A Battle for ‘Barren Land’: Rethinking Chinese Interests in the Sino-Indian Border Dispute
"India-China-Border-Dispute-620x400" by bmnnetwork is licensed under CC BY 2.0
By Alyssa Resar
In September of 2020, for the first time in over four decades, shots were fired along the Sino-Indian border’s Line of Actual Control (LAC). The violence was the result of months of escalating tension, including a deadly incident in May that resulted in over fifty casualties. For many in China and India, these events are only the most recent in a protracted conflict that began with the nations’ first border war in 1962. Neither side expects this fighting to be the last. As one Indian scholar put it: “It is a no-man’s land. Even if the [present] issue is resolved, this will only flare up.”[1] Or as a Chinese historian noted, with current conditions the way they are, “Sino-Indian border disputes and problems” will persist.[2]
Their comments raise an important question. Why has this dispute endured for decades over land that both sides consider “barren”?[3] A breadth of studies has provided various answers, which clarify important dynamics at play: from analyses of resource control and the border region, to studies of the dispute’s geostrategic implications.[4] Given the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) rapidly growing military power in the Indo-Pacific, many recent articles on the issue focus on the changing military balance between China and India.[5]
Yet, with the exception of M. Taylor Fravel’s groundbreaking work on territorial disputes and regime security, there are few studies that explore the importance of Chinese domestic politics to the issue.[6] This is despite the fact that the 1962 Sino-Indian War occurred against the backdrop of a revolt in Tibet that “sparked the largest internal threat ever” to the PRC’s territorial integrity and to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) authority within its western border region.[7] Moreover, the region still contains potential sources of unrest today, especially near Xinjiang.
In this article, I build upon existing research on Chinese domestic politics and territorial disputes by examining the current impasse between India and China from the perspective of CCP objectives and interests. In particular, I highlight the importance of “regime security” — defined as a “condition where governing elites are secure from … challenges to their rule” — to Chinese decision-making throughout the dispute.[8] To do so, I first begin with a case study of the 1962 Sino-Indian War in light of the revolt in Tibet to demonstrate why the region mattered for Party leaders’ sense of security. To probe the issue more deeply, I highlight not only the significance of this consideration in officials’ minds, but also how it affected — and in some cases shaped — their decision-making, influencing everything from their perceptions of threat to their judgments of territorial value.[9] In my analysis, I draw from a breadth of Chinese and Indian government documents, Chinese military (People’s Liberation Army) statements, military memoirs, and recently declassified Chinese-language materials. In the final section of the article, I turn to several recent incidents along the border to highlight that although the uprising in Tibet has long passed, the possibility that a similar event could transpire commits the Chinese government to control over the region — and helps explain, in part, the intractability of the border issue writ large.
Given the salience of the dispute within the Sino-Indian relationship, research that sheds light on each angle of the issue and how it is perceived by both sides will help policymakers chart a path forward for the two nations. The well-documented links between territorial disputes and war increase the urgency of managing the dispute for both governments and the rest of the world.[10] In this case, examining the seventy-year history of the border conflict can clarify which Chinese interests are at stake and why, illuminating the factors that will influence the likelihood of Chinese military involvement in the future.
Map of the Disputed Border Between China and India[11]
Arun Ganesh, India Pakistan China Disputed Areas Map, 2011, National Institute of Design, India, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:India_Pakistan_China_Disputed_Areas_Map.png.
Historical Negotiations Over the Border: From Compromise “In No Circumstances” to “Mutual Accommodation”
This case study begins with the early stages of China’s border negotiations with India, when the Chinese government upheld an uncompromising stance on the disputed territory in both the western sector (referred to as Aksai Chin) and the eastern one (near Arunachal Pradesh, an Indian province below the McMahon Line)[12]. For example, in March 1960, a Chinese government document stipulated that India occupied thousands of square kilometers of Chinese territory in the “eastern,” “middle,” and “western” sectors, a report that stressed the geographic importance of each section.[13] A 1959 Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs memorandum emphasized that the western territory had “always belonged to China,” and argued that the McMahon Line delimiting the territory in the east had been illegitimately forced upon the Chinese government.[14] Moreover, in April of 1960, Premier Zhou Enlai stated, “In no circumstances are we going to accept or recognize the secret invention (border line) signed by Imperialists.”[15]
In May 1960, however, Chinese officials shifted their tone. In a visit to New Delhi, Zhou offered a “package deal” based in “mutual understanding and mutual accommodation.”[16] In exchange for recognizing India’s claim in the eastern sector, an area of 84,000 square kilometers, Zhou requested that the Indian government accept China’s claim to the western sector, an area of just 38,000 square kilometers. This deal would require recognition of the “imperialist” McMahon Line that China had refused to accept a month prior.[17]
Why such an abrupt reversal? The answer lies in understanding how the Chinese government determined the value of territory. In this case, Chinese leaders assessed the worth of the land in light of its import to them amid a tense domestic situation. In 1959, a revolt erupted in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, and soon grew into a multi-year, 87,000-strong rebellion that the Party was unable to control. Even after it sent in People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops to stabilize the region, Tibetan guerillas continued to operate well into 1962.[18] This rebellion jeopardized the CCP’s authority over the Tibetan population — a people over which it had just established control. Moreover, it occurred in a region threatening to the CCP’s governance because of its close proximity to the extended land border.[19] The Party not only viewed this revolt as a localized threat to its authority, but also it suspected that the United States and India had sent in undercover operatives to support the rebels.[20] Thus, the uprising was a widespread challenge to regime security within China’s boundaries that compromised the CCP’s international standing.
Suddenly, Aksai Chin became paramount to the government’s strategy to maintain authority in the region. The sector contained the Aksai Chin highway, which China had constructed in 1957 to gain access to Tibet. According to Chinese reports, it was “the only traffic artery linking [Xinjiang] to western Tibet, because to the northeast [lay] the great plain of Xinjiang through which direct traffic with Tibet was practically impossible.”[21] Because it offered access to Tibet, it provided an important entry point for PLA forces, as rebel attacks occurred most frequently in eastern Tibet.[22]
As the revolt expanded and Aksai Chin’s significance increased, Chinese leaders became increasingly willing to compromise on the disputed territory near Arunachal Pradesh, conceding more and more over time with little success. Zhou’s “package deal” reflected the Party’s eagerness to retain control over Aksai Chin, such that the “imperialist” boundary in the east became eminently negotiable. A 1962 letter from Zhou Enlai admitted that while “China does not recognize the so-called McMahon line,” it would be open to compromise “in the interest of settling the Sino-Indian boundary question.”[23] Then, a clash broke out in late July of 1962 among Indian and Chinese forces in the Chip Chap River valley of the western sector. Fearing an expansion of the conflict, Foreign Minister Chen Yi reaffirmed to Indian diplomats at a Geneva conference China’s willingness to acknowledge the McMahon Line in exchange for jurisdiction over Aksai Chin.[24] He then went so far as to propose a division of Aksai Chin between the two countries, if only China could retain control of the highway.[25] Finally, in February of 1962, Chinese diplomats proposed “joint use of the Xinjiang-Tibet highway.”[26]
Even this deal was rejected, however, and by September of 1962 the Chinese government at last realized that its efforts at diplomacy had failed.[27] Government officials concluded that India was soon to launch an attack on China’s border posts in the eastern and western sectors. In October 1962, believing it had no better option, China launched a month-long military offensive against Indian forces. After establishing a decisive military victory, the government declared a ceasefire.
Chinese forces began to unilaterally withdraw from the eastern sector, beyond the line the government had originally accepted. In the west, they maintained control of the land containing the highway alone. Notably, even there, political scientist Manjari Miller notes that the Chinese “not only withdrew their troops but went so far as to withdraw them beyond the [Line of Actual Control] rather than to it.”[28] This abdication of territorial gains highlights the Chinese government’s intense focus on the highway in the western frontier as a tool to suppress the revolt, whereas it was able to deprioritize territory that was considered less necessary for its efforts to secure the regime.
Though this decision was logical given the government’s calculation of its interests, it was astonishing to the international community. Indeed, many outside commenters noted how easily China could have occupied the whole region. Experts calculated that the PLA overran “3,750 square miles of NEFA and… every foot of contested territory in Ladakh.”[29] The Chinese military shared this view, describing the manner in which “seven brigades of the 4th Infantry Division were all utterly defeated. The 4th Infantry Division is India’s most elite squad.”[30] In the United States, President Kennedy himself remarked of the withdrawal: “Can you imagine the difficulty we would have with the Pentagon in pulling back and giving up territory that had cost that many casualties, no matter how great the political end it served?”[31]
The Perception of the Party Under Threat
China was able to relinquish the eastern territory in 1962 because Chinese decision-makers feared the loss of regime authority far more than they feared an Indian military attack. This preoccupation with the domestic situation shaped their evaluation of the dispute. In one meeting with an Indian delegation, Zhou put the matter simply: “Of course both aspects are related a—internal developments in Tibet, and the border question.”[32] One Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs document went further, noting that the border question was not merely related to internal developments but defined by the CCP’s ideological struggle: “The Sino-Indian border dispute … is [not] a struggle for the so-called barren land. In essence, the dispute is not even about the border. The Sino-Indian boundary question is a serious international class struggle.”[33]
Thus, the Chinese government viewed the withdrawal as its only option, given its desperation to stabilize Tibet. In the words of the Central Military Commission staff’s operational proposal, the “practical difficulties associated with China’s domestic situation” necessitated that China disengage from the conflict as quickly as possible.[34] Rather than spend resources retaining control over the eastern sector, officials thus shored up the military’s defenses along the highway in Aksai Chin.[35]
Ultimately, securing the regime, in this case by stabilizing Tibet, was a significant concern for the Chinese government as it pursued its territorial objectives within the western sector.[36] The territory in this region was valuable not only because it supported China’s defense from external threats, but also because it contained goods necessary to protect the regime. Additionally, Chinese leaders’ perceptions of the object of the threat at hand — the CCP — influenced their evaluation of the subject of the threat — the Indian government’s strategic priorities vis-à-vis the Party. This process of threat construction reveals how regime security operated on the perceptions and cognitive biases of government leaders, and it can explain why the Chinese military would retreat from the majority of the territory under dispute — while holding fast to Aksai Chin.
From 1962 and Back Again
The territory near the western sector has not been the site of a revolt approaching the size or intensity of the 1959 Tibetan rebellion in the decades since. While threats to regime security thus appear to be under control for the time being, existing evidence suggests that the risk of unrest nonetheless remains a significant concern for the Chinese government.[37]
First, it is no coincidence that the May 2020 clash happened after India’s construction of a feeder road in the Galwan Valley, which provides India access into Aksai Chin. Indeed, as Fravel wrote shortly after the incident, the construction of the road “helped provoke the standoff that began in May.”[38] This is because, as he notes, Chinese officials viewed the Galwan Valley “as a backdoor into Aksai Chin.”[39] Wang Dehua, a Chinese expert on South Asian issues at the Shanghai Institute of International Studies, corroborated this analysis. He not only argued that Aksai Chin has remained an “important issue” for the Chinese government but clarified that its significance rests, as in 1962, in the fact that it contains a transportation route that is “currently the only direct highway between Xinjiang and Tibet,” which thereby gives China an invaluable access point to the region.[40] The need for access via the highway remains intimately connected with regime security concerns. As Chinese analyst Yun Sun put it, Aksai Chin is “vital to Chinese control of its ‘ethnic frontiers’ in Tibet and Xinjiang.”[41]
Second, the events in May and September of 2020, which were considerably more intense than previous clashes, occurred against the backdrop of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s August 2019 decision to abrogate Article 370, thereby ending autonomy for Jammu and Kashmir and claiming Aksai China as India’s own.[42] Amplifying the Chinese government’s concern over the issue, Indian officials left little ambiguity regarding their intentions. On the day Modi abrogated Article 370, Amit Shah, India’s Home Minister, exclaimed that Indians were “ready to give [their] lives” to defend the territory, which “included” Aksai Chin.[43] Unsurprisingly, the decision was met with backlash in Beijing. A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said shortly after that India “is challenging China’s sovereign rights and interests by unilaterally revising domestic law…This is illegal, null and void.”[44] This “fierce opposition” to the transformation of the territory’s status, as American analyst and scholar Ashley Tellis wrote, laid the foundation for China’s “militaristic power play” along the LAC.[45] Indeed, India’s abrogation of Article 370 confirmed Chinese officials’ worst suspicions regarding India’s intentions and raised the stakes of the dispute for the Chinese government.
Third, it is notable that though the dispute in the eastern sector has not yet been resolved, tensions in the western region escalate considerably more often. This discrepancy suggests that to China, the western sector simply matters more; to this day, the Chinese government is willing to sacrifice Chinese lives to save it. As Wang Dehua acknowledged, this is because the dispute over Aksai Chin has unique significance for China: “[C]ompared with the 2017 Donglang standoff [in the eastern sector], the China-India Ladakh standoff [in the western sector] has caused more offense to the mainland.”[46] This “offense” is likely rooted in the Party’s sensitivity surrounding the western region’s implications for its domestic control, a consideration that continues to define the Chinese government’s thinking on the issue.
Conclusion
This article has demonstrated how the CCP’s interest in regime security has influenced Chinese officials’ understanding of the dispute — both in 1962 and today — as well as their calculus regarding the use of military force. While there are certainly other factors at play, including geopolitical, resource, and reputational concerns, this study has highlighted the impact of domestic politics on the dispute today, and how they have shaped its historic trajectory.[47]
There is no doubt that policymakers in India and China, and those in all other nations with an interest in the peaceful resolution of the border issue, must contend with the region’s implications for the CCP’s perceptions of its own security. The history I have examined in this study reveals a clear pattern: if a threat to the regime is sufficiently severe, and if other options have been exhausted, the Chinese government will not hesitate to use military force to gain control of territory it considers vital to its security and survival. At the very least, this study begins to explain why the dispute has endured despite the many efforts to resolve it at the negotiating table, and why negotiations in the future that do not address these domestic considerations are likely to fail.
However, this does not mean that war over Aksai Chin is inevitable. This history serves as a reminder that the CCP decided to pursue a military offensive in 1962 only when Party officials became desperate, after India continuously rejected Zhou’s calls for “mutual accommodation and mutual compromise.”[48] Today, the Chinese government remains committed to maintaining control of its western frontiers, especially via the Aksai Chin highway, and it will go to great lengths to do so. This commitment presents not just a warning but an opportunity. Like their predecessors in 1962, officials on both sides can choose to escalate the tensions by stoking the Chinese government’s fear of regime insecurity. Yet they can also pursue a different path, leveraging Chinese domestic interests to carve out territorial agreements and compromises that keep the barren land, at least momentarily, free of gunfire.
About the Author
Alyssa Resar is a researcher at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Previously, she was the Williams/Lodge International Government and Public Affairs Research Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.
Endnotes
Fayaz Bukhari and Satarupa Bhattacharjya, “India and China Withdraw Troops from Himalayan Face off | GlobalPost,” Thomson Reuters, December 11, 2013, https://web.archive.org/web/20131211131312/http:/www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/thomson-reuters/130507/india-and-china-withdraw-troops-himalayan-face.
康民军, “中国政府在中印边境战争期间和平解决边界争端的努力,” CPC News, October 9, 2013, http://theory.people.com.cn/n/2013/1009/c83867-23139029-4.html.
“April, 1963 Report from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, ‘The Soviet Union’s Stance on the Sino-Indian Boundary Question and Soviet-Indian Relations,’” Wilson Center Digital Archive, accessed January 24, 2020, https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116949.pdf?v=8874161e2989ae2ccb1bf926ac995a92.
Ameya Pratap Singh and Urvi Tembey, “India-China Relations and the Geopolitics of Water,” The Interpreter, April 23, 2020, https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/india-china-relations-and-geopolitics-water.
Meia Nouwens and Henry Boyd, “Understanding the Military Build-up on the China–India Border,” International Institute for Strategic Studies, June 18, 2020, https://www.iiss.org/blogs/analysis/2020/06/china-india-border.
M. Taylor Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation: Cooperation and Conflict in China’s Territorial Disputes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), https://muse.jhu.edu/book/30390.
Ibid., 126-7.
Gregory D. Koblentz, “Regime Security: A New Theory for Understanding the Proliferation of Chemical and Biological Weapons,” Contemporary Security Policy 34, no. 3 (November 19, 2013): 505–25, https://doi.org/10.1080/13523260.2013.842298.
Ultimately, given that China was and remains a highly centralized single-party state, the nation’s policies reflected the interests and concerns of Party leaders.
Douglas M. Gibler, “Bordering on Peace: Democracy, Territorial Issues, and Conflict,” International Studies Quarterly 51, no. 3 (September 2007): 509–32, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2478.2007.00462.x.
Arun Ganesh, India Pakistan China Disputed Areas Map, 2011, National Institute of Design, India, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:India_Pakistan_China_Disputed_Areas_Map.png.
Fravel, Strong Borders, 220. This line, decided upon by the British, demarcated the Sino-Indian border in the east.
“Notes, Memoranda and Letters Exchanged and Agreements Signed between The Governments of India and China” (Ministry of External Affairs: Government of India, March 1960).
“Note of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China to the Indian Embassy in China: December 26, 1959,” in The Sino-Indian Boundary Question (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1962), 53.
“April 21, 1960: Record of Conversation between R.K. Nehru and Zhou Enlai,” Wilson Center Digital Archive, accessed January 24, 2020, https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/175923.pdf?v=d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e.
Neville Maxwell, India’s China War (New Delhi Natraj Publishers, 2015), 160.
“Record of Talks Between P.M Jawaharlal Nehru and Premier Zhou Enlai Held on 24th April, 1960, From 10.30 AM to 1.45 PM,” Wilson Center: Digital Archive, 2016, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/121124.
Chen Jian, “The Tibetan Rebellion of 1959 and China’s Changing Relations with India and the Soviet Union,” Journal of Cold War Studies 8, no. 3 (July 2006): 54–101, https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws.2006.8.3.54.
Fravel, Strong Borders, 73-79.
Doug Livermore, “Lessons of Covert Action in Tibet (1950-1972),” Small Wars Journal, 2018, https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/lessons-covert-action-tibet-1950-1972.
“Note of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China to the Indian Embassy in China: December 26, 1959,” in The Sino-Indian Boundary Question.
M. Taylor Fravel, “Regime Insecurity and International Cooperation: Explaining China’s Compromises in Territorial Disputes,” International Security 30, no. 2 (October 2005): 46–83, https://doi.org/10.1162/016228805775124534.
“Text of 15 November Zhou Enlai Letter,” in Daily Report: Foreign Radio Broadcasts (The Central Intelligence Agency: Foreign Broadcast Information Service, 1962), BBB 3.
Fravel, Strong Borders, 81.
Arthur Lall, The Emergence of Modern India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 156.
Arthur Cohen, The Sino-Indian Border Dispute, III, DD/I Staff Study POLO XVI [Top Secret] (Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, 1963), 24.
Fravel, Strong Borders, 81.
Manjari Chatterjee Miller, Wronged by Empire: Post-Imperial Ideology and Foreign Policy in India and China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), 64.
Allen Suess Whiting, The Chinese Calculus of Deterrence: India and Indochina (Ann Arbor, Michigan): Center For Chinese Studies, Cop, 2001), 149.
“Minutes of Conversation Between Vice Premier Chen Yi and Indonesian Deputy Prime Minister Subandrio: January 07, 1963,” Wilson Center Digital Archive, 2016, https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114792.
Paul M. Mcgarr, The Cold War in South Asia: Britain, the United States and the Indian Subcontinent, 1945-1965 (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
“April 21, 1960: Record of Conversation between R.K. Nehru and Zhou Enlai,” Wilson Center Digital Archive.
“April, 1963 Report from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, ‘The Soviet Union’s Stance on the Sino-Indian Boundary Question and Soviet-Indian Relations,’” Wilson Center Digital Archive.
中印大战纪实 [Record of events in the big China-India war], ed. Shi Bo (Beijing: Da Di Chubanshe, 1993), 182.
Ke Wang, “Rethinking Chinese Territorial Disputes: How the Value of Contested Land Shapes Territorial Policies,” Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1491. (January 1, 2014), 128.
Fravel, Strong Borders, 11.
Given the recency and sensitivity of the clashes since 2000, publicly available materials from both sides are spare. That said, the evidence that is available appears to be consistent with my argument.
M. Taylor Fravel, “China’s Sovereignty Obsession,” Foreign Affairs, June 26, 2020, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2020-06-26/chinas-sovereignty-obsession.
Ibid.
中时电子报, “边界冲突印方咄咄逼人 专家：中方低调有2大主因,” Back China, June 5, 2020, https://www.backchina.com/news/2020/06/05/692231.html.
Yun Sun, “China’s Strategic Assessment of the Ladakh Clash,” War on the Rocks, June 19, 2020, https://warontherocks.com/2020/06/chinas-strategic-assessment-of-the-ladakh-clash/.
Ashley J. Tellis, “Hustling in the Himalayas: The Sino-Indian Border Confrontation,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, June 4, 2020, https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/06/04/hustling-in-himalayas-sino-indian-border-confrontation-pub-81979.
Press Trust of India, “PoK, Aksai Chin Part of J&K; Will Give Life for It: Amit Shah in Lok Sabha,” Business Standard India, August 6, 2019, https://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/pok-aksai-chin-part-of-jk-will-give-life-for-it-shah-in-ls-119080600532_1.html.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Geng Shuang’s Regular Press Conference on October 31, 2019,” October 31, 2019, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xwfw_665399/s2510_665401/t1712371.shtml.
Tellis, “Hustling in the Himalayas: The Sino-Indian Border Confrontation.”
中时电子报, https://www.backchina.com/news/2020/06/05/692231.html.
Miller, Wronged by Empire.
Maxwell, India’s China War, 160.