The Long Game: How the Chinese Negotiate with India

Negotiations with China prominently etch the diplomatic landscape of independent India. Even before India could recover from the pangs of brutal partition and the Pakistani Lashkar attack on Jammu & Kashmir, India began to feel the tremors of another invasion to its northern frontier. Ever since India’s tryst with Communist China turned out to be its major security challenge. Oftentimes, past experiences serve as valuable sources of feedback for learning and unlearning (even). Besides helping in recognising a pattern and avoid repeating the same mistakes, a relook at the events in the past can help identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Embarking on such an exercise, India’s Premier Sinologist, former foreign secretary of India and Indian Ambassador to China, Vijay Gokhale in his book- “The Long Game: How The Chinese Negotiate With India” discerns China’s negotiation skills.

Deliberating on six major incidents from independence till 2019, Gokhale distills into this book his vast experience and scholarship on the India-China relationship to make a compelling case for policymakers to revisit the records to restructure our negotiations. The stand-off along the LAC indicates that Beijing is up for a long haul. India can’t afford to have a weak hand to tackle the trained diplomatic corps of China. The six defining events of the India-China bilateral ties constitute the six chapters of the book and the last chapter delves into lessons for India.

In the early years of independence, unlike China which has always handled its foreign affairs and directly dealt with leaders of Russia and the US, colonial India under the British never had the opportunity to negotiate directly. Along with a lack of diplomatic experience, India's misconceived notion of “Asian resurgence in the post-war period can be possible with China as a major player”, India squandered away a massive tactical advantage to be in the good books of China. Indian leadership further tied itself into knots with apprehensions that hostility with Chinese Communists might rankle the Indian communists.

Anxious about India’s global stature and largely worried about the international perception of being seen as a junior partner of the US or British, defying the “institutional consultation” on foreign affairs, the government of India displayed unrequited haste in recognising the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and meekly tendered the leverage. India’s haste had clouded its judgment. Nehru indeed prevailed on Raghavan to close the deal at the earliest. He wrote- “If the Indo-Chinese agreement on Tibet is signed and announced, soon it will have a salutary effect. If, however, this is postponed indefinitely, this will have contrary effect… this will create an impression of failure which will not be good”. Unlike the clear, objective approach of China, India’s focus was on timing. India even waived off the financial compensation China was willing to pay for taking over the Indian telegraph, post facilities, guest houses and vacant fields to get the deal signed before the May 1954 Geneva Convention.

In sharp contrast, Communist China adopted a methodical approach. It outmatched and outmaneuvered India. In pursuit of temporary global acclaim, Indian leadership unilaterally surrendered all its cards, lost special privileges in Tibet and failed to secure national priorities.

Ignoring Sardar Vallabhai Patel’s prescient warning, “even though we regard ourselves as friends of China, the Chinese don’t regard us as friends” and C. Rajagopalachari, the leadership failed to readjust the strategy. Undermining the first-hand information from the liaison officers and trade representatives, India tendered written assurances and committed a historical blunder. This presumptuous diplomacy has permanently weakened India’s position as New Delhi missed an opportunity to resolve the boundary issue. An issue that continues to be a drag on India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Without getting much into the details of China’s invasion of Tibet and the subsequent developments, the author scrupulously adhered to underscoring the Chinese step-by-step negotiations of steadily escalating pressure on India to extract concessions. Having suffered the consequences of trusting without testing, India subsequently learned from some of its mistakes and successfully frustrated Chinese attempts to isolate India after the 1998 nuclear tests. Trouncing China at its own obtained a clean nuclear waiver too.

For China, party and state are the same and aligning with the party lines is paramount. Diplomats everywhere owe their allegiance to the country but the Chinese diplomats are agents of the party. Their diplomatic style is “theatrical” and sovereignty for them is a principle that cannot be sacrificed at any cost, says the author. The variant offshoots of ‘wolf warriors’ in just a shift. These ideologically oriented diplomats chosen for negotiations have always relied on past records and meetings with India.

New Delhi always harboured anxiety about the influence the Communist Party of China (CPC) wielded over the Indian left parties.  Nehru indeed, expressed his concerns regarding Indian Communists in two separate communications with Ambassador Panikkar and Ambassador Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit. Some analysts even believe that these fears have hustled India to grant recognition to China, a pariah state then. Though these apprehensions have an iota of truth to them, that can’t be an excuse for comprising on national interests.

The CPC had and continues to have a great influence on Communists across the world.  The Chinese used the left parties and left-leaning media to stir up hostility against the US by creating an illusion of strategic alignment with the US when India was close to signing the nuclear agreement. To scuttle the ‘Agreement for Cooperation Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of India Concerning the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy (known as 123 Agreement), instead of raising its concerns in a bilateral meeting, China manufactured a narrative of India’s goal of becoming an independent pole and its unwillingness to accept any binding agreement because it interfered with its strategic autonomy.

So, the reports, including the latest reports of the United States Intelligence Community warning about Chinese attempts to interfere in the 2024 US presidential elections aren’t a figment of imagination. Instead of confrontation, the modus operandi of China has been to sophisticatedly manipulate the discourse through interest groups operating in respective countries. The author also mentions eight organs that work in tandem in crafting narratives. China having mastered the art of operating in unorthodox ways dons the role of a puppet-master to build domestic pressure.

Unlike authoritarian China, democratic governments are expected to showcase outcomes. The Indian leadership faced a similar predicament in 2003. In a bid to score diplomatic points domestically, ahead of the elections, the Indian government acknowledged Tibet as a part of the PRC despite China’s not so explicit recognition of Sikkim as part of India. Drawing from this incident, the author urges India to overcome the pitfall of the compulsion of democracy. The book gives a peek into Chinese methods like –“intimidation, falsehood, victimhood, fear psychosis and exerting maximum pressure”. Reflecting on the India-China relations, a Chinese commentator, in the aftermath of the Chinese technical block on the listing of Masood Azhar in 2018 said, “China can obstruct India’s demands without paying nearly any price, or even need not give a special response”.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee on the eve of the 1998 nuclear testing remarked, “We can change our friends but not neighbours”, China being India’s largest neighbour is an undeniable reality. Hence it is incumbent on India to learn from the failures and miscalculations and prepare for the ‘Long Game’. The incisive insights from the book can serve as an invaluable guide for young and aspiring diplomats.

Written in simple English, the book caters to the inquisitiveness of strategic analysts as to what goes into these long-drawn negotiations, especially with China. The individual events chosen for the book besides demonstrating India’s gradual understanding of the Chinese psyche, explore the dynamics of negotiations. Expertly summing up Chinese diplomacy, the author says, “They are adept at generating feelings of gratitude in the opponent and in disguising their own feeling of guilt”. The book successfully deconstructs the myth of China as a “beautiful swan gliding on the placid surface of a lake in sylvan surroundings” and identifies the methods, tactics and tools used by the Chinese to make the adversary concede out of sheer frustration.

 

Pages: 180

Publishers: Penguin Random House India

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