DOCSLIB.ORG

Why Nationalism Alone Cannot Solve the Sino-Indian Border Dispute

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Why Nationalism Alone Cannot Solve the Sino-Indian Border Dispute ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 Why Nationalism Alone Cannot Solve the Sino-Indian Border Dispute EPW ENGAGE Any meaningful attempt to solve the border dispute will necessitate India rethinking its China policy. On 1 January, China released a statement saying they were seeking an “early harvest”- based settlement of the nearly 3,500 km Sino–Indian border dispute, which includes confidence-building measures, such as demarcating the border in Sikkim, enabling cross- border trade along border towns, and implementing a code of conduct for troops stationed in the region. This statement was preceded by the 22nd round of border talks between the two countries in December, and by an “informal summit” between the Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. However, beyond the oft-used diplomatic rhetoric, the real outcomes of these meetings, if any, remain unknown. Despite this recent—and public—bonhomie between China and India, relations between the two countries have been fraught in the recent past. China reacted sharply to India’s abrogation of Article 370, calling it “unlawful” and “void,” and also stated that the move challenged the country’s sovereignty in those areas. It also requested a special meeting to discuss Kashmir at the United Nations Security Council, before eventually withdrawing its request. India maintains that Kashmir is an "internal matter." Further, in 2017, the two countries’ respective armies were engaged in a two-month-long standoff in Doklam, where the Chinese army was attempting to construct a road in an area that India claimed did not belong to them. The border issue stems from the McMahon Line, which was drawn by then Foreign ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 Secretary Henry McMahon in 1914 to create a “strategic” border for India in the North East. The line advanced India’s territorial claims of the North by some 20,000 square miles, and the British were allegedly aware that this would cross into what China claimed to be their territory. Moreover, the Nehru government is criticised for pursuing a nationalist “Forward Policy,” triggering the 1962 Sino-Indian war, and also for refusing to negotiate with China. However, even today, India’s fundamental foreign policy outlook towards China—and indeed, issues of territorial sovereignty—is unshifting, and fails to go beyond the nationalist rhetoric. This reading list discusses the issue of the Sino–Indian border and the possibility of peace at a time when both countries are vying to emerge as leaders of the Asian continent. 1) The Nehru Government's Numerous Missteps The People's Republic of China came into being in 1949, and at the time, was concerned with resolving territorial sovereignty disputes with neighbouring countries along the lines of “what history had left them,” which included accepting the McMahon Line as the defacto border—this meant that at the time, they did object to India asserting its claim upto the McMahon line. However, Neville Maxwell writes that the 1962 Sino–Indian war was of the then government's making, when it decided, in the 1950s, to print new maps of India that showed large swathes of territory—especially Aksai Chin—beyond the line as belonging to the Indian state. Unknown to him [Nehru] at that time—and of course he had seen no reason to enquire—Beijing held the area to be historically Chinese territory, and were in full control of it. Tightening the lock on his own approach and that of his successors, he ruled that “this frontier should be regarded as a firm and definite one which is not open to discussion with anybody” and ordered that as far and as soon as possible it be made good on the ground, “especially in such places” as might be claimed by China. With that instruction he lit the fuse that led to the explosion of border war. Furthermore, Maxwell says that Zhou Enlai, the then Chinese Premier, even offered in 1960 to legitimise India’s then territorial holdings in the spirit of “mutual understanding and mutual accommodation,” but the Indian government refused to negotiate. He [Enlai] met an iron wall of refusal to negotiate, an implacable insistence that China must withdraw from all territory claimed by India—why? An American scholar who spent years interviewing those who were Nehru’s closest advisers advanced this answer: “The Indians perceived in the Chinese wish to negotiate an attempt to denigrate the historical authenticity of the ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 Indian nation. A true nation would not, in the Indian view, be asked to negotiate its historically evolved borders. That request or demand could come only from a neighbour who (like the former British rulers) regarded the Indian nation as an artificial creation.” (Hoffman 1990: 256) The government's decision to refuse to negotiate, coupled with armed incursions into what the Chinese claimed as their own land, put India on an “escalation strategy,” writes Maxwell, which committed the country to the use of force to realise its territorial ambitions. The Indian policy for settlement of the China borders was set, and it holds to this day, with one modification India would: – Insist that all sectors of its border with China were already defined, indisputable and therefore, non- negotiable; – As soon as possible advance its state forces into the territory claimed; – Refuse to enter into any agreement for maintaining the status quo until all territory claimed by India was under Indian control; – At all stages refuse to submit its claimed border alignments to negotiation. Each of those points was in absolute opposition to the Chinese approach, and in sum the policy amounted to insistence that definition of the Sino-Indian borders would be for decision by India alone. 2) Assessing India’s Territorial Claims H Srikant writes that India claiming Aksai Chin and other areas has been done on the basis of “imaginary historical evidence.” To begin with, India as a nation state is a recent creation, and while it may have existed as a civilisational entity before that, to claim territory on the basis of what Hindu scriptures would mean that India could also claim land within Pakistan and Afghanistan as its own. It is strange that India, which like many other states in the world recognises Tibet as an integral part of China, considers the McMahon Line as inviolable, knowing very well that China has never recognised the line as its border with India … going by that logic, India should give up some of its territory in the north-east since it was never a part of the so-called Indian civilisation. What the colonial rulers did or what Hindu scriptures and folklore say cannot be a rational basis for territorial claims. Moreover, Srikant cautions against embedding nationalism in the discourse around the border issue, which he argues can be used to serve the interests of a select group of people. ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 Historically, nationalism is a progressive force as long as it is fighting feudalism and colonialism. However, once a nation-state becomes a reality, nationalism can become a tool in the hands of reactionaries to mislead and manipulate the citizens into serving the interests of certain privileged classes or groups of people.2 If one remains only a nationalist, he or she can never see the mistakes and limitations of his or her own country and blindly support whatever the ruling elite thinks and does in the name of the “motherland”... the elite consensus coupled with effective media management has led citizens to believe that India was an innocent victim of Chinese aggression in 1962 and that China has occupied thousands of square miles of territory that legitimately belongs to India. 3) Any Agreement Will Have to Address China’s Concerns with Tibet Srinath Raghavan writes that for China to officially recognise the McMahon Line would be for them to implicitly acknowledge that Tibet enjoyed some form of independence in the early 1900s, and was able to successfully carry out boundary negotiations with India. Further, Raghavan argues that India’s Tibet policy will be at the forefront of any boundary discussions. While India does not officially recognise Tibet, it has provided refuge to its leaders, and although unofficial, a Tibetan “government-in-exile” functions in India. Ties between India and Tibet have always been viewed by Beijing with wariness, not to say suspicion. The troubles in Tibet have accentuated China’s concerns about the “Dalai Clique” and its links with India. Repeated calls in Indian public discourse on the need to play the “Tibet card” only serve to stoke China’s suspicions … Contrary to wishful thinking in some quarters, the Tibetan issue does not afford any leverage to India. The issue has no purchase on the Indian political class or public opinion. This being case, the realistic course is to find ways of offering more convincing reassurances to China about its attitude to Tibet. This will be essential to removing needless mistrust and to reaching an accord on the boundary. Towards the latter end, it is equally imperative that the Indian government informs and shapes domestic opinion on China. The bogey of an aggressive China may well become a selffulfilling prophecy, for strident views on both sides feed on and accentuate the other. 4) Finding a Workable Solution On the global level, negotiations have historically served India well—the 123 nuclear agreement with the United States being an important milestone in India's diplomatic prowess.Neville Maxwell says that the only way the “talks” can be productive is if India rethinks its refusal to negotiate. He argues that India today needs to relinquish its claim to ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 Aksai Chin, and also drop the argument that the McMahon line is the legally accepted international boundary, and perhaps even learn from the Russian example of solving territorial disputes.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • FORTY YEARS of FOLLY What Caused the Sino-Indian Boundary Conflict and Why the Dispute Is Unresolved by Neville Maxwell [Publish
    N Maxwell from Critical Asian Studies March 2003. From http:// chinaindiaborderdispute.wordpress.com FORTY YEARS OF FOLLY What caused the Sino-Indian boundary conflict and why the dispute is unresolved By Neville Maxwell [Published in CRITICAL ASIAN STUDIES March 2003] Provided by the author to the archive at http:// chinaindiaborderdispute.wordpress.com India’s distrustful animus towards China is a toxic element in world politics, preventing development of what might have been the fruitful and long-lasting entente to which the first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru confidently looked forward in the early 1950s, and which could have been a powerful stabilising factor for Asia. The hostility derives from the Indian political class’s wounded memory of their country’s humiliation in the brief, fierce border war of 1962, which Nehru himself misled them into perceiving as the outcome of Chinese aggression. It is a tragic – or perhaps tragic-comic – underlying truth that the border dispute is factitious, and would be readily resolvable if only India would follow the example of all China’s many other neighbours, and submit the issues to the normal diplomatic procedures for boundary settlement. The fortieth anniversary of the border war has shown again how ill-served the Indian political class is by those of its intelligentsia who write on that subject. Decades after the full story of the dispute and conflict emerged most of them still hawk the old, disproved falsehoods about an innocent India, victim of a calculated surprise act of aggression by an expansionist China;1 others creep backwards towards the truth which previously they denied, but their progress is crippled and cut short by their obligation of repeated prostrations to the memory of Nehru.2 Still others show a curious fickleness in their approach.
    [Show full text]
  • Britain and the Sino-Indian War of 1962
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Repository@Nottingham The Long Shadow of Colonial Cartography: Britain and the Sino-Indian War of 1962 PAUL M. McGARR Department of American and Canadian Studies, University of Nottingham, UK ABSTRACT This article examines British responses to the Sino-Indian border war of 1962. It illustrates how, in the years leading up to the war, Britain’s colonial legacy in the Indian subcontinent saw it drawn reluctantly into a territorial dispute between Asia’s two largest and most powerful nations. It analyses disagreements in Whitehall between the Foreign Office and Commonwealth Relations Office over the relative strength of India and China’s border claims, and assesses how these debates reshaped British regional policy. It argues that the border war was instrumental in transforming Britain’s post-colonial relationship with South Asia. Continuing to filter relations with India through an imperial prism proved unsatisfactory; what followed was a more pragmatic Indo-British association. KEY WORDS: India, China, Sino-Indian border, Foreign Office, Commonwealth Relations Office. If two giant countries, the biggest countries of Asia, are involved in conflict, it will shake Asia and shake the world. It is not just a little border issue, of course. But the issues surrounding it are so huge, vague, deep-seated and far-reaching, inter-twined even, that one has to think about this with all the clarity and strength at one’s command, and not be swept away by passion into action which may harm us instead of doing us good.
    [Show full text]
  • Myth and Misrepresentation in Australian Foreign Policy Menzies and Engagement with Asia
    BenvenutiMyth and Misrepresentation and Jones in Australian Foreign Policy Myth and Misrepresentation in Australian Foreign Policy Menzies and Engagement with Asia ✣ Andrea Benvenuti and David Martin Jones In 1960 the deputy leader of the Australian Labor Party, Gough Whitlam, declared that Australia “has for ten years missed the opportunity to interpret the new nations to the old world and the old world to the new na- tions.”1 Throughout the 1960s, Labor spokesmen attacked the foreign policy of Sir Robert Menzies’s Liberal–Country Party coalition government (1949– 1966) for both its dependence on powerful friends and its alleged insensitivity to Asian countries.2 This criticism of Liberal foreign policy not only persisted in later decades but also became the prevailing academic and media ortho- doxy.3 As we show here, Labor’s criticism constitutes the basis of a tenacious political myth that demands critical reevaluation. Menzies’s political opponents and, subsequently, his academic critics have claimed that his attitude toward Asia was permeated by suspicion and conde- scension. From the 1970s, an inchoate Labor left and academic understand- ing contended that conservative Anglo-centrism “had placed Australia on the losing side of almost every external engagement from the Suez Crisis to Viet- nam.”4 A decade later, analysts writing in the context of the Labor-driven doc- trine of “enmeshment” with Asia reinforced this emerging foreign policy or- 1. Gordon Greenwood and Norman Harper, eds., Australia in World Affairs 1956–1960 (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1963), p. 96. 2. See, for instance, Mads Clausen, “‘Falsiªed by History’: Menzies, Asia and Post-Imperial Australia,” History Compass, Vol.
    [Show full text]
  • The Sino-Indian Border Dispute: Implications of China's Economic
    The Sino-Indian Border Dispute: Implications of China’s Economic Reforms on the 1987 Border Conflict By Kunsang Gyurme Submitted to Central European University Department of International Relations and European Studies In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in International Relations and European Studies Supervisor: Indre Balcaite Word Count: 16,599 CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2016 Abstract This thesis builds on the existing works on the conflictual Sino-Indian relationship since birth of respective nations to the late 1980s. The first part of this thesis aims to examine the Sino-Indian relationship in two periods, 1947-1962 and 1978-1987. It investigates how two similar conflicts at the same border had different outcomes. I focus on the existing literature to determine the various factors that led to conflict in both periods. By employing the comparative political method, I show that economic interdependence factor was the variable that deescalated border conflict in 1987. The second part of the thesis applies the liberal view of economic interdependence and theory of trade expectations in the Sino-Indian case of the late 1980s. I argue that economic interdependence can explain the absence of war between the two nations. It shows that China’s economic reform and “open poor policy” had a huge impact on China’s prioritizing foreign trade and economic development since the reform was closely linked to the survival of communist regime. Thus China chose cooperation over war in the border conflict with India. As a result, border conflict between India and China did not escalate into a fully-fledged war in 1987.
    [Show full text]
  • Recent Publications (Articles, Books, Journals)
    HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies Volume 7 Number 1 Himalayan Research Bulletin Article 7 Spring 1987 Recent Publications (Articles, Books, Journals) Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya Recommended Citation . 1987. Recent Publications (Articles, Books, Journals). HIMALAYA 7(1). Available at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol7/iss1/7 This Research Article is brought to you for free and open access by the DigitalCommons@Macalester College at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. "The Coming of Macchendranath to Nepal: Comments from a Comparative Point of View." By N.J. Allen. Vol. I, Oxford University Papers on India. Edited by N.J. Allen, R. Gombrich, T. Raychaudhuri & G. Rizvi. Delhi: O.U.P., 1986. pp.75-102. "Mating Patterns among the Dirang Monpa of West Kameng District, Arunachal Pradesh." By Saumitra Barua. In Current Anthropology, April 1986, vol. 27, no. 2. pp. 188-190. "Himalayan Polynandry: Bondage Among Women in Jaunsar Bawar." By Jayoti Gupta. In Chains of Servitude: Bondage and Slavery in India. Edited by Utsa Patnaik and Manjari Dingwaney. New York: Apt Books, Inc., 1986. pp. 258-28l.ISBN 0-86131-490-5. $40. "Tooth Size Variation in Prehistoric India." By John R. Lukacs. In American Anthropologist, vol. 87, no. 4, December 1985. pp. 811-825. "Natural Background of the Yak: Transhumance in the Langtang Valley, Nepal Himalaya." By Yugo ono and Ayako Sadakane.
    [Show full text]
  • India's Wars: the Indo-Pakistani Wars and the India-China Border Conflict
    India’s Wars: The Indo-Pakistani Wars and the India-China Border Conflict Takenori Horimoto Since India gained its independence in 1947, it has waged four wars intermittently by the 1970s against Pakistan (Indo-Pakistani Wars) and China (the India-China War). While all of these wars were caused by territorial disputes, the termination of the wars was largely influenced by internal factors as well as the contemporary international situation on each occasion. I. Indo-Pakistani Wars 1. The Kashmir dispute as a root cause of the Indo-Pakistani Wars The Kashmir dispute was the root cause of the Indo-Pakistani Wars. The map below shows all of South Asia (inset) and Kashmir. Pakistan and India in the maps were formerly integrated and made up British India. Kashmir was also a part of British India, and a “princely state” ruled by the Maharaja. Although the Maharaja was Hindu, about three-fifths of the population of the princely state was Muslim (followers of Islam). The difference in religion between the Maharaja and the population was the starting point of the Kashmir dispute, and remains so to the present.1 India and Pakistan were respectively founded by being partitioned and gaining independence from British India in August 1947. When being partitioned and gaining their independence, the territory was divided into India, which was predominantly Hindu, and Pakistan, which was predominantly Muslim. As a result, Pakistan consisted of East and West Pakistan, where many Muslims lived. In the case of Kashmir, the Maharaja was granted a degree of authority to decide whether to belong to India or Pakistan.
    [Show full text]
  • The Sino-Indian Border War 1962 New Perspectives
    The Sino-Indian Border War 1962 New Perspectives Jyotirmoy Banerjee / Jadavpur University, India A new volume, The Sino-Indian !ar of #$%&' New Perspectives, edited (y Amit )* +as ,upta and -oren. -üthi, provides fresh insi0hts into the (rie" #$%& (order war that set India1s non ali0ned policy teeterin0, (ut left the People1s )epublic of 2hina 3P)24 relatively unscathed* Eleven authors and twelve chapters survey the (ack0round, policies, and errors surroundin0 the event, usin0 (oth new and e7istin0 archival materials* Amon0 the novelties' Amit +as ,upta on India1s policy, +ai 2haowu on 2hina1s strate0y, and Payal Banerjee on the little 6nown wartime pli0ht of India1s 2hinese citi.ens* The #$%& (order dispute arose, in part, from the fact that ri0id frontiers were a !estern concept imposed on Asia, and whose after e"fects can still (e felt today* As recently as the mid&8#9, jin0oistic voices were heard in the standoff over 2hina1s road (uildin0 near the Bhutan (order in the Northeast, which threatened India1s 2hicken1s Neck corridor* :ther (ilateral irritations include the 2hina Pa6istan Economic 2orridor 32P52, a massive 2hinese investment in rival Pa6istan1s infrastructure4, 2hina1s opposition to (oth the inclusion of ;asood A.har 3the Pa6istani founder of Jaish e ;ohammad in <ashmir4 on a UN terror list, and to India1s mem(ership in the Nuclear Suppliers1 ,roup 3which see6s to B5)-INER <:--5, KALTER KRIEG = B5)-IN 2ENTER >:R 2:-+ WAR STU+IES &8#9 Jyotirmoy Banerjee The Sino-Indian Border War 1962 prevent nuclear proliferation, founded in response to India1s #$9? nuclear tests4* Yet a discussion of Sino-Indian relations must also re0ister the robust economic ties (etween the two nations A (ilateral trade of more than USB98 (illion annually, ma6in0 the P)2 a top trade partner of India A as well as joint military e7ercises in &8#%* >urthermore, periodic spi6es in (order tension have not seriously distur(ed the peace for decades* -oren.
    [Show full text]
  • Border Conflict and Tibet: the Asian Giants and Their Ih Story of Power Struggle Evan Towt SIT Study Abroad
    SIT Graduate Institute/SIT Study Abroad SIT Digital Collections Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection SIT Study Abroad Spring 2010 Border Conflict and Tibet: The Asian Giants and Their iH story of Power Struggle Evan Towt SIT Study Abroad Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/isp_collection Part of the Asian Studies Commons, and the Defense and Security Studies Commons Recommended Citation Towt, Evan, "Border Conflict and Tibet: The Asian Giants and Their iH story of Power Struggle" (2010). Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection. 882. https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/isp_collection/882 This Unpublished Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the SIT Study Abroad at SIT Digital Collections. It has been accepted for inclusion in Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection by an authorized administrator of SIT Digital Collections. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Border Conflict and Tibet: The Asian Giants and their History of Power Struggle Towt, Evan Academic Director: Onians, Isabelle Senior Faculty Advisor: Hubert Decleer Franklin and Marshall College Anthropology Asia, India, Himachal Pradesh, McLeod Ganj Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Tibetan/Himalayan Studies, SIT Study Abroad, Spring 2010 “You are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody." -Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Defender of Anarchy A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality 2 Abstract The South Asian world is dominated by India and China, their combined populations equaling almost a full half of humankind. In 1962, the two countries clashed over their border.
    [Show full text]
  • India's China War
    GEORGE ANTHOMY NEVILLE, MAXWELL INDIA'S CHINA WAR Now, it is a question of fact whether this village or that village or this little strip of territory is on their side or on our side. Normally, wherever these are relatively petty disputes, well, it does seem rather absurd for two great countries. immediately to rush at each other's throats to decide whether two miles of territory are on this side or on that side, and especially two miles of territory in the high mountains, where nobody lives. But where national prestige and dignity is involved, it is not the two miles of territory, it is the nation's dignity and self- respect that becomes involved. And therefore this happens. Jawaharlal Nehru, Lok Sabha, September 4th, 1959 JONATHAN CAPE THIRTY BEDFORD SQUARE LONDON FIRST PUBLISHED 1970 © 1970 BY NEVILLE MAXWELL JONATHAN CAPE LIMITED 30 BEDFORD SQUARE, LONDON, WCI ISBN O 224 61887 3 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY EBENEZER BAYLIS & SON LIMITED THE TRINITY PRESS, WORCESTER, AND LONDON BOUND BY G. & J. KITCAT LIMITED, LONDON I • COLLISION COURSE 89 88 INDIA'S CHINA WAR even before that. If officials in Peking had looked into the boundary cross Aksai Chin —two of these might have reached its westernmost question in the western sector in the early 1950s they would have noted edge but they went nowhere near the road. The first the Indian Govern­ that Indian maps showed an indeterminate claim which included Aksai ment learned about that was from gratified notices in the Chinese press Chin. But these maps—in which the boundary was shown only by an about the completion of this major road-building feat.
    [Show full text]
  • China Borders: Settlement and Conflicts—Selected Papers, by Neville Maxwell, Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014, Pp
    China Borders: Settlement and Conflicts—Selected Papers, by Neville Maxwell, Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014, pp. 289, £49.99 Mandip Singh* This book is a compilation of papers written by journalist Neville Maxwell over a career span of five decades. Those who look at China– India relations closely, notably the border dispute, will know that Neville Maxwell is not new to the India–China border discourse. Accredited to The Times, he was their South Asia correspondent in New Delhi during the tumultuous years from 1959–62, when he extensively covered the Indo-China War of 1962. A self-confessed fan of Nehru till he revisited the India–China War, Maxwell wrote his side of the war account in the well-acclaimed book, India’s China War, first published in 1970. That book was a clear indictment of Nehru and his government for the debacle of 1962. This book, a compilation of his writings in various journals/ publications after 1962, only reinforces his viewpoint. The book is laid out in four broad parts, in which Neville Maxwell reiterates that China has been magnanimous, passive and accommodating in its dealings on border issues with its neighbours. He picks on the examples of India, Russia and Hong Kong to buttress his argument. In his view, not only has China been wronged but also that she has been a victim of scheming Western policies, often to the extent of trickery. To a China watcher today, * Brigadier Mandip Singh is a serving officer presently posted in Army Training Command, Shimla. The views expressed here are his own and do not represent that of the Indian Army or the Government of India.
    [Show full text]
  • Between Geostrategic Rivalry and Economic Competition Emergence of a Pragmatic India-China Relationship
    China Perspectives 2008/3 | 2008 China and its Continental Borders Between Geostrategic Rivalry and Economic Competition Emergence of a Pragmatic India-China Relationship Jean-François Huchet Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/4073 DOI: 10.4000/chinaperspectives.4073 ISSN: 1996-4617 Publisher Centre d'étude français sur la Chine contemporaine Printed version Date of publication: 1 July 2008 Number of pages: 50-67 ISSN: 2070-3449 Electronic reference Jean-François Huchet, « Between Geostrategic Rivalry and Economic Competition », China Perspectives [Online], 2008/3 | 2008, Online since 01 July 2011, connection on 28 October 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/4073 ; DOI : 10.4000/chinaperspectives.4073 © All rights reserved Special feature s e v Emergence of a Pragmatic i a t c n i e India-China Relationship h p s c (1) r Between Geostrategic Rivalry and Economic Competition e p JEAN-FRANÇOIS HUCHET This article analyses the extent of the China-India diplomatic thaw since the early 1990s. Without ignoring the existence of multiple cooperation channels, or seeking to minimise the importance of the considerable achievements realised in recent years by the two governments towards normalising their relations, the article show that relations between the two Asian giants remain hamstrung by a series of geostrategic and economic rivalries. Despite fast growth in trade and in specific areas of economic cooperation, the normalisation of ties between Beijing and New Delhi does not yet constitute a genuine strategic partnership. “In public, India and China expressed undying friend - ertheless interesting, given the growing weight of the two ship, but on the ground each was working to protect Asian giants on the world arena, to consider the nature and its strategic interests.” (2) evolution of this bilateral relationship in the context of inter - national relations and global trade.
    [Show full text]
  • Looking East to Look West
    LOOKING EAST TO LOOK WEST Looking East half title page.indd 1 10/9/09 9:18 AM The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) was established as an autonomous organization in 1968. It is a regional centre dedicated to the study of socio-political, security and economic trends and developments in Southeast Asia and its wider geostrategic and economic environment. The Institute’s research programmes are the Regional Economic Studies (RES, including ASEAN and APEC), Regional Strategic and Political Studies (RSPS), and Regional Social and Cultural Studies (RSCS). ISEAS Publishing, an established academic press, has issued almost 2,000 books and journals. It is the largest scholarly publisher of research about Southeast Asia from within the region. ISEAS Publishing works with many other academic and trade publishers and distributors to disseminate important research and analyses from and about Southeast Asia to the rest of the world. 00 Prelims-i-ix.indd 2 10/2/09 11:31 AM LOOKING EAST TO LOOK WEST Lee Kuan Yew’s Mission India SUNANDA K. DATTA-RAY P E N G U I N V I K I N G INSTITUTE OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN STUDIES PENGUIN BOOKS Singapore India Looking East title pagenew.indd 1 10/9/09 9:19 AM First published in Singapore in 2009 by ISEAS Publishing Institute of Southeast Asian Studies 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace, Pasir Panjang Singapore 119614 for distribution in all countries except India. E-mail: [email protected] Website: http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg This is a reprint edition published by arrangement with the original publisher, Viking, Penguin Books India, and for sale outside the Indian Subcontinent.
    [Show full text]