China and India: A New Diplomacy
By Kanti Bajpai
Director, Centre on Asia and Globalisation and Wilmar Professor of Asian Studies, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. He is the editor (with Selina Ho and Manjari Chatterjee Miller) of the Routledge Handbook of China-India Relations (2020).
JULY, 01, 2020
China-India tensions along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh in June 2020 indicate that relations between the giants of Asia are brittle. The military clash of June 15 is unsettling, but both powers must take the long view. The relationship is complex. However, at the heart of it is the border quarrel over which they went to war in 1962. Despite negotiations before and after the war, over several decades, they have not resolved their differences. A settlement is a necessary condition for long-term peace. Unfortunately, the border quarrel is not ripe for resolution. In the meantime, the Line of Actual Control (LAC) must be stabilized.
This essay argues that rather than pursuing a settlement of the border or insist on defining the LAC to the satisfaction of both parties, they should aim for a new structure of diplomacy. This new structure would rework the erstwhile diplomacy between China and India and tackle the problem of patrolling transgressions in fourteen key “pockets” where tensions tend to flare along the vast frontier.
The Old Diplomacy
Until June 15, 2020, China and India had not inflicted casualties on each other after the 1962 war, except in the incidents of 1967 and 1975. Stability was partly a function of geography. The Himalayas made it difficult and dangerous to carry out military operations of any great scope. Nuclear weapons and growing conventional military capabilities deepened the implausibility of war.
Beyond deterrence, after Rajiv Gandhi’s Beijing visit in 1988, China and India built a diplomacy of regular high-level summits, military confidence-building measures (CBMs), border negotiations, and trade. This structure helped further undergird the peace. It has however come under increasing strain. The border confrontations of 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017 and now 2020 indicate that the old diplomacy is not enough. Its four elements have not softened conflict or fostered trust to the point that a resolution of the border quarrel has been made possible and stability and peace are assured.
Without jettisoning the diplomacy of the post-1988 period altogether, it is time to consider three initiatives which could restore trust more effectively.
Resetting Summitry
First, while China-India summitry has played a crucial role at key moments, it needs to be reset.
The 1988 Deng Xiaoping-Rajiv Gandhi meeting was a breakthrough. At it, the two sides agreed that despite differences over the border it was time to normalize relations and to restart negotiations on a final settlement of the boundary. The summits of 1993 and 1996 were notable for accords on the first set of military CBMs. At the 2003 summit, China and India agreed to the appointment of Special Representatives (SRs) to discuss the nature of a boundary settlement. The 2005 summit saw the first fruits of the SR-level discussions, namely, a broad set of guidelines on which a settlement might be reached.
Since 2010, the two sides have held bilateral summits almost every year. In 2010, they signed a hotline agreement. The 2014 summit, despite the shadow of the Chumar confrontation, brought Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi together for their first bilateral summit. The first informal summit, in 2018, just months after the Doklam standoff, was intended to repair relations and resulted in a directive to their militaries to improve communications. The 2019 informal summit was less substantive, but it repeated the need for continued strategic communication between the two governments.
The bilateral summits since 1988 have played a positive role in China-India relations. They have however lost their edge. This is to be expected when they are held with such regularity. To be productive and have a lasting impact, summits need careful preparation and should only be held when substantive outcomes have been clearly defined. The signing of a well-curated and truly consequential accord must be the objective. Leaders need to “put something on the line” otherwise there is little incentive to follow through on commitments. Furthermore, officials and departments down the chain must get the sense that summit agreements are important and must be honoured. Summits build a process of cascading trust. They can erode trust when they are routinized and open-ended.
Back-channel Diplomacy
This suggests a second and more positive initiative: back-channel diplomacy. New Delhi used this with Islamabad between 1999 and 2016 (and perhaps continues to do so). In 2006-07, the mechanism almost produced an agreement on the Kashmir dispute. China and India need to invest in a similar problem-solving mechanism that supports the build up to a substantively rich summit.
Instead of regular and sometimes anodyne summits, China and India could benefit from a dedicated and sustained communication process between trusted high-level envoys who outside the public glare negotiate on key disputes. The envoy must have the trust and respect of the leaderships and must report directly to the leader. Unhindered access to the top leadership is vital.
In the case of China-India, the envoys have a potentially rich agenda including the border quarrel, crisis management, combating terrorism, policies towards various third parties, bilateral economic relations, and climate change cooperation. But to be effective, the back-channel must be given as narrow and definite an agenda as possible since no envoy can range across too broad a spectrum of issues.
Virtual Patrolling
The third initiative flows from the idea of the back-channel. Since a back-channel cannot be about everything at once, the first thing it should be about is stabilizing the border. China and India negotiated on the border for years before the 1962 war and then again, almost without interruption, since 1981. It would be infructuous to return to that subject at this point. More plausible and viable is to focus on the fourteen “pockets” that have been identified as the most contested. It is in these pockets that border confrontations have occurred and are most likely to recur.
Confrontations arise from patrolling areas of vital interest with hazy boundaries. Stabilizing the contested pockets might be achieved without human patrolling. Active military posts and forward deployed units would be withdrawn from these areas to be replaced by a combination of monitoring technologies. Sensors, cameras, drones, and satellite reconnaissance in combination would constitute a formidable surveillance system. Admittedly, a virtual system may not work in all pockets all of the time. Moreover, its deployment presumes that both sides are indeed committed to maintaining peace. The idea can only proceed on an understanding that pending a final resolution of the border and without prejudice to either side’s claims, the two countries prefer peace over war. The hardware and the software for a system of virtual patrolling exists. It is time for China and India to replace 19th century with 21st century forms of border control.
Conclusion: Rebuilding Trust
The events of June 2020 have been a jolt but present an opportunity to rethink bilateral diplomacy. At the core of the three inter-related propositions advanced here is the notion that China and India have to build trust differently from the recent past. Resetting the summits, instituting a back-channel, and replacing real with virtual patrolling in select frontier areas could lay the basis for an abiding peace. The new diplomacy could rebuild trust to the point that a final border settlement becomes possible.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.