China’s unilateral actions against India make peaceful border distant reality

File image of a village near the India-China border (Representational/Reuters image)

The rise of China and its vaulting geopolitical ambitions are anything but benign. The latest border skirmish with India in the Tawang sector of Arunachal Pradesh is yet another amplifier of the Chinese turning a consistent woodpecker on any disputed bark.

A litany of border stand-offs with India since 2013 forms a pattern that smacks of Beijing's penchant for taking unilateral actions. The way they had timed the border transgressions and the subsequent painful process for restoring the status quo ante brought to question the efficacy of existing bilateral agreements and understandings to deal with border issues. This approach progressively and systematically undermines the repeatedly reiterated political intent on both sides for a negotiated settlement of the border issues.

The fresh attempt to alter the status quo in Tawang on December 9, which thankfully didn’t escalate, indicates that China is least inclined in resolving the leftover problems in Ladakh.

Though it is appreciable that the possibility of a ‘violent’ contact, first since Galwan killing of June 2020, was averted, it shows since 2013 Despang incursion, the Chinese transgressions have become more of a norm than an incident of a patrolling party straying in inadvertently.

China’s acts of transgression in Ladakh have virtually fractured the border management framework that both sides have built since 1993 through various augmenting agreements and enabling frameworks for engagements at various levels.

It is very natural that such incidents hold the bilateral relationship to a ransom. Peace and tranquillity along the border are the foundational principles of friendly ties between India and China.

After the 1962 war, it took many years for the two countries to bring a semblance of normalcy to their ties and build on from there to focus more on their convergences than the divergences. The two countries had to travel some distance and withstand some inevitable heartburn to turn a possible new leaf. However, it never amounted to anything close to complete trust.

Mao Zedong had called India a capitalist ‘lackey’, and even termed India’s first Prime Minster Jawaharlal Nehru a ‘collaborator of imperialism’. Zhou Enlai had once contemptuously termed India as a ‘bottomless hole’ suggesting that the country constantly needs foreign help to tide over the economic difficulties. Deng Xiaoping’s remarks about India, China, and the Asian Century was a welcome change once.

However, unless there is a peaceful border between two of Asia's biggest countries and economies the Asian century can't exactly be the same.

Both India and China made rapid economic progress since 1990’s, and their sphere of global influence also expanded.

It was very rare in history that the two big neighbouring countries grew at the same time, often thinking whether they would have enough space in the world to co-exist as they got serious about improving their bilateral ties.

But everything was and is predicated to a peaceful border. By nature, boundary questions have no simple answers. They always involve historical legacies, inherited inanities of colonial rulers, and issues of settled populations. These complexities make border negotiations a laborious process of building mutual trust and confidence through patient, and often painstaking negotiations.

However, the Chinese have taken an entirely new stance when it comes to border issues in the last few years. Though they have developed the border area infrastructure to help an advancing army, it is indigestible for them to see the countries on the other side of the fence doing the same. China tactically employs the tools of economic coercion and intimidation with many countries they are in territorial dispute with. This has also led to Indian public trust in China getting deeply damaged. It is unlikely to recover for some time. That is something no democratic country can overlook in formulating policies. A peaceful border is fundamental to everything that India and China would do together, including building a steady and practical relationship.