At a conference on geopolitics, a Chinese participant made a rather interesting—if not intriguing—pitch in the context of the 54-month-long standoff on the Line of Actual Control (LAC). He said that both India and China needed to make a ‘new beginning’ while referring to the process of disengagement that has been playing out intermittently over the past four years.
It provoked a thought where it would leave the rather carefully constructed architecture of agreements that had been put into place to manage the LAC between 1993 and 2013 across different Indian and Chinese administrations.
To provide a bit of perspective, the Sino-Indian relationship went into a deep freeze after the border war of 1962. It was marked by periodic clashes and prolonged standoffs like the ones at Nathu La in 1967 and Somdurong Chu in 1986-87.
In 1988, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi broke the ice when he visited Beijing in December and met with the Chinese leadership, including Deng Xiaoping.
However, it was only in 1993 that the first pact with China, titled Border Peace and Tranquility Agreement, came to be signed. It was followed in 1996 with the Agreement on Confidence Building Measures. In June 2003, during Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s visit to China, the Declaration on Principles for Relations and Comprehensive Cooperation between the Republic of India and the People’s Republic of China was arrived at along with a memorandum between the governments on expanding border trade. It was during this visit that the Special Representatives Mechanism on the India-China boundary issue was also set up.
It was followed by an agreement in April 2005 between the two governments on the Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the India-China Boundary Question along with a protocol for implementation of military confidence-building measures in April 2005.
In 2012, the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China border affairs was agreed upon, followed by the Border Defence Cooperation agreement in 2013.
Despite having such a panoply of covenants, incidents continued to happen between China and India along the LAC and elsewhere too. There were transgressions by the Chinese in April 2013 in the Depsang plains, also called the Daulat Beg Oldie incident.
Daulat Beg Oldie, shorn of any mysticism the name might evoke, means ‘the spot where the great and rich man died’ in Turki language. Sultan Said Khan of the central Asian Yarkent Khanate ostensibly died here in the 16th century while returning from a military campaign in Ladakh and Kashmir that was more a slash-and-burn or loot-and-scoot expedition.
In September 2014, the Chumar standoff took place while President Xi Jingping was visiting India; it took 16 days to resolve. It was followed by the Doklam crisis from June to August of 2017, which took 73 days to unwind.
After Doklam, an informal summit took place at Wuhan in China on April 27 and 28, 2018. A part of the Indian readout from the summit stated, “The two leaders expressed their support for the work of the special representatives on the India-China boundary question and urged them to intensify their efforts to seek a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable settlement. The two leaders underscored the importance of maintaining peace and tranquility in all areas of the India-China border region in the larger interest of the overall development of bilateral relations. To this end, they issued strategic guidance to their respective militaries to strengthen communication in order to build trust and mutual understanding and enhance predictability and effectiveness in the management of border affairs.”
The Chinese readout from Wuhan summit read, “Both sides agree to properly manage and control their differences. Both sides have the maturity and wisdom to handle their differences through peaceful discussion and by respecting each other’s concerns and aspirations. They agree to use the special representatives’ meeting on the boundary question to seek a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable settlement. The two militaries will strengthen confidence-building measures and enhance communication and cooperation to uphold border peace and tranquility.”
Despite almost congruent reads on the boundary question, the chill of Doklam never really went away. On October 12 and 13 of 2019, Modi and Xi met again at Mamallapuram. The Indian readout on the meeting stated, “The two Leaders have exchanged views on outstanding issues, including on the boundary question. They have welcomed the work of the special representatives and urged them to continue their efforts to arrive at a mutually-agreed framework for a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable settlement based on political parameters and guiding principles that were agreed by the two sides in 2005. They reiterated their understanding that efforts will continue to be made to ensure peace and tranquility in the border areas, and that both sides will continue to work on additional confidence building measures in pursuit of this objective.”
Again, the Chinese readout was aligned. It stated, “To solve the boundary issue, the two countries should seek a solution that is fair, reasonable and acceptable to both sides in accordance with the agreement on political guiding principles. We should prudently deal with issues concerning each other’s core interests, and for problems that cannot be solved at the moment, we should properly manage and control them.
“Third, China and India should practically improve military and security exchanges and cooperation. We should promote military relations along the correct direction of enhancing trust, dispelling doubts and strengthening friendly cooperation, carry out activities including professional cooperation and joint training, continuously enhance mutual trust between the two militaries, strengthen cooperation between law enforcement and security departments, and safeguard regional security and stability.”
If this was the state of the relationship till October 2019, then what happened between October 2019 and April 2020 that resulted in the Chinese transgressions across LAC, in Galwan in June 2020, the 21 rounds of talks between the military commanders and the subsequent 54-month standoff?
Therefore, when the Chinese talk of a ‘new beginning’, where does it leave this panoply of pacts?
(Views are personal)
(manishtewari01@gmail.com)
Manish Tewari | Lawyer, third-term MP and former Union Information and Broadcasting Minister