region,”
Korean Journal of Defense Analysis,
spring 2003, vol.XV, no.1,147-148.

2    “Protest in Bishkek Against Kyrgyzstan-China Agreement,” in
Pravda On-Line,
May 16, 2002.
http://english.pravda.ru/cis/2002/05/16/28816.html
(accessed 4 July 2003). See also Komissina and Kurtov, “Resolving Border Disputes in the Asia-Pacific Region,” 148-149.

3    Komissina and Kurtov, “Resolving Border Disputes in the Asia-Pacific Region,” 148-149.

4    
Ibid.

5    
Ibid.,
150.

6    Zhao Quansheng,
Interpreting Chinese Foreign Policy: The Micro-Macro Linkage Approach

(Hong Kong:    Oxford University Press, 1996), chapter 4, “Institutional

Macrostructure and the Policy-making Process,” 40-78.

7    
South China Morning Post,
18 October 1996.

8    Vidya Shankar Aiyar, “Sino-Russian Demilitarization Pact,”
China Report
(Delhi) 1997, vol.33, no. 3, 458-459.

9    Shibu Itty Kuttickal, “Brothers in Trade,”
Today
(Singapore), 26 June 2003, 30.

10    David Hsieh, “Border Disputes ‘Will Not Be Resolved Soon’,”
Straits Times
(Singapore), 26 June 2003, A2.

11    Kenji Hayao,
The Japanese Prime Minister and Public Policy
(Pittsburgh PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993), chapter 6, “The Prime Minister and Party Politics: The LDP and the Opposition,” 122-140.

12    William H. Riker,
The Theory of Political Coalition
(Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1984), chapter 4, “Research On and Applications of the Size Principle,” 77-101.

13    ‘Japan: Upper House Approves New Japan-China Fisheries Pact” in
FBIS-EAS-
98-120, 30 April 1998. Tokyo KYODO in English 1446 GMT 30 April 1998.

14    According to Japan’s
Yomiuri Shimbun,
the Japanese government registered in October 2002 its rental of the Uotsurishima, Minami Kojima, and Kita-Kojima islands for a year up to 31 March 2003, with a private owner, Yukihiro Kurihara, who reportedly lives outside Okinawa Prefecture, for an amount of 22.56 million Yen. The lease is apparently intended to strengthen Japan’s claims over the island chain by preventing resale of the islands to third parties and blocking individuals or groups from landing there. “MPs Urge Taipei To Take Islands Dispute to Court,”
Straits Times
(Singapore), 4 January 2003; and “China Protest to Japan over ‘Leasing’ of Islands,”
Straits Times
(Singapore), 5 January 2003.

15    G. Karasin, “Russia and China: A New Partnership,”
International Affairs
(Moscow), 1997, vol. 43, no. 3, 26; and Aiyar, “Sino-Russian Demilitarization Pact,” 458.

16    This finding is consonant with the results on the strategy of “tying hands” derived from the collaborative project on two-level game analysis directed by Peter Evans, Harold Jacobson and Robert Putnam. It is similar to the findings of the collaborative project, and contradicts Thomas Schelling’s logic that “having one’s hands tied” might be advantageous, risking no agreement but increasing the chances of getting an agreement one desires. See Peter B. Evans, “Building an Integrative Approach to International and Domestic Politics: Reflections and Projects,” in Peter B. Evans, Harold K. Jacobson and Robert D. Putnam (eds)
Double-Edged Diplomacy: International Bargaining and Domestic Politics
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 402-403. See also Thomas C. Schelling,
The Strategy of Conflict
(Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), 19-28.

17    Zhao,
Interpreting Chinese Foreign Policy: The Micro-Macro Linkage Approach
(Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1996), 80-81.

18    “Record of Conversation of Mao Zedong with Representatives of Socialist Countries,” Center for the Preservation of Contemporary Documentation (TsKhSD), Moscow, f.5, op.30, d. 238, II. 77-78.

19    This conclusion supports Helen Milner
^,
s finding that an asymmetrical distribution of information domestically increases the chances of cooperative agreement. The distribution of information internally is one of three factors posited by Milner as conditioning a state’s ability to cooperate. The other two factors are the structure of domestic preferences and the nature of domestic institutions. See Helen V. Milner,
Interests, Institutions and Information: Domestic Politics and International Relations
(Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 239-240.

20    The term “suasive reverberation” is adopted from Janice Gross Stein, “The Political Economy of Security Agreements: The Linked Costs of Failure at Camp David,” in Evans
et al.
(eds)
Double-Edged Diplomacy,
77-103.

21    Goh Sui Noi, “Landmark Visit by Indian PM Will Boost Mutual Trust,”
Straits Times,
28 June 2003, A9.

22    Peter F. Trumbore, “Public Opinion as a Domestic Constraint in International Negotiations: Two-level Games in the Anglo-Irish Peace Process,”
International Studies Quarterly,
1998, vol.42, 545-565.

8 Conclusion

The “moral” and “realist” bases of the Chinese approach to territorial sovereignty disputes

Material interests and international distribution of power are by no means irrelevant in explaining state behavior, but as we have seen, shared understanding, knowledge, perception and expectations inform the content of state identities and interest definitions, and these “ideational” factors have great importance in explaining interactions within and between states. Although Peter Katzenstein’s argument, that cultural and institutional norms shape states’ identity and affect their national security definition and policies, are not explicitly tested here,
¹
the analyses in the previous chapters agree with his contention that realist theories are likely to be wrong if they overlook either the significance of comprehensive definitions of national security going beyond narrow military concerns, or the legacy of the Sino-centric world system for the national security policies of China and the Asian states in the 1990s.
²
This would be as true for realist theories as for any other methodological constructions purporting to explain China’s approach to territorial disputes. A framework of negotiations like that of two-level games can only postulate the likelihood of reaching or ratifying an agreement by looking at the bargaining space in the presence or absence of certain domestic, institutional and leadership factors. It cannot explain when or why a disagreement, dispute or conflict arose between countries or people, nor determine the circumstances of where and how it happened, or for that matter, its duration, let alone predict future occurrences of such disputes or conflicts. For that, we have to examine the strategic thinking of state leaders, especially the cultural assumptions behind foreign policy formulation, the sources of domestic power politics, political participation and regime legitimacy, and a people’s perception of the historical and contemporary role of their country in the changing international scene. It is to these substantive issues, which form part of what I refer to as the “moral” and “realist” bases of the Chinese approach to territorial disputes with its neighbors, and on which the two-level game framework rests, that we now turn to in this concluding chapter.