IndoChina Relationships

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Indo-China Relationships

• Harsh Vora
• AA EE 021
• (Electrical Engg.)

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INDEX

• Geographical Overview
• Early History
• Middle Ages ( Sino-Sikh War)
• After Independence
• (1960s to 2000s)
• Alleged 2009 naval-stand off

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Goegraphical Overview
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• China and India are separated by the formidable
  geographical obstacles of the Himalayan mountain
  chain. China and India today share a border along
  the Himalayas and Nepal and Bhutan, two states
  lying along the Himalaya range, and acting as
  buffer states. In addition, the disputed Kashmir
  province (jointly claimed by India and Pakistan)
  borders both the PRC and India. As Pakistan has
  tense relations with India, Kashmir's state of
  unrest serves as a natural ally to the PRC.
• Two territories are currently disputed between
  the People's Republic of China and India Aksai
  Chin and Arunachal Pradesh. Arunachal Pradesh is
  located near the far east of India, while Aksai
  Chin is located near the northwest corner of
  India, at the junction of India, Pakistan, and
  the PRC. However, all sides in the dispute have
  agreed to respect the Line of Actual Control and
  this border dispute is not widely seen as a major
  flashpoint.

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Early HistoryAntiquity

• India and China had relatively little political
  contact before the 1950s. Despite this, both
  countries have had extensive cultural contact
  since the first century, especially with the
  transmission of Buddhism from India to China.
  Trade relations via the Silk Road acted as
  economic contact between the two regions.
• China and India have also had some contact before
  the transmission of Buddhism. References to a
  people called the Chinas, now believed to be the
  Chinese, are found in ancient Indian literature.
  The Indian epic Mahabharata (c. 5th century BC)
  contains references to "China", which may have
  been referring to the Qin state which later
  became the Qin Dynasty. Chanakya (c. 350-283 BC),
  the prime minister of the Maurya Empire and a
  professor at Takshashila University, refers to
  Chinese silk as "cinamsuka" (Chinese silk dress)
  and "cinapatta" (Chinese silk bundle) in his
  Arthashastra.

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Middle Ages

• After the transmission of Buddhism from India to
  China from the first century onwards, many Indian
  scholars and monks travelled to China, such as
  Batuo (fl. 464-495 AD)founder of the Shaolin
  Monasteryand Bodhidharmafounder of Chan/Zen
  Buddhismwhile many Chinese scholars and monks
  also travelled to India, such as Xuanzang (b.
  604) and I Ching (635-713), both of whom were
  students at Nalanda University in Bihar. Xuanzang
  wrote the Great Tang Records on the Western
  Regions, an account of his journey to India,
  which later inspired Wu Cheng'en's Ming Dynasty
  novel Journey to the West, one of the Four Great
  Classical Novels of Chinese literature.

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Sino-Sikh War

• In the 18th to 19th centuries, the Sikh
  Confederacy of the Punjab region in India was
  expanding into neighbouring lands. It had annexed
  Ladakh into the state of Jammu in 1834. In 1841,
  they invaded Tibet with an army and overran parts
  of western Tibet. Chinese forces defeated the
  Sikh army in December 1841, forcing the Sikh army
  to withdraw from Tibet, and in turn entered
  Ladakh and besieged Leh, where they were in turn
  defeated by the Sikh Army. At this point, neither
  side wished to continue the conflict, as the
  Sikhs were embroiled in tensions with the British
  that would lead up to the First Anglo-Sikh War,
  while the Chinese was in the midst of the First
  Opium War with the British East India Company.
  The Chinese and the Sikhs signed a treaty in
  September 1842, which stipulated no
  transgressions or interference in the other
  country's frontiers

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After Independence

• Jawaharlal Nehru based his vision of "resurgent
  Asia" on friendship between the two largest
  states of Asia his vision of an internationalist
  foreign policy governed by the ethics of the
  Panchsheel, which he initially believed was
  shared by China, came to grief when it became
  clear that the two countries had a conflict of
  interest in Tibet, which had traditionally served
  as a geographical and political buffer zone, and
  where India believed it had inherited special
  privileges from the British Raj.
• However, the initial focus of the leaders of both
  the nations was not the foreign policy, but the
  internal development of their respective states.
  When they did concentrate on the foreign
  policies, their concern wasnt one another, but
  rather the United States of America and the Union
  of Soviet Socialist Republics and the alliance
  systems which dominated by the two superpowers.

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1960sSino-Indian War

• Border disputes resulted in a short border war
  between the People's Republic of China and India
  in 20 October 1962. The PRC pushed the unprepared
  and inadequately led Indian forces to within
  forty-eight kilometres of the Assam plains in the
  northeast and occupied strategic points in
  Ladakh, until the PRC declared a unilateral
  cease-fire on 21 November and withdrew twenty
  kilometers behind its contended line of control.
• At the time of Sino-Indian border conflict, a
  severe political split was taking place in the
  Communist Party of India. One section was accused
  by the Indian government as being pro-PRC, and a
  large number of political leaders were jailed.
  Subsequently, CPI split with the leftist section
  forming the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in
  1964. CPI(M) held some contacts with the
  Communist Party of China in the initial period
  after the split, but did not fully embrace the
  political line of Mao Zedong.

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• Relations between the PRC and India deteriorated
  during the rest of the 1960s and the early 1970s
  as Sino-Pakistani relations improved and
  Sino-Soviet relations worsened. The PRC backed
  Pakistan in its 1965 war with India. Between 1967
  and 1971, an all-weather road was built across
  territory claimed by India, linking PRC's
  Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region with Pakistan
  India could do no more than protest. The PRC
  continued an active propaganda campaign against
  India and supplied ideological, financial, and
  other assistance to dissident groups, especially
  to tribes in northeastern India. The PRC accused
  India of assisting the Khampa rebels in Tibet.
  Diplomatic contact between the two governments
  was minimal although not formally severed. The
  flow of cultural and other exchanges that had
  marked the 1950s ceased entirely. The flourishing
  wool, fur and spice trade between Lhasa and India
  through the Nathula Pass, an offshoot of the
  ancient Silk Road in the then Indian protectorate
  of Sikkim was also severed. However, the biweekly
  postal network through this pass was kept alive,
  which exists till today.

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1970s

• In August 1971, India signed its Treaty of Peace,
  Friendship, and Cooperation with the Soviet
  Union, and the United States and the PRC sided
  with Pakistan in its December 1971 war with
  India. By this time, the PRC had just replaced
  the Republic of China in the UN where its
  representatives denounced India as being a "tool
  of Soviet expansionism."
• India and the PRC renewed efforts to improve
  relations after the Soviet Union invaded
  Afghanistan in December 1979. The PRC modified
  its pro-Pakistan stand on Kashmir and appeared
  willing to remain silent on India's absorption of
  Sikkim and its special advisory relationship with
  Bhutan. The PRC's leaders agreed to discuss the
  boundary issue, India's priority, as the first
  step to a broadening of relations. The two
  countries hosted each others' news agencies, and
  Mount Kailash and Mansarowar Lake in Tibet, the
  mythological home of the Hindu pantheon, were
  opened to annual pilgrimages from India.

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1980s

• In 1981 PRC minister of foreign affairs Huang Hua
  was invited to India, where he made complimentary
  remarks about India's role in South Asia. PRC
  premier Zhao Ziyang concurrently toured Pakistan,
  Nepal, and Bangladesh.
• In 1980, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi
  approved a plan to upgrade the deployment of
  forces around the Line of Actual Control to avoid
  unilateral redefinitions of the line. India also
  increased funds for infrastructural development
  in these areas

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• In 1984, squads of Indian soldiers began actively
  patrolling the Sumdorong Chu Valley in Arunachal
  Pradesh (formerly NEFA), which is north of the
  McMahon Line as drawn on the Simla Treaty map but
  south of the ridge which Indian claims is meant
  to delineate the McMahon Line. The Sumdorong Chu
  valley "seemed to lie to the north of the McMahon
  line but is south of the highest ridge in the
  area, and the McMahon line is meant to follow the
  highest points" according to the Indian claims,
  while the Chinese did not recognize the McMahon
  Line as legitimate and were not prepared to
  accept an Indian claim line even further north
  than that. The Indian team left the area before
  the winter. In the winter of 1986, the Chinese
  deployed their troops to the Sumdorong Chu before
  the Indian team could arrive in the summer and
  built a Helipad at Wandung.Surprised by the
  Chinese occupation, India's then Chief of Army
  Staff, General K.Sundarji, airlifted a brigade to
  the region.

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1990s

• As the mid-1990s approached, slow but steady
  improvement in relations with China was visible.
  Top-level dialogue continued with the December
  1991 visit of PRC premier Li Peng to India and
  the May 1992 visit to China of Indian president
  R. Venkataraman. Six rounds of talks of the
  Indian-Chinese Joint Working Group on the Border
  Issue were held between December 1988 and June
  1993. Progress was also made in reducing tensions
  on the border via confidence-building measures,
  including mutual troop reductions, regular
  meetings of local military commanders, and
  advance notification of military exercises.
  Border trade resumed in July 1992 after a hiatus
  of more than thirty years, consulates reopened in
  Bombay (Mumbai) and Shanghai in December 1992,
  and, in June 1993, the two sides agreed to open
  an additional border trading post. During Sharad
  Pawar's July 1992 visit to Beijing, the first
  ever by an Indian minister of defence, the two
  defense establishments agreed to develop
  academic, military, scientific, and technological
  exchanges and to schedule an Indian port call by
  a Chinese naval vessel.

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• Possibly indicative of the further relaxation of
  India-China relations, at least there was little
  notice taken in Beijing, was the April 1995
  announcement, after a year of consultation, of
  the opening of the Taipei Economic and Cultural
  Center in New Delhi. The center serves as the
  representative office of the Republic of China
  (Taiwan) and is the counterpart of the
  India-Taipei Association in Taiwan both
  institutions have the goal of improving relations
  between the two sides, which have been strained
  since New Delhi's recognition of Beijing in 1950.
• Sino-Indian relations hit a low point in 1998
  following India's nuclear tests in May. Indian
  Defense Minister George Fernandes declared that
  "China is India's number one threat", hinting
  that India developed nuclear weapons in defense
  against China's nuclear arsenal. In 1998, China
  was one of the strongest international critics of
  India's nuclear tests and entry into the nuclear
  club. Relations between India and China stayed
  strained until the end of the decade.

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2000s

• With Indian President K. R. Narayanan's visit to
  China, 2000 marked a gradual re-engagement of
  Indian and Chinese diplomacy. In a major
  embarrassment for China, the 17th Karmapa, Urgyen
  Trinley Dorje, who was proclaimed by China, made
  a dramatic escape from Tibet to the Rumtek
  Monastery in Sikkim. Chinese officials were in a
  quandary on this issue as any protest to India on
  the issue would mean an explicit endorsement on
  India's governance of Sikkim, which the Chinese
  still hadn't recognised. In 2002, Chinese Premier
  Zhu Rongji reciprocated by visiting India, with a
  focus on economic issues. 2003 ushered in a
  marked improvement in Sino-Indian relations
  following Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari
  Vajpayee's landmark June 2003 visit to China.
  China officially recognized Indian sovereignty
  over Sikkim as the two nations moved toward
  resolving their border disputes.

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• Until 2008 the British Government's position
  remained the same as had been since the Simla
  Accord of 1913 that China held suzerainty over
  Tibet but not sovereignty. Britain revised this
  view on 29 October 2008, when it recognised
  Chinese sovereignty over Tibet by issuing a
  statement on its website.282930 The
  Economist stated that although the British
  Foreign Office's website does not use the word
  sovereignty, officials at the Foreign Office said
  "it means that, as far as Britain is concerned,
  'Tibet is part of China. Full stop.'"31 This
  change in Britain's position affects India's
  claim to its North Eastern territories which rely
  on the same Simla agreement that Britain's prior
  position on Tibet's sovereignty was based
  upon.32

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Alleged 2009 naval stand-off

• On February 3, 0739h, ifeng.com, a
  Chinese-language portal, published an alleged
  reprint detailing two Chinese destroyers and an
  anti-submarine helicopter engaged in a half an
  hour naval stand off against an unidentified
  submarine. Within two days, the same story was
  reprinted by many other Chinese-language sites
  and eventually caught on by major news outlets
  abroad which reported that the unidentified
  submarine had belonged to India.
• By February 5, the story was rejected by both
  governments.35 The story was a fabrication
  based on an actual anti-submarine exercise the
  PLAN conducted in 2008. However, until this day,
  many Chinese-language sites still carry this fake
  story.

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China wins vote on Arunachal Pradesh

• In August, China won a vote on a disclosure
  agreement, which prevents Asian Development Bank
  from formally acknowledging Arunachal Pradesh as
  part of India. All ADB activities in Arunachal
  Pradesh effectively ceased.

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