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Essay: China’s international relation with india and others world giants

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China’s international relation with india and others world giants

China’s International Relation with India and others World Giants

China’s theory of foreign relations started in pre-modern days, when China was the Middle Kingdom. It was the center of the civilized world, with the Chinese emperor as the leader. Making believe that China ruled with the mandate of heaven, all of East Asia accepted this, even on its weakness periods as of the Song Dynasty when it did not deal with actual power relationships. China was from early times a center of trade, many interactions from the outside world came through the Silk Road. For example; in the first or second century with the contact with important leaders of the Roman Empire and during the thirteenth century in contact with Marco Polo.

Via this Silk Road, China started its international relations with other countries, where not only goods where traded but also language and cultures where being mix. India and China are the world’s oldest civilization and have coexisted in peace for most of the time, yet on 1950’s their relationship started to deteriorate due to borders disputes. Even though there where little political contact before the 1950’s, both countries have had wide-ranging of cultural contact as of the first century, especially with the transmission of Buddhism from India to China through the Silk Road. In the present day, the dispute over who should have Tibet, and who should rule it, has slow down the progression of their relations.

In 1950 when China regained its control over Tibet by force and in keeping with a policy of friendship with China, and in an attempt at conciliation, varied with no small amount of disdain, Indian Prime Minister Nehru guaranteed Chinese leaders that India had not interest in any political nor territorial gains, and wasn’t looking for any special constitutional rights in Tibet, but that traditional trading privileges must continue. In the course of India’s support, Tibetans leaders signed a contract in May 1951 recognizing Chinese dominion and control while at the same time ensuring that the present socio-political systems in Tibet would be permitted to carry on as before. According to an article in the U.S. Library of Congress titled “India: A Country Study,” in April 1954, India and China signed an eight-year contract on Tibet that set forward the foundation of their association in the shape of the Panch Shila, which meant literally five principles. These are the mutual respect, mutual sovereignty, mutual non-interference, mutual benefit and peaceful co-existence. This successfully established the Tibet issue in the short term; however was to be one of the numerous major China-Indian conflicts to come.

Until 1959, regardless of border skirmishes and contentions over lines of setting down on territorial maps, Chinese leaders had cordially guaranteed India that there was no territorial disagreement along the border. Yet, the circumstances began to come to the top with the finding of a completed Chinese road cutting diagonally the Aksai Chin region of the Ladakh District of Jammu and Kashmir by an Indian reconnaissance team. To worsen the matters, in January 1959, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai wrote to Prime Minister Nehru rejecting the Indian Prime Minister’s argument that the border was based on treaty and custom, asserting as an alternative that China had never acknowledged the 550 mile McMahon Line drawn up during the 1914 Simla Convention which defined the eastern section of the border between India and Tibet, a differentiation which Zhou Enlai termed “a product of the British policy of aggression” against China. Then to worsen the matter for bilateral friction at that time was the fact that the Dalai Lama had sought refuge in Dharmsala, Himachal Pradesh, in March 1959, and thousands of Tibetan refugees settled in northwestern India, mainly in Himachal Pradesh. China accused India of expansionist intentions in Tibet and responded by claiming 104,000 square kilometers of territory over which India’s maps showed clear autonomy.

Chinese and India relations continued to deteriorate during the rest of the 1960s and the early 1970s in opposite proportion to the warming Chinese and Pakistani relations and were aggravated by the worsening of Chinese and Soviet affairs. The crisis came when China backed Pakistan in its 1965 war with India. However, diplomatic contact between the two governments remained at a bare minimum and was never formally severed, even when “in August 1971, India signed its Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union and the United States, and China sided with Pakistan in its December 1971 war with India”( India: A Country Study). Some semblance of desire to engage amicably still remained, as evident in renewed bilateral efforts to recover relations after the Soviet Union invasion.

Thus, although Sino-Indian conflicts have been at times very serious, resulting even in war, there has never been a full unleashing of aggression. Rather, both sides have always managed to exhibit some, even though often small, measure of restraint in their dealings with each other.
A more genuine warming in relations was made possible by Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to China in December 1988, the first by an Indian Prime Minister to China since Nehru’s visit in 1954. This historic occasion saw the division of continuing difficulties in border negotiations from the other aspects of expanding relations between India and China. This trend of separating the more volatile bilateral issues was to continue with Jiang Zemin’s visit to India in 1996 which was to end up in the de-linking of China’s Pakistan policy from its India policy. Gandhi’s visit was also marked by a joint statement� issued by China and India that strained the need to re-establish friendly affairs, once again on the basis of the Panch Shila. India and China also decided to widen bilateral ties in a range of areas. Critics have observed that there occurred from this time forward an obvious shift of importance away from the declaration of huge territorial claims and high moral principles. Instead there ensued an increased rhetoric concerning the need for “common recognitions” and “adjustment” on the part of the Chinese, and an increased emphasis on historical, legal, geographical realities on the part of the Indians.

Both parties now called for a “fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable” compromise solution to their boundary question. There was a display of determination by both China and India to resolve the border issue. The two governments agreed to hold annual diplomatic consultations between their respective committee on economic and scientific cooperation and establish a joint working group on finding a solution to the boundary issue. This was to continue with top level dialogue, increased by the December 1991 visit of Chinese premier Li Peng to India and the May 1992 reciprocal visit to China of Indian President Ramaswami Venkataraman. Between December 1988 and June 1993, no less than six rounds of talks by the Indian-Chinese Joint Working Group on the Border Issue were held, and border tensions were reduced through confidence building measures which included mutual troop reductions, regular meetings of local military commanders, and the advance notification of the commencement of military exercises. A visible sign of the improvement of Chinese-Indian bilateral relations was the resumption of border trade in July 1992 after a hiatus of more than thirty years. Consulates were also reopened in Bombay and Shanghai in December 1992 and in June 1993 the two sides agreed to open an additional border trading post. Good relations and mutual confidence were high on the agenda when, during Sharad Pawar’s July 1992 visit to Beijing, the first ever by an Indian minister of defence – the two militaries agreed to develop not only academic, scientific and technological exchanges, but also military exchanges and a Chinese naval vessel was scheduled to make a visit to an Indian port.

While the determined but slow improvement of relations in the 1990s could not forefend the May 1998 Indian nuclear tests called Pokhran II, which once again brought Chinese-Indian bilateral relations to a new low, it may have played a part in ensuring that the fallout of this with regards to Chinese-Indian ties was less dire that it could have been, although there was indeed enough good reason for fresh hostility. Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes unequivocally declared China to be India’s “potential threat number one” and Beijing choice to interpret India’s nuclear tests as part of India’s containment policy towards China in its quest for regional hegemony only further exacerbated the matter. It is worth noting though, that while the Chinese Government was clearly offended and exerted much pressure on New Delhi to recant its rhetoric on the China threat, some critics contend that Beijing was not unduly concerned by the nuclear tests as any real threat by itself.
It is against this historical backdrop of alternating friction and goodwill that the latest phase of growing trust in China-India relations must be viewed. However, it must be underscored that the most recent warming in China-Indian relations is unique and cause for optimism. As previous bilateral hostilities stopped just short of prolonged war, the goodwill phases of Sino-Indian relations had also stopped just short of true or sustained rapprochement. The singularity of the newest upturn in Chinese-Indian ties lies in the fact that it is accompanied by forays into joint ventures, various types of cooperation and even tentative beginnings of a strategic partnership as both governments begin to recognize opportunities for mutual benefit in each other.

The most recent phase of good relations between China and India was ushered in by the successful visit of Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to China in June 2003, during which Prime Minister Vajpayee and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao signed a Declaration on Cooperation as well as nine protocols on bilateral cooperation, thereby fully normalizing Sino-Indian relations. Both leaders had pledged that their countries would work together for regional peace and stability, and progress was made even with regards to the long-standing Sino-Indian boundary dispute: the two leaders reaffirmed their commitment of 1993 and 1996 to maintaining peace and tranquility along the border, and to take steps to codify the Line of Actual Control. There has also to date been six rounds of talks held between designated Special Representatives from both countries on the border issue. This is significant in that it has raised the level and stakes of border talks from the foreign secretary level of before, and, seen in the context of the unsuccessful border talks of the 1980s as well as the 15 rounds (to date) of meetings under the auspices of the Joint Working Group, is indicative of the renewed commitment on both sides to find a viable solution to the border issue, despite the fact that a political framework for solving the problem still proves elusive. A significant aspect of the June 2003 agreement was that India reiterated its recognition of Tibet as part of Chinese territory, and made a pact not to support separatist activities by Tibetan exiles in India. China, on its part, agreed to open a point for border trade in Sikkim, thus indirectly accepting Sikkim’s status as part of India. This was given even clearer emphasis by the deliberate publication of a new map in 2005 which includes the new delineations. In short, there is definitely room for growing optimism that these one-time adversaries are becoming, if not friends, at least productive partners. Following the change of government in India from May 2004 onwards, the leaders of both countries have met again several times, including at the bilateral summit in New Delhi in April 2005, and are expanding relations on many fronts, not least the economic one. As Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was quoted as saying recently, “Who could have imagined that China would emerge as [India’s] second-largest trade partner?” Now it seems that past predictions of an “Asianism” in which India and China would come together to a prominent position on the world stage is emerging as a distinct possibility. Both nations have, to date, ostensibly put aside their hostile past in favor of the benefits that friendly relations may bring. Indeed, accompanying their parallel rise is an inexorable sense that for India and China, whether in the economic or strategic sense, or whether pertaining to their aspirations towards global power status, their interests are certainly converging.

It is no surprise that rivalry in the oil sector between these two developing giants is aggressive, since India is just as ambitious for goods as China. The two are battling each other in the search for oil from Sudan to Siberia as they try to protected the resources to fuel their vast economies. Both of Asia’s largest rising powers desperately need energy, especially oil. China today imports roughly half of its oil. The latent potential in the Chinese-Indian engagement does not end with joint economic or even collaborative action on the world stage. Germane to sustainable peaceful relations is mutual understanding and consensus on the security front. Tentative forays into the formation of a strategic partnership have already been made. Couched within Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s historic visit to India in April 2005 and the ensuing agreements, is the possibility of a strategic partnership between the two nations, one that would eventually redesign the world order. India’s Foreign Secretary, Shyam Saran has alluded to the “global and strategic” implications of the new Chinese-Indian partnership. It is possible that China and India, who have been critical of American unilateralism, may join together in “balancing” the current hegemony. For instance, one critic has postulated that they might take action in opposing the US plan for the weaponry of outer space. Both countries are able to see beyond their ongoing disagreements, whether over the border issue or the Dalai Lama, to acknowledge the value of cooperation on the strategic front. They have come a long way from hostile posturing and outright war, to economic cooperation and the tentative beginnings of a productive security partnership. The fact that India and China are willing to extend their interaction from the economic sector into the political arena is indicative of the beginnings of maturing confidence between the two, but more than that, both are beginning to recognize the similar issues and concerns that they share. During former Indian Defense Minister George Fernandez’ meeting with Chinese Minister Wen Jiabao in 2003, both came to the conclusion that their main domestic problems included unemployment, regional disparities and the enduring poverty of farmers, which led Fernandez, who was once famous for his hostility towards China, finally to concede, “we are both sailing in the same boat”. However, it is these surprising parallels between the two countries that make an even deeper form of cooperation advantageous. Both have embarked in radical economic reform which have to date lifted their respective economies far beyond expectation. Yet, the two also share massive populations with correspondingly huge resource demands, especially for land, water and energy. Furthermore, environmental decay and high HIV infection rates are problems common to both. In terms of security, both face similar dilemmas: for China, its dispute with the US over Taiwan, and for India, the ongoing dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir. While broad parallels and similarities between these two vastly different countries do not necessarily count for much, there is a worthwhile point to be made in that in some significant ways, both are brought together by their shared interests. Thus more than just cooperation, lesson learning and policy exchange can be even more profitable between India and China. One sector in which lesson-learning is already taking place is in the all important IT industry, where China’s hardware sector is a complement to India’s thriving software industry.

Today, both countries have in recent times tried and accomplished to fuse diplomatic and economic ties, and as a result, the two countries’ relations have become closer and in the present day. Japan is seen as a rival for both China and India, and it seems that the race for being the world’s super power never ends. Japan being the third of the world’s largest economic is being threatened by these two newly emerging powers. “Japan and India are Asia’s two oldest democracies. Japan and China are the Asia’s oldest enemies. The contrast could not be greater” (Emmott). After World War II and the return of International community to Japan, its democratic policies have being very close with the United States and also cooperating with the United Nations. By the Republic of India being the world’s most-populous electoral democracy country and having one of the fastest economic growth rates in the world right now. Also, with the world’s second largest armed forces, and fourth largest economy by purchasing power parity, It is India’s growing international influence that increasingly gives it a more prominent voice in their global affairs. ___2 But because China is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and other reasons, China is view at a higher position than India in the international hierarchy of states and in popular perceptions (Mansingh).

James Heitzman and Robert L. Worden, editors. India: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1995.

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