Negotiating with the Dragon
69
Negotiating with the Dragon:
The People’s Republic of China and International Dispute
Settlement Duration
Scott Sigmund Gartner∗ & Aimee A. Tannehill∗∗
How can the People’s Republic of China simultaneously be among the
world’s most belligerent major powers and have one of the fastest
growing economies?
We suggest that China’s complex conflict
management behavior helps it balance against these apparently
conflicting forces.
Using both quantitative and qualitative analyses, we
show that China is no more likely than other states to reach an agreement
when involved as a disputant in an international conflict management
effort.
However, these same analyses suggest that agreements that
involve China as a disputant are more likely to last longer than those
between other states. In particular, compared to agreements involving
other disputants, China’s international dispute settlements are much more
likely to last eight weeks or more – a duration found to be critical for long
term conflict management success.
Understanding the complexity of
China, its willingness to engage in conflict and cooperation, helps to
∗
Dr. Gartner is a Full Professor of the Department of Political Science, University of
California, Davis. Dr. Gartner can be reached at [email protected]
∗∗
Mr. Tannehill is a Ph. D student of the Department of Political Science, University of
California, Davis. Mr. Tannehill can be reached at [email protected]
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untangle the enigma poised by China’s economic ascent and dispute
behavior.
.
Key words: China, Dispute, Settlement, Duration, Selection, Conflict
Management, At Mediato
Introduction
China poses an enigma.
On the one hand, China is a great power, the
planet’s most populous nation and arguably the world’s fastest growing
major economy.
These factors ensure China’s importance in global
politics today and in the future. On the other hand, historically, China
has more ongoing disputes with major powers than almost any other
nation, feuding with Russia/USSR, India, and the US (both over Korea
and the Straits of Taiwan), in addition to enduring disputes with Taiwan
and Vietnam.
Given the tremendous importance of international trade
for economic development, how can a state with so many powerful
enemies develop its economy so rapidly?
Part of the answer may lie in China’s ability to resolve effectively its
international disputes.
If international agreements that include China
hold up better than others, this might help to explain how China
minimizes the economic impact of its frequent conflict participation.
Being both more conflictual and more cooperative would suggest that
Negotiating with the Dragon
71
China has “a pattern of behavior far more complex than many portray”.1
Almost all the nations of the world, at one time or another, have
participated in conflict management in order to try to resolve an
international dispute. Are some countries more effective at international
dispute resolution than others?
In particular, are international
agreements that include the People’s Republic of China more likely to
endure than those between other disputants? Despite the importance of
unraveling this riddle, there are few studies that systematically analyze
China’s conflict management behavior.
This paper has five sections.
First, we define what we mean by
conflict management and present a general theoretical framework for
thinking about the factors that influence agreement duration.
Second,
we identify specific attributes about China’s foreign policy, its enduring
disputes, and related conflict management processes.
Third, we present
statistical data that examines China’s influence on dispute resolution
outcomes.
Fourth, we illustrate the results of the quantitative analysis
with case studies that manifest many of the micro-political aspects of
China’s role in international dispute management.
Finally, in the
conclusion we return to the notion of why understanding the longevity of
China’s conflict management agreements is critical.
Conflict Management Theory
1
M. Taylor Fravel, “Regime Insecurity and International Cooperation,” International
Security 30, no. 2 (2005): 46 and Paul Papayoanou and Scott Kaster, “Sleeping with the
(Potential) Enemy: Assessing the U.S. Policy of Engagement with China,” Security
Studies 9, no. 1 (1999): 157-187.
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Tamkang Journal of International Affairs
Recently, there has been an explosion of research analyzing the
outcomes of international conflict management efforts generally, with a
focus more specifically on international agreement duration. 2
These
studies have developed critical theoretical and empirical tools that allow
us to move beyond previous work and undertake new projects, such as the
systematic analysis of China’s conflict management outcomes.
One of the key theoretical developments in recent studies of dispute
outcomes is the distinction between “process” and “selection” effects.3
Process effects represent choices made during conflict management that
directly influence a dispute’s outcome, such as mediator strategy.
Conflict managers, such as mediators, employ different strategies, such as
the highly intensive “Directive Strategy” (mediators create possible
2
Kyle Beardsley et al., "Mediation Style and Crisis Outcomes," Journal of Conflict
Resolution 50, no. 1(2006): 58-86 and William Dixon and Paul D. Senese, “Democracy,
Disputes, and Negotiated Settlements,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 46, no. 4(2002):
547-71 and Michael Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis, “International Peace Building: A
Theoretical and Quantitative Analysis,” American Political Science Review 94, no.
4(2000): 779-802 and Derrick V. Frazier and William J. Dixon, "Third Party
Intermediaries and Negotiated Settlements, 1946-2000," International Interactions 32,
no. 4(2006): 385-408 and Scott Sigmund Gartner and Molly M. Melin, “Assessing
Outcomes: Conflict Management and the Durability of Peace,” in the Sage Handbook on
Conflict Resolution (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Press, Forthcoming) and J. Michael
Greig, “Stepping into the Fray: When do Mediators Mediate?,” American Journal of
Political Science 49, no.2(2005): 249-266 and Zeev Maoz and Leslie G. Terris,
"Credibility and Strategy in International Mediation," International Interactions 32, no.
4(2006): 409-40 and Patrick Regan, Civil Wars and Foreign Powers (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 2002) and Isak Svensson, “Guaranteeing Peace: The
Credibility of Third-Party Mediators in Civil Wars,” In Empirical Studies in
International Mediation: New Approaches and Findings, ed. Jacob Bercovitch and Scott
Sigmund Gartner (New York: Routledge, Forthcoming).
3
Jacob Bercovitch and Scott Sigmund Gartner, "Is there Method in the Madness of
Mediation? Some Lessons for Mediators from Quantitative Studies of Mediation,”
International Interactions 32, no. 4(2006):329-54 and Scott Sigmund Gartner and Jacob
Bercovitch, "Overcoming Obstacles to Peace: The Contribution of Mediation to
Short-Lived Settlements," International Studies Quarterly 50 (2006): 819-40.
Negotiating with the Dragon
73
agreements) or the less intrusive “Communications Strategy” (mediators
attempts to facilitate discussion between disputants).4
Thus, for example,
President Carter was effective at not just encouraging Israel-Egypt
communications, but he also provided guarantees of US funding for
military bases to both countries (a directive strategy) – all of which
contributed to the successful Camp David Peace Accords. 5
efforts and the bases are examples of process effects.
Carter’s
Process effects
have a causal relationship to conflict management outcomes – they
influence, directly, conflict management efforts’ success and failure.6
The second type of international conflict management effects are
selection effects.
Selection effects identify the population from which a
7
dispute is drawn.
For example, imagine that there are two types of
disputes, highly intractable (hard to resolve, agreements are unlikely to
last) and tractable (easy to resolve, agreements are likely to last).
If we
can identify which population a particular dispute is selected from, then
we would have insight into the likely results of conflict management
efforts.
Selection effects are factors that identify the population to which
disputes belong; they do not make a dispute harder or easier (they have no
direct effect), but rather signal the likely nature of the dispute.
4
Jacob Bercovitch and Alison Houston, “Why Do They Do It Like This? An Analysis
of the Factors Influencing Mediation Behavior in International Conflicts,” Journal of
Conflict Resolution 44, no. 2(2000): 170-202.
5
Gartner and Bercovitch, "Overcoming Obstacles to Peace".
6
Beardsley et al., "Mediation Style and Crisis Outcomes".
7
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, “Big Wars, Little Wars: Avoiding Selection Bias,”
International Interactions 16, (1990): 159-169 and James D Fearon, "Selection Effects
and Deterrence," International Interactions 28, no. 1(2002): 5-30 and Greig, “Stepping
into the Fray?”.
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Tamkang Journal of International Affairs
The differences between selection and process effects can be
illustrated by thinking about mortality rates between a university-student
clinic and a hospital.
hospital.
The university clinic refers all serious cases to the
The hospital therefore gets the harder cases – those with a
higher chance of resulting in a fatality (selection effect). The hospital
has better and superior medical resources and provides better treatment
(process effect).
Yet, more students are likely to die at the hospital than
the s clinic. This does not mean that the hospital provides bad care – it
simply represents the intersection of selection and process effects.
Should a student have a serious illness, you would want them to go to the
hospital – even knowing that mortality rates are higher there than at the
university clinic.
In doing so, you would automatically take into account
selection effects, recognizing that the population of patients who go to the
hospital is fundamentally different: more ill and more likely to die than
the population of patients at the clinic.
Without taking into account
selection effects, one would erroneously identify the life-saving abilities
of the university clinic to be superior to the hospital.
In fact, it is
because the opposite is true and that the hospital has better medical
process effects, that the hospital attracts those patients who are more ill
and more likely to die.
Thus, failure to take selection effects into
account, leads to incorrect inferences about fundamental capabilities.
Naturally, when faced with a serious illness, people go to the hospital
and not the university clinic.
While people clearly allow for selection
effects when consuming information about differential mortality rates
between hospitals and university clinics, both scholars and practitioners
have largely failed to take selection effects into account when examining
Negotiating with the Dragon
75
dispute conflict management efforts.8
The influence of selection and process effects are asymmetric on our
interpretation of China’s role in conflict management.
Should we find
first that China has extremely high-intensity disputes over critical and
high-stake issues that are likely to be highly intractable, and second that
agreements with China have short durations, then it is unclear if the short
durations are due to the nature of the disputes (selection) or the negative
influence of China (process) on the conflict management process. If
however, we find that China’s disputes are indeed intense and critical, but
that agreements that include China are more long-lasting, then we can be
certain that this is due to positive process effects resulting from China’s
participation. Conversely, should China’s disputes be of low-intensity
over minimal stakes, then short-lived agreements would manifest a
negative process effect regarding China’s participation and we would be
unable to differentiate the influence of selection and process effects on
long-lived agreements.
Thus the next critical question is what is the
nature of China’s disputes over the last 59 years?
China’s Foreign Policy
Since 1949, China’s foreign policy has generally been guided by three
central assumptions. The first is the conviction of China’s historical
prominence and the principle of zili gengsheng - self reliance or
regeneration through one’s own efforts.9 Second, elites within China have
8
Gartner and Bercovitch, "Overcoming Obstacles to Peace" and Greig, “Stepping into
the Fray”.
9
Steven M Goldstein, "Nationalism and Internationalism: Sino-Soviet Relations," in
Chinese Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice, ed. Thomas W. Robinson and David
Shambaugh (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 224-265.
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Tamkang Journal of International Affairs
had close ties to foreign enemies that have had negative consequences for
the country.
In order to avoid this domestic-foreign collusion, it is
believed that close supervision of domestic elites is necessary.
Finally,
even though there have been negative consequences from foreign
interaction, there is widespread belief that the development of foreign
relations are essential to the strong development of China; both
internationally and domestically.10
Interestingly, these assumptions appear to have less to do with Marxist
ideology and more with a sense of Chinese nationalism.
Analysis of
Chinese foreign policy indicates a clear disconnect between the ideology
of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the actual foreign policy of
the state.
The key national interests of China that drive these
assumptions and much of its foreign policy existed long before the
creation of the People’s Republic of China.11
In China’s drive to re-claim its status among the world’s powers, the
state has been extremely purposeful in its foreign relations. Due to its
historical experience it is explicitly anti-hegemonic. The international
relationships China develops are typically more equal and cooperative
than patronage. 12
10
Additionally, China is successful at mending any
William C Kirby, "Traditions of Centrality, Authority, and Management in Modern
China's Foreign Relations," in Chinese Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice, ed. Thomas
W. Robinson and David Shambaugh (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 13-29.
11
Steven I Levine, "Perception and Ideology in Chinese Foreign Policy," in Chinese
Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice, ed. T. W. Robinson and D. Shambaugh (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1994), 30-46.
12
Harry Harding, “China’s Co-operative Behaviour,” in China’s Foreign Policy: Theory
and Practice, eds. Thomas W. Robinson and David Shambaugh (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1994), 375-400.
Negotiating with the Dragon
fractures that do occur.13
77
This is the aspect of Chinese foreign policy
that we investigate here.
Before presenting the quantitative analysis of China’s impact on
dispute resolution, we briefly identify some of the key issues in China’s
ongoing disputes with Russia, the United States, India, Taiwan, and
Vietnam.
Russia. Following the creation of the PRC, the Soviet Union was
China’s closest ally.
However, the relationship between the two socialist
states did not remain close for long.
By the early 1960s, due to
ideological, military, and economic disagreements, the previously close
relationship had effectively dissolved.
Essentially, China began to feel
excessively controlled by the Soviet Union and felt the need to pursue zili
gengsheng – self-reliance.
One major issue causing tension between the
two at this time was their 2,738 mile border.
China contested the
borders that had been established by the Qing dynasty and Tsarist
Russia.14
The increasingly acrimonious relationship came to a head in
the Sino-Soviet border dispute of 1969.
United States. Relations between China and the United States have
been plagued with mistrust and uncertainty. The United States’ support
of the Nationalists during the Chinese civil war and delayed recognition
of the People’s Republic of China severely hampered any possibility of
normalized relations.
13
The increasing animosity between the Soviet
Fravel, “Regime Insecurity and International Cooperation”.
Tai Sung An, The Sino-Soviet Territorial Dispute (Philadelphia: Westminster Press,
1973).
14
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Union and China forced China to re-consider its desire for a relationship
with the United States.15
Following the Sino-Soviet border dispute of
1969, China and the United States entered into a period of rapprochement
that ultimately led to the establishment of recognized diplomatic relations
in 1979.
While there remains tension between the two states on many
issues (i.e. political, military, human rights, and economic issues), for the
most part the two states have endeavored to develop strong, positive
relations – especially economically.
India. The states of India and the People’s Republic of China both
became independent states in the late 1940s.
From the outset their
relationship was conflictual rather than cooperative. Initially territorial
disputes, especially regarding Tibet, were at the center of their
disagreements.16
As the Cold War developed, relations between India
and China became more concerned with whom the other was allied with,
rather than direct bi-lateral issues.
The deterioration of relations
between the Soviet Union and China, the strengthening of relations
between the Soviet Union and India, and the rapprochement between the
U.S. and China, all contributed to the deterioration of Sino-Indian
relations.17
However, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in
1979, Sino-Indian relations slowly began to improve.
The Indian
nuclear tests in 1998 had the potential to seriously derail relations.
15
David Shambaugh "Patterns of Interaction in Sino-American Relations," in Chinese
Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice, ed. Thomas W. Robinson and David Shambaugh
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 197-223.
16
Allen Seuss Whiting, The Chinese Calculus of Deterrence: India and Indochina (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975).
17
Harold C Hinton, "China as an Asian Power," in Chinese Foreign Policy: Theory and
Practice, eds. Thomas W. Robinson and David Shambaugh (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1994), 348-372.
Negotiating with the Dragon
79
However, with both states experiencing rapid economic growth and
recognizing their mutual importance, they were able to avoid
confrontation and have been pursuing even greater levels of cooperation
of late.
Taiwan. In 1949, with the Chinese Communist Party on the verge of
victory in the Chinese civil war, the Republic of China (ROC)
government retreated to Formosa/Taiwan.
In the following years, much
of the world’s governments continued to recognize the ROC as the official
government of China.
Finally on November 23, 1971 the People’s
Republic of China (PRC) replaced the ROC as the official representatives
of China in the United Nations. However, it was not until the United
States and the PRC resumed normal diplomatic relations in 1979 that
cross-Strait relations began to improve.18
The dispute fundamentally
addresses Taiwan’s sovereign status, with the PRC claiming Taiwan to be
a part of China.
Tensions increased after the mid-1990s in part because
newly democratic Taiwan’s elected leaders adopted a stronger stance on
sovereignty issues.
While the 2008 election of Ma Ying-jeou, a
pragmatist, as president may usher in an era of greater stability, Taiwan
continues to be a major flashpoint for disputes.
Vietnam. In 1950, the People’s Republic of China was the first
government to officially recognize the Democratic Republic of Vietnam
and for the next fifteen years the two countries maintained very close
18
William T. Tow, "China and the International Strategic System," in Chinese Foreign
Policy: Theory and Practice, eds. Thomas W. Robinson and David Shambaugh (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1994), 115-157.
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relations. However, the increase in Soviet involvement in the Second
Indochina War was extremely worrisome to China and they eventually
turned their attention towards improving relations with the United States.
Additionally, China was actively supporting the Khmer Rouge in
Cambodia, which resulted in an even more strained relationship between
Vietnam and China. Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia to remove the
Khmer Rouge instigated China’s invasion of Vietnam in 1979.
The
animosity between the two states has only in recent years begun to
dissipate
Disputes involving China and Russia, the United States, India, Taiwan,
and Vietnam make up the bulk of China’s dispute behavior. Despite the
diversity of co-belligerents, statistical analysis reveals that China’s
conflict management behavior follows two clear systematic patterns.
A Quantitative Analysis
Quantitative analyses represent a powerful tool for identifying
systematic patterns of behavior.
We examine China’s conflict
management behavior quantitatively using the International Conflict
Management Data Set developed by Bercovitch.19
post-World War II through the year 2000.
The data range from
Unlike many traditional data
sets, such as the Militarized Interstate Dispute Data Set, where the focus
is on a conflict, here the unit of analysis is the conflict management effort
within disputes (which may or may not involve casualties). As a result,
a major dispute might have dozens of conflict management efforts,
observations that would be lost in the more traditional conflict-based data
19
Bercovitch and Houston, “Why Do They Do It Like This?” and Gartner and
Bercovitch, "Overcoming Obstacles to Peace ".
Negotiating with the Dragon
81
sets. Similarly, a minor dispute that is resolved peacefully is also included
here and would also be absent from more traditional conflict and
war-based data sets. Note our data only include international disputes
(such as those between the PRC and India).
Since we are attempting to
capture China’s conflict management behavior, we use a PRC perspective
to define the concept “international,” and exclude the China/Taiwan
conflict – since the PRC identifies this as a domestic dispute. Obviously,
many, both in and outside of Taiwan disagree with this perspective; our
approach represents an attempt to reflect PRC decision making and does
not reflect a political position.
We include, however, China/US disputes
and conflict management efforts that involve or are over Taiwan or the
Taiwan Strait, since those clearly represent international disputes.
We first present an analysis of the influence that China as a disputant
has on the likelihood of a conflict management effort (such as a bilateral
negotiation between states or a third party mediation with the disputants)
resulting in a settlement.
Following that, we provide an analysis of the
impact of China participation as a disputant on the duration of conflict
management settlements.
In each presentation, we first introduce
descriptive quantitative data (e.g. cross tabs) and then a statistical
analysis.
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Likelihood of an Agreement.
Do international conflict management
efforts that involve China as a disputant lead to conflict resolution
agreements at a higher likelihood than those that do not include China?
There are a total of 1,835 non-civil war, conflict management events in
the International Conflict Management Data Set (dropping those with
missing values), 131 of which involve China (7.1%).
Of the 1,704
conflict resolution efforts that do not include China, 37.4% result in some
type of agreement. In contrast, of the 131 conflict management efforts that
include China, slightly more, 45%, result in agreements.
Table 1
Negotiating with the Dragon
83
represents a logistic analysis of the International Conflict Management
data, with Agreement as the dependent variable (1 if ceasefire, partial
agreement, or full settlement, 0 otherwise, mean =.38, standard deviation
= .49).
Looking at Table 1, Model 1, we see that China has a positive
effect on the likelihood of a conflict resolution effort resulting in an
agreement.
The coefficient of .31 means that the involvement of China
as a disputant increases the likelihood of dispute resolution leading to an
agreement by 8%.
We next add the dispute issues to the model as control variables
(Ideology, Security, Independence, Ethnic, Resources and Territory (the
missing value)). Now, as seen in Model 2, China no longer has an
independent effect on agreement formation.
This suggests that it is the
type of dispute China tends to be involved in (selection effect) and not
China’s direct influence on the conflict management effort (process effect)
that affects the likelihood of an agreement.
In particular, compared to
territorial disputes (which are especially prone to violence 20 ), those
disputes that involve ideology are considerably more and those involving
ethnicity and security issues less, likely to result in an agreement.
The
nature of the dispute captures the variation erroneously attributed to China
in the bivariate analysis. Thus, the involvement of China as a disputant
does not directly increase the likelihood of an agreement resulting from
dispute resolution.
Duration of an Agreement. Do international conflict management
20
John Vasquez, “Why do Neighbors Fight? Proximity, Interaction, and Territory,”
Journal of Peace Research 32 (1995): 277-93.
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Tamkang Journal of International Affairs
efforts that involve China as a disputant lead to longer lasting conflict
resolution agreements than those that do not include China?
Conflict
management efforts resulted in 696 agreements, 59 of which involve
China (8.5%). Recent studies emphasize the importance of identifying
whether or a not an agreement fails rapidly, such as those that last less
than eight weeks.21
Agreements that are violated quickly fail to bring a
process of political change.
Those that last for at least a short time are
able to foster political transformation and alter conditions, improving the
likelihood of a lasting peace.
These recent studies examine the duration
of agreements. A durable agreement is defined as one which lasts eight
weeks or more.
We continue this practice and analyze the variable
Lasting, which identifies whether an agreement lasts eight weeks or more
(1 if the settlement lasts eight weeks or more, 0 otherwise, mean =.75,
standard deviation .43).
The results are striking; China dramatically increases the likelihood of
an agreement lasting eight weeks or more.
Among the 637 international
agreements signed without China, 73% last eight weeks or more.
In
contrast, looking at the 59 agreements that include China as a disputant
and signatory, over 98% last eight weeks or more.
Table 1, Model 3
shows that China has a strong, positive effect on the likelihood of an
agreement lasting (p=.002).
The logit coefficient of 3.07 translates into
a 25% increase in the probability of a longer lived agreement.
Not only
is the effect large, but it is now robust to nature of the dispute.
Once again we next analyze the independent effect of China when
21
Gartner and Bercovitch, "Overcoming Obstacles to Peace” and Bercovitch and
Gartner, "Is there Method in the Madness of Mediation?”.
Negotiating with the Dragon
85
holding constant the nature of conflict in a multivariate analysis.
Model
4 in Table 1 includes the dispute issue variables; here, unlike the earlier
analysis of the likelihood of agreement, China maintains its statistical
significance (p=.005) and value and results in an almost identical change
in predicted probabilities (24%).
China’s participation represents a
process effect – it alters the dynamics of the negotiation and leads to
longer-lasting settlements, even when controlling for the nature of the
dispute.
The results reported in Table 1 suggest that China’s participation as a
disputant has little effect on the likelihood that conflict management
efforts do or do not translate into an agreement.
Those agreements,
however, that do include China are considerably more likely to last eight
weeks or more.
As a result, agreements with China have a much greater
chance of altering the political dynamic fueling the dispute.
These
results also suggest that China’s role in conflict management reveals both
selection and process effects.
The selection effects reflect the serious
nature of China’s ongoing disputes with Russia/USSR, India, and the
United States.
At the same time, while these disputes involve critically
important issues – which make formulating an agreement difficult – the
disputes also resulted in agreements that were abided by China and her
fellow disputants at considerably higher than average rates.
We next illustrate through some case studies what these statistical
results mean in terms of China’s foreign policy and conflict management
behavior.
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Qualitative Analysis
In order to illustrate better the quantitative results, we present two
brief qualitative discussions of China’s conflict management behavior: the
Sino-Indian border dispute of 1962 and the 1969 Sino-Soviet border
dispute.
Sino-Indian Border Dispute of 1962
The border between China and India has been a source of ongoing
border dispute since well before the creation of either state.
Prior to
Indian independence, the British and Chinese attempted many
negotiations, none of which resulted in a mutually agreeable, stable
settlement.
The main areas of contention are the Aksai Chin and
Arunachal Pradesh region.
The most enduring, disputed boundary along
the eastern Himalayas is the McMahon Line.
This was the result of
negotiations between Great Britain, China and Tibet in 1816.
The line
lies just south of the highest ridge of the Himalayas and places portions of
Tibet in Indian territory.
This area eventually became the Northeast
Frontier Area (NEFA - later Arunachal Pradesh).
China has never
approved of this partition, arguing that Tibet is not a sovereign nation and
is not eligible to make this agreement.
In addition, the Aksai Chin
region near the borders of China, India and Pakistan has been a source of
disagreement as well. This region was granted to British India as part of
the treaty that created the McMahon Line.
However, due to Tibet being
a signatory, China refuses to recognize the treaty and the boundaries
determined therein.
The Aksai Chin region held substantial importance to China as it
Negotiating with the Dragon
allowed access to Tibet from the Xinjiang region.
87
In 1960, after many
years of disagreement, Zhou Enlai proposed granting India’s claim to the
Northeast Frontier Area if China was granted Aksai Chin.
This proposal
was rejected wholesale by India. India maintained that there was to be
no negotiation of the McMahon Line or Aksai Chin and that any further
negotiations would first require the removal of all Chinese forces from the
disputed region in the west.22
For the following two years little progress was made between the two
states regarding the border dispute.
In 1959 India had discovered the
construction of a road through Aksai Chin which provided China with
military access to Tibet.
This was extremely worrisome to India as it
signaled China’s intent to occupy and thereby claim Aksai Chin. This was
a substantial factor in India’s implementation of a ‘forward policy’ in the
disputed areas.
The ‘forward policy’ was India’s reaction to China’s continued
military encroachment into the disputed areas. It entailed placing Indian
outposts in the disputed areas (especially in the NEFA) with the purpose
of preventing the advancement of Chinese forces.
India did not
anticipate the implementation of their ‘forward policy’ to be met with any
resistance from China.
However, China was experiencing the
devastating economic and political effects Mao’s Great Leap Forward and
feared India’s ‘forward policy’ signaled its intent to take advantage of
China’s domestic weakness and invade Tibet. China warned India that
failure to withdraw would be met with extreme consequences, but India
22
Whiting, The Chinese Calculus of Deterrence.
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refused.
Finally, on October 20, 1962 China launched two simultaneous
attacks in the western (Aksai Chin) and eastern (NEFA) disputed areas.
Due to the belief that China would not retaliate, India was caught
completely unprepared.
After just four days of fighting the Chinese
halted fighting and attempted to negotiate with India.
However, with the
support of the United States and the United Kingdom, India refused the
Chinese proposal.
After a three-week break, fighting resumed on
November 14 with an Indian attack on Chinese forces in the NEFA.
Again, the Indian forces were simply overwhelmed by the Chinese forces.
By November 18 the Indian forces were in retreat and by November 20
the Indian army had been completely forced out of the NEFA.
On
November 18 China launched an offensive in the western area of Aksai
Chin.
It took only one day to defeat the few Indian forces left in this
area.
Once China had pushed the Indians past the undisputed border they
declared a unilateral cease-fire on November 19, 1962.
In addition to
the halting of hostilities the Chinese announced that they would withdraw
from the majority of territory gained in the invasion.
They chose to
remain in control of most of Aksai Chin which had been a disputed area
that both states had occupied prior to the war which China had asserted
control over.
However, China withdrew north of the McMahon Line in
the Northeast Frontier Agency (NEFA), which represented over half of the
disputed territory.
Following the cease-fire China returned soldiers and
Negotiating with the Dragon
89
equipment captured during the war as a show of goodwill.23
Since the
cease-fire there have been occasional clashes between the Chinese and
Indian forces in the region, but nothing that resembled the hostilities of
1962.
A number of reasons for this lack of hostilities exist.
The war was, at the most basic level, an act of Chinese deterrence; an
attempt to demonstrate China’s power and resolve.
Their goal does not
appear to be the conquest of vast amounts of Indian territory.
Rather,
their goal was to convince the Indians of the futility of attempting any sort
of invasion or land grab from China and the termination of their ‘forward
policy’.
Once the Chinese were able to demonstrate convincingly their
ability to defeat the Indian army they called a cease-fire and retreated.
Additionally, in the aftermath of the war India was force to re-examine
seriously the state of its national security.
Major efforts were made to
strengthen the Indian military forces to ensure that India would never
experience such a defeat again.
China’s desire for secure borders in the western area of Aksai Chin
and the war itself are representative of the Chinese principle of zili
gengsheng - self reliance or regeneration through one’s own efforts.24
They believe that Aksai Chin and Tibet belong to China and they
demonstrated their resolve and ability to fight for them.
However, when
presented with the opportunity to take control of additional Indian
territory they did not.
23
24
Whiting, The Chinese Calculus of Deterrence.
Goldstein, "Nationalism and Internationalism".
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Tamkang Journal of International Affairs
Sino-Soviet Border Dispute of 1969
The relationship between the PRC and the Soviet Union began as a
solid connection between two ideologically compatible states.
As the
PRC emerged victorious from the Chinese civil war it immediately allied
with the Soviet Union, in opposition to the United States and Japan.
Relations were formalized with the signing of the Sino-Soviet Treaty of
Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance in 1950.
The treaty
provided China with much needed economic, military, and technical aid.
For the first six years of the treaty, relations continued to be extremely
close and cooperative. Beginning in the late 1950s China, and Mao in
particular, began to distance itself from the Soviets.
There exist multiple reasons for this distancing behavior. For one,
China did not agree with Khrushchev and the Soviet plan of
de-Stalinization and attempts at improving relations with the West.
Second, China began to feel that the alliance with the Soviet Union placed
it in a position of subordination and dependence.
Finally, the close
relationship between the two countries naturally led to an increase in
interactions between government officials and the influence of foreign
agents raised suspicions within China.
Taken together, these factors all
led to a sudden and severe weakening of the Sino-Soviet relationship.
Throughout the 1960s the two states engaged in a heated war of words.
The Soviets expressed concern over the massive failure of the Great Leap
Forward.
One of the many consequences was the mass exodus of
Uighurs and Kazakhs from China to the Soviet Union, which the Chinese
accused the Soviets of instigating. The Chinese strongly criticized the
Negotiating with the Dragon
91
Soviet Union’s role in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Not only did it
disapprove of the Soviets yielding to American pressure, but also for
placing the missiles there in the first place.
The issue of the Sino-Soviet
border also became an issue of contention, with China contesting the
borders that had been established by the Qing dynasty and Tsarist Russia.
Additionally, the Chinese were incensed by the Soviet’s support of India
during the Soviet-Indian War of 1962.25
The Prague Spring in 1968 solidified the Sino-Soviet rift.
The
Soviet Union expressed concern regarding the rapid liberal reforms
occurring in Czechoslovakia and attempted to negotiate the structure of
the reforms with the Czech leadership.
When this proved unsuccessful
the Soviets, along with a number of other Warsaw Pact members, invaded
Czechoslovakia to put a stop to the reforms.
The Brezhnev Doctrine
outlined the Soviet justification for the invasion of Czechoslovakia. It
stated that the USSR could invade any socialist country if it was deemed
to be turning towards capitalism.
This created considerable concern for
China because of fears that, due to the ongoing disagreements between
the two states, the Soviets would launch an invasion or even nuclear
attack on China.
In order to guard against this, China began to fortify
the Sino-Soviet border with additional forces.
These additional forces engaged the Soviet forces in minor
pre-emptive strikes as an act of deterrence of further Soviet aggression.
This behavior led to the first major confrontation between the two sides
25
An, The Sino-Soviet Territorial Dispute.
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Tamkang Journal of International Affairs
on March 2, 1969 where the Chinese ambushed Soviet forces located on
Zhenbao/Damansky Island.
The Soviets then struck back on March 14,
attacking the Chinese both on Zhenbao/Damansky Island and on the bank
of the Ussuri River.
Major confrontations temporarily ceased after these
attacks, but no negotiations took place for some time.
The Soviets first proposed talks on March 29, 1969 but the Chinese
did not respond until May 11. Considerable back and forth proposals
ensued but the two sides could not even come to an agreement regarding
the conditions for negotiations. Further confrontations ensued throughout
the summer, with the most serious occurring on August 13, 1969.
In
addition to the military clashes, both sides engaged in a considerable
propaganda war.
These conflicts finally ceased after Soviet Premier
Aleksei Kosygin made an unannounced visit to Beijing to meet with Chou
En-lai on September 11, 1969.
The two agreed to resume talks to
resolve the border issue as well as to stop the propaganda war.
Talks to negotiate the border dispute began in October 1969 but did
not reach any settlement for many years.
Initially, the negotiations were
hampered by the inability of the two sides to agree on the agenda.
Once
true border negotiations began, it was not until 2004 that all the border
issues between China and the Soviet Union/Russia were settled.26
26
Akihiro Iwashita, "An Inquiry for New Thinking on the Border Dispute: Backgrounds
of "Historic Success" for the Sin-Russian Negotiations," in Siberia and the Russian Far
East in the 21st Century: Partners in the "Community of Asia", ed. A. Iwashita (Sapporo:
Slavic Research Center, 2005),
http://src-h.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/coe21/publish/no6_1_ses/chapter6_iwashita.pdf (accessed
June 25, 2008).
Negotiating with the Dragon
Conclusion
China’s economy has grown at a phenomenal pace.
93
Along with the
growth has come world-wide recognition of China’s great power status.
At the same time, China has transformed its ideologically-based
outsider/rebel position to become part of the global mainstream, joining
the World Trade Organization in December 2001 and hosting the 2008
Summer Olympics.
state.
Nevertheless, China remains a highly belligerent
For example, in April 2001, a Chinese jet hit an American
surveillance plane traveling in international airspace.27
While studies
form the Chinese perspective point to the invasiveness of the surveillance
and the intransigence of the Bush Administration,28 statements by the
crew and evidence from electronic records depict China’s provocative
behavior.29
And yet, despite vitriolic rhetoric on both sides, China and
the US worked out an arrangement for the return of both the crew and the
plane to the US, and China entered the WTO later in that same year.
While a determination of culpability in this incident goes beyond the
scope of this analysis, the example illustrates the continuing high
likelihood of China’s becoming enmeshed in militarized disputes, the
serious importance of developing further our understanding of China’s
conflict management behavior, and the multifaceted face of China’s
foreign policy.
27
Erik Eckholm, “China Agrees to Return Partly Dismantled Spy Plane as Cargo,” The
New York Times, May 29, 2001,
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C01E2D7153CF93AA15756C0A9679
C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print (accessed 6/25/08).
28
Joseph Y. S. Cheng and King-Lun Ngok, “The 2001 ‘Spy’ Plane Incident Revisited:
the Chinese Perspective,” Journal of Chinese Political Science 9, no. 1(2004): 63-83.
29
Shirley A Kan, “China-U.S. Aircraft Collision Incident of April 2001: Assessments
and Policy Implications,” Congressional Research Service (US Government Printing
Office, October 10, 2001).
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Tamkang Journal of International Affairs
Our key findings are that China is no more or less prone to achieve an
agreement when participating in a conflict management effort, but that
when conflict management does result in a settlement, it adheres to the
terms of the agreement considerably more than other countries. Our
quantitative results analyzing all types of dispute resolutions strongly
supports previous, qualitative research on territorial disputes involving
China: “China has not participated in military conflict over contested
areas with neighboring states with which it has settled territorial
disputes”.30 Understanding the complexity of China, its willingness to
engage in conflict and cooperation, helps to untangle the enigma China’s
economic ascent and dispute behavior pose.
Identifying the patterns of China’s foreign policy also greatly
contributes to our developing a more complete understanding of regional
dynamics.
Like the democratic peace, which found that democracies
were as likely to fight than non-democracies, but do not fight each other,
we find that China is just as likely as other states to obtain an agreement
from conflict management, but considerably more likely to have that
agreement make it through the treacherous initial period where so many
settlements fail.
China’s willingness to abide by its agreements
profoundly affects regional dynamics.
As Fravel states, “the territorial
settlements made possible by China’s compromises have had important
strategic effects in East Asia.
China’s settlements are linked to the
absence of war with opposing states”.31
30
Fravel, “Regime Insecurity and International Cooperation,” and see also Papayoanou
and Kaster, “Sleeping with the (Potential) Enemy”.
31
Fravel, “Regime Insecurity and International Cooperation”.
Negotiating with the Dragon
What are the implications of these results?
95
In terms of the dispute
with Taiwan, China’s credibility is seen as the key to dealing with Taiwan,
potentially the most critical dispute in the region.32
Keeping in mind the
critical caveat that our analysis solely addressed international conflicts
from the PRC perspective (and thus did not include Taiwan or Tibet), our
results suggest a mixed perspective. Our findings suggest that, on the one
hand, the likelihood of China reaching an agreement with Taiwan is the
same as that of other states dealing with highly salient issues.
On the
other hand, China’s likelihood of adhering to a treaty with Taiwan appears
to be considerably higher than that of other states dealing with serious
disputes.
These mixed results thus provided reason for guarded
optimism about a long-term resolution of the China-Taiwan dispute.
32
Scott L. Kastner and Chad Rector, “National Unification and Mistrust: Bargaining
Power and the Prospects for a PRC/Taiwan Agreement,” Security Studies 17, no. 1(2006):
39-71.
96
Tamkang Journal of International Affairs
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