The Creation and Mobilization of Anti-China Sentiment by Interest Groups in Indian Society (2012–2018) Adithi Sanjay The Creation and Mobilization of Anti-China Sentiment by Interest Groups in Indian Society (2012–2018) Adithi Sanjay © 2020 Center for International and Regional Studies Georgetown University in Qatar CURA Paper No. 1 CIRS Undergraduate Research About the Author Advancement (CURA) Adithi Sanjay (Class of 2021) is a senior at The CIRS Undergraduate Research Advancement GU-Q majoring in International Politics. She (CURA) program facilitates research experiences for spent two years at Georgetown University’s Georgetown University-Qatar undergraduate students. Washington, DC campus, where she was part CURA initiatives aim to enhance students’ research of the Georgetown Journal of International capacity through skill-development workshops, Affairs, GU India Ink, Zeeba Investment Group, discussion seminars, peer-to-peer learning mecha- and Georgetown Global Consulting. Adithi nisms, and focused mentorship. CURA also provides has a particular interest in regional security opportunities for students to present their original architecture, border tensions in South Asia, research publicly, and to submit papers for publishing as well as India’s foreign policy strategy in the the CURA Paper Series. CURA programs will assist context of both contemporary security issues and undergraduates in: the nation’s diplomatic history. 1. preparing for an undergraduate research experience 2. identifying and defining research goals 3. developing a range of research skills Acknowledgements 4. presenting their research findings 5. publishing their original research Adithi thanks CIRS for giving her the opportunity to further develop her research as To learn more about CURA, visit https://bit.ly/CIRS_CURA well as Georgetown University in Qatar and Qatar Foundation for all of their support. Introduction Between 1950 and the present day, Sino–Indian diplomatic relations have been through significant ebbs and flows. In the years following India’s independence from British colonialism in 1947, the phrase “Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai” (India and China are brothers) was often used to describe the relationship between the two nations.1 India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, romanticized and admired China, claiming that India and China were “two great Asian civilizations” that would forge a common destiny.2 From a strategic perspective, Nehru believed that the cultivation of strong ties with China would best serve Indian national security interests, given that Tibet was under heavy Chinese influence and could not effectively serve as a geostrategic buffer between India and China.3 Despite efforts to maintain friendly Sino-Indian relations in India’s early years as an independent nation, a general sense of apprehension, rooted in the unresolved Indo-China border issue, was exacerbated in the late 1950s * An earlier version of this paper was originally submitted by the author as an assignment for the Krogh Honors Seminar at the Edmund E. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. 1 Rajiv Sikri, “The Tibet Factor in India-China Relations,”Journal of International Affairs 64, no. 2 (2011): 57; Tibet Justice Center, Tibet’s Stateless Nationals III: The Status of Tibetan Refugees in India (Oakland, CA: Tibet Justice Center and Boston University, 2016), 28, www.bu.edu/law/ files/2016/09/Tibets-Stateless-Nationals-II-FINAL-report.pdf. 2 Sikri, “The Tibet Factor in India-China Relations,” 57. 3 Tibet Justice Center, Tibet’s Stateless Nationals III, 28. CREATION AND MOBILIZATION OF ANTI-CHINA SENTIMENT • 1 with more frequent Chinese incursions into Indian territory. For example, in In 2017, the Pew Global Attitudes Survey reported that only 26 percent of a note given to the Chinese Charge d’Affaires on September 9, 1956, India Indians viewed China as “favorable,” while 56 percent saw China’s growing reported that Chinese troops crossed the Shipki La mountain pass into Indian military strength as bad for India. Additionally, 51 percent of Indians felt territory and threatened to use grenades against the Indian Border Police China’s growing economic strength was bad for India, and 44 percent forces.4 Furthermore, in 1957, China constructed a road connecting Tibet named China’s power and influence as a top threat.7 The same year, the BBC and Xinjiang in the Aksai Chin region; this road passed through the Yangpa, World Public Opinion survey concluded that only 19 percent of Indians Khitai Dawan, and Haji Langer areas in Indian-controlled Ladakh.5 The viewed Chinese influence as mainly positive.8 Existing data on anti-China infrastructure project significantly heightened the existing sense of distrust sentiment in India, such as the Pew and BBC surveys, has been reported at of China among segments of the Indian population, as it was perceived as the national-level only, which communicates anti-China sentiment in India a threat to India’s territorial sovereignty. Additionally, new political maps in extremely broad terms. This generalization makes it difficult to analyze the published by China in the 1950s also threatened Indian sovereignty. They different drivers of anti-China sentiment among various interest groups in highlighted China’s efforts to tighten its grip on Tibet as the state claimed India, such as political civil society, non-political civil society, and the Indian large swaths of territory in the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA), in government. Given that each of these three stakeholder groups has different present-day Arunachal Pradesh.6 economic, political, and social interests vis-à-vis China, it is important to analyze potential variations in anti-China sentiment among these groups Over the decades, Sino–Indian relations underwent several transformations, in order to understand the drivers of any identifiable divergences in their and these shifts have affected the ways in which China is perceived by respective opinions. regional and national political parties, as well as the public, in India. This paper presents a case study of the mobilization of anti-China sentiment in Understanding the dynamics of anti-China sentiment in India is India by constructing and analyzing a unique dataset on the issues driving particularly important due to the salience of China-related issues in anti-China protests in India, based on reports in national- and regional- domestic Indian politics, and their implications for cooperation between level Indian newspaper articles published between 2012 and 2018. This India and China on economic, sociocultural, and political bases. Given period was chosen primarily because it covers the leadership of two Indian India’s large population of 1.3 billion, as well as the diversity of social, prime ministers, Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi; is characterized cultural, and economic exchanges and interactions between China and by fluctuations in the Sino–Indian relationship; and saw two major military different subgroups across various regions of India, the generalization of standoffs at the Indo–China border in 2013 and 2017 that were triggered anti-China sentiment at the national level is problematic in that it glosses by escalations in unresolved territorial disputes between the two nations. over the nuances of the issues driving public opinion of China in India. 7 Bruce Stokes, Dorothy Manevich, and Hanyu Chwe, “Three Years in, Modi Remains Very 4 Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, “Notes, Memoranda and Letters Exchanged Popular: India and the World,” Pew Research Center, Global Attitudes Project, November 15, and Agreements Signed between The Governments of India and China 1954–1959,” White Paper 2017, 5, www.pewresearch.org/global/2017/11/15/india-and-the-world. I, 20‒21, https://theasiadialogue.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/WhitePaper1NEW.pdf. 8 GlobeScan, “Backgrounder: Country-by-Country Results: Views of China’s Influence by 5 Ibid., 26. Country, 2017,” News Release, April 7, 2017, https://globescan.com/sharp-drop-in-world-views- 6 Sikri, “The Tibet Factor in India-China Relations,” 61. of-us-uk-global-poll/#backgrounder-country-by-country-results. 2 • CURA PAPER NO. 1 CREATION AND MOBILIZATION OF ANTI-CHINA SENTIMENT • 3 Furthermore, survey data published by organizations such as the Pew A Brief History of Sino–Indian Relations Research Center plays an influential role in shaping global narratives and informing policy decisions at the national level; therefore, it is crucial The first major inflection point in Sino–Indian relations came in 1959 that the nuances of issues such as anti-China sentiment are analyzed during the Lhasa uprising in Tibet. Chinese agricultural collectivization in detail. The objective of this study is to fill this gap by conducting an efforts, implemented as part of Chairman Mao Zedong’s Great Leap analysis of factors that yield insights into the mobilization of anti-China Forward campaign, resulted in large-scale rebellions in Kham and Amdo, sentiment by three different stakeholder groups in India: non-political two of the three regions of Tibet. Large-scale destruction of monasteries civil society organizations, political parties and affiliated organizations, and the murder of monks by Chinese authorities led to an eruption of and the Indian central government. violence and caused thousands of individuals to flee into central Tibet and India.9 Due in part to strong sympathy for the plight of Tibetans by the This paper begins by outlining