The China-India Rivalry in the Globalization Era

T.V. Paul

• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781626166004, 9781626165991
• eBook ISBN: 9781626166011
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Relations internationales

As the aspirations of the two rising Asian powers collide, the China-India rivalry is likely to shape twenty-first-century international politics in the region and far beyond.

This volume by T.V. Paul and an international group of leading scholars examines whether the rivalry between the two countries that began in the 1950s will intensify or dissipate in the twenty-first century. The China-India relationship is important to analyze because past experience has shown that when two rising great powers share a border, the relationship is volatile and potentially dangerous. India and China’s relationship faces a number of challenges, including multiple border disputes that periodically flare up, division over the status of Tibet and the Dalai Lama, the strategic challenge to India posed by China's close relationship with Pakistan, the Chinese navy's greater presence in the Indian Ocean, and the two states’ competition for natural resources. Despite these irritants, however, both countries agree on issues such as global financial reforms and climate change and have much to gain from increasing trade and investment, so there are reasons for optimism as well as pessimism.

The contributors to this volume answer the following questions: What explains the peculiar contours of this rivalry? What influence does accelerated globalization, especially increased trade and investment, have on this rivalry? What impact do US-China competition and China’s expanding navy have on this rivalry? Under what conditions will it escalate or end? The China-India Rivalry in the Globalization Era will be of great interest to students, scholars, and policymakers concerned with Indian and Chinese foreign policy and Asian security.

PART I

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1

Explaining Conflict and Cooperation in the China-India Rivalry

T.V. PAUL

The rivalry between China and India has entered its sixth decade. Although the territorial disputes began in the 1950s, it has become a deep-rooted, enduring rivalry since the 1962 border war between the two states. Despite several rounds of negotiations on settling the territorial dispute, no end to the rivalry is in sight, while it sees intermittent militarized flare-ups, such as the June–September 2017 Doklam standoff involving Indian and Chinese troops in the trijunction area linking Bhutan, Tibet, and India, a territory contested by China and Bhutan. However, unlike the India-Pakistan rivalry, China-India relations are somewhat positive on the economic front. Since the 1990s, the trade volumes between the two largest economies of Asia have been on a steady increase. In 2000, the trade volume was $2.92 billion, which grew to $70.08 billion in 2016, with a trade deficit of $46.56 billion for India.¹ China is indeed India’s leading trading partner, although the reverse is not true, which makes it an asymmetrical economic relationship. At international institutions, India and China seem to agree on issues such as global financial reforms, climate change, and elements of trade rules. However, on global governance, an agreement is missing on United Nations (UN) reforms, especially India’s entry as a permanent member of the UN Security Council (UNSC) and its membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).

As China expands its reach in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean by way of increasing its naval presence, reclaiming and constructing islets, and building ports in countries such as Pakistan and Sri Lanka, India has begun to make countermoves, largely through its joint activities with the United States, such as naval exercises and offering refueling and replenishment of American naval vessels. Indian naval ships visit Southeast Asian waters more frequently while India seeks closer strategic relations with Japan, Australia, and Vietnam. The Japan-India efforts include plans to develop an Asia-Africa Growth Corridor parallel to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the latter originally called the One Belt One Road (OBOR) project.² These efforts show the rivalry assuming a new and larger dimension in the economic and strategic contest between the two Asian giants. India is also developing the port of Chabahar in Iran in an effort to circumvent Pakistan, China’s closest ally in South Asia, to obtain greater trade and strategic links with Afghanistan and Central Asian countries. The rivalry has entered a new phase, with China’s ambition to become a global power increased since the arrival of Xi Jinping as Chinese leader in 2012 and India’s desire under Narendra Modi to be recognized as a rising great power beginning to collide in different spheres. It appears the rivalry is unlikely to end anytime soon as it is becoming a systemic contest surrounding many larger strategic issues and territorial areas that were not previously parts of its domain.

What explains the peculiar contours of this rivalry? Why is it different from the India-Pakistan rivalry in terms of intensity and other behavioral characteristics? What influence does accelerated globalization, especially increased trade and investment, have on this rivalry? What impact does the US-China competition and China’s expanding reach into the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean have on this rivalry? Under what conditions will it escalate or end?

I argue that in order to understand the dynamics of this conflict, we need to explore its evolution in diverse issue areas and its differences from India’s intense rivalry with Pakistan. Fundamental differences and competition over territorial boundaries, status in Asia and beyond, resources (in particular, water), notions of regional and global order, and strategic culture mark adversarial relations between the two giant states. Regional and global balance-of-power competition, divergent strategies on nuclear and conventional deterrence, and engagement with other states in South Asia and increasingly in the Asia-Pacific region have contributed to the perpetuation of this rivalry in a unique fashion. It is important to know how these diverse issues link together in making this conflict protracted and enduring. No single theory can capture the dynamics of this rivalry fully, and hence more of an eclectic approach is preferred in this project.³

In the middle of the divergences, however, several factors mitigate the rivalry and reduce the possibility for an open military conflict in the immediate future. Intensified economic globalization and resultant economic interdependence are crucial factors here. Increasing trade between the two states and their insertion into globalization during the past three decades may have reduced the incentives for war. Chinese and Indian companies and trading groups engage each other, offering avenues of cooperation. The periodic meetings among the top leaders and officials in the context of border talks have reduced opportunities for escalation. Even their agreement as rising powers on many issues of global governance has given them an opportunity to reduce their friction points. The interactions of the two through the Group of Twenty (G-20) forum, the BRICS association (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) have opened up avenues for diplomatic engagement and cooperation.

The central claim of this volume is that a limited or managed rivalry persists, but it has remained less intense than the India-Pakistan rivalry due to several mitigating variables, ranging from economic factors to diplomatic ones. Among them is growing asymmetrical economic interdependence between India and China. Globalization has increased economic interactions and has helped to soften friction but has not removed it. The relations seem to be going through periodic ups and downs as the contending issues resurface from time to time. India’s willingness to forgo its earlier set condition—that until China settles all the territorial disputes, it will not trade with the country—made a big difference in improving economic relations. The adoption of a “broad position” since the period of Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to Beijing in December 1988 showed that “India no longer held other areas of interaction hostage to the settlement of the border issue.”⁴ Thus the weaker party in this asymmetrical relationship took the initiative to sideline the territorial issue for economic interests, whereas Pakistan, the weaker party in the India-Pakistan rivalry, steadfastly opposes any economic concessions or deep interactions with India until the territorial dispute is resolved. Pakistan has managed to bridge the power asymmetry with India through strategy, weaponry (including nuclear arms), and alliance support of the United States in the past and China since the 1960s.⁵ The power asymmetry with China makes India reluctant to take a strong posture on issues of territory, water, and imbalance in trade. China, on the other hand, does not want to push India too hard militarily to compel it to join an active military alliance with the US and other like-minded states. Thus there is no vigorous challenger in this dyad, unlike the India-Pakistan one. This case shows that enduring rivalries do not need to be intense and that they can be made less conflictual through mitigating factors and diplomatic choices that the parties make.

This rivalry has attracted a number of studies. Most treat the territorial dispute as the key source of the conflict.⁶ Some recent works have broadened the rivalry’s other dimensions, in particular the expansion of the rivalry into the Indian and Pacific Oceans.⁷ However, it is important to note that the prolongation of this rivalry is not attributable to territorial dispute alone, as China has settled twelve border disputes with its fourteen bordering states, except India and Bhutan.⁸ Even the territorial settlement in this case was talked about in negotiations as feasible, with China accepting India’s position in its northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh in exchange for India conceding Chinese claims in the Ladakh area. Despite these conditions, why is the border dispute with India so difficult to settle? It is probably that other factors identified below interact in such a way that the conflict is too multidimensional and intractable. It needs resolution on multiple fronts, especially at the systemic and subsystemic levels, that is unlikely to occur anytime soon. The number of issues in the rivalry is increasing with the rise of China and its efforts to carve out its geostrategic space in the Pacific and the Indian Ocean with possible military confrontation with the United States and its allies and strategic partners, which now include India. Some of these issues have a long time horizon, encouraging both parties not to make sudden strategic choices that aggravate the conflict. In many senses, the China-India conflict remains a “managed rivalry.”⁹

First, I explore each of the factors identified here that generate and perpetuate the conflict, making it an enduring rivalry that is characterized by conflict over unresolved issues, strategic interdependence between the parties, psychological enmity, and repeated militarized conflicts.¹⁰ One study contends that for a rivalry to be called “enduring,” at least six militarized disputes should occur over a twenty-year period, and defines it according to “spatial consistence, duration, and militarized competition.”¹¹ This rivalry may not have as many militarized territorial crises as it used to have, but nevertheless the dispute exists, and both sides are making constant efforts to strengthen their military forces and infrastructure on the border. There have been a number of face-to-face standoffs between patrols, and mutual incursions on contested territories have been taking place; it seems their number has increased in recent years with frenzied infrastructure development on both sides.¹² A form of deterrence has worked in preventing the limited mutual incursions from escalating to fullblown war. Several rounds of negotiations have not solved the key differences on the territorial issue. The China-India rivalry is nearly six decades old and hence qualifies as an enduring one. The big question is, if it is not a rivalry, why do both sides increase their military buildup in the border, while stridently clinging to their positions?

I place the factors that perpetuate the India-China rivalry under three clusters: territory and resources, status and conceptions of order, and strategic culture and defense/deterrence strategies.

TERRITORY AND RESOURCES

The key source of lingering divergence appears to be on the nature of the territorial demarcations. The differing conceptions of the McMahon Line, which separates the 4,056-kilometer-long border, produced a major flare-up in 1962 and limited skirmishes several times since then. A tenuous peace exists on the border. But the border dispute is yet to become part of the national identity narrative of the two sides as much as in the India-Pakistan case. The territory in contention is sparsely populated, and the colonial-era line that is presumed to separate the two countries is contested. This is different from the manner of the postpartition Kashmir, which both India and Pakistan view as essential to complete their national identities—one built on secularism and the other on Islamic statehood.

There are three sectors where the territory is disputed. In the western sector, India claims but China occupies some thirty-eight thousand square kilom...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Part I: Introduction
• Part II: Sources
• Part III: Strategies
• Part IV: Mitigators
• Part V: Conclusions
• List of Contributors
• Index