Transcript Business 2 Template

Indo-China Relationships
Harsh Vora
AA EE 021
(Electrical Engg.)
INDEX
• Geographical Overview
• Early History
• Middle Ages ( Sino-Sikh
War)
• After Independence
• (1960s to 2000s)
• Alleged 2009 naval-stand
off
Goegraphical Overview
• 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.
Early History
Antiquity
• 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.
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
Monastery—and Bodhidharma—founder of
Chan/Zen Buddhism—while 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.
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
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 wasn’t 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.
1960s
Sino-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.
• 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.
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.
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
• 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
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.
• 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 IndiaTaipei 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.
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.
• 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.[28][29][30] 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]
Alleged 2009 naval stand-off
• On February 3, 0739h, ifeng.com, a Chineselanguage portal, published an alleged reprint
detailing two Chinese destroyers and an antisubmarine 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.
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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