One of the issues that has consistently
aroused considerable interest, emotion and sometimes misperceptions, in the
public mind, have been the reported offers of ‘package deals’ by China at
various stages of the Sino-Indian Boundary negotiations. The latest variation
of the ‘package deal’ was the reported ‘offer’ by Dai Bingguo, the former
Chinese Special Representative for the boundary talks. In his interview to the
Beijing based magazine China-India
Dialogue on 2 March 2017, Dai said that ‘the disputed territory in the
eastern sector of the China-India boundary, including Tawang, is inalienable
from China’s Tibet in terms of cultural background and administrative jurisdiction.
The major reason that the boundary question persists is that China’s reasonable
requests have not been met. If the Indian side takes care of China’s concerns
in the eastern sector of their border, the Chinese side will respond
accordingly and address India’s concerns elsewhere’.
It must be noted, however, that this Dai interview is not a Chinese
government initiative, but a private one since Dai does not hold any official
position anymore; albeit his 'offer' may have been with the knowledge and
encouragement of the Chinese government. Therefore Dai is in a sense testing
the waters, without putting the prestige of the Chinese government or
association on line. That this was not the first such offer of a ‘package deal’
is also fairly obvious, for in the past, several variations have been on the
table.
To recollect from historical record, the first such offer of a ‘package
deal’ was reportedly made by PM Zhou Enlai when he came to Delhi in April 1960.
There is considerable confusion as to whether he actually made such an offer. According
to Chinese writings on the subject, Zhou in his first meeting with PM Nehru stated
that although the area south of the
McMahon Line was once a part of Tibet, China would not raise ‘new’ demands, but
be ‘practical’. In the sixth meeting, Zhou proposed that China would recognize
the line reached by India’s administrative jurisdiction in the eastern sector,
if India did the same in the western sector. This perhaps was the genesis of
the ‘package deal’ referred to by the Chinese. Further the records of the
Zhou-Nehru meeting show that Zhou made two important points. Firstly, he said
that ‘we do not recognize the McMahon Line but are willing to take a realistic
view’ and that ‘we would not cross it’ and secondly that ‘we do not put forward any territorial claim south of the McMahon Line’
[emphasis added].[1]
There is added confirmation that perhaps a package offer was made by
Zhou in that the then Foreign Secretary Dutt informed Indian Missions after
Zhou’s visit that:
It is quite obvious that the Chinese
aim was to make us accept their claim in Ladakh as a price for the recognition
of our position in NEFA….it was also obvious that if we accepted the line
claimed by China in Ladakh they would accept the McMahon Line.
These of course are Foreign Secretary
Dutt’s observations and surmise, for it does not specifically state whether
such an offer was actually made. It should also be kept in mind that only a few
months earlier [8 September 1959], Zhou had written officially to Nehru
categorically stating that ‘this piece of territory [NEFA] corresponds in size
to Chekiang province of China and is as big as 90,000 square kilometers. Mr.
Prime Minister, how could China agree to accept under coercion such an illegal
Line…and disgrace itself by selling out its territory’? So what was Zhou
actually trying to convey to Nehru? It is not entirely clear.
The next occasion that the question of a ‘package deal’ surfaces is when
FM Vajpayee met the then Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping in February 1979 and the
latter once again put forward the proposal. This was followed by an interview
that Deng gave to an Indian journalist Krishna Kant [Chief Editor of Vikrant]
on 21 June 1980 in which Deng reiterated the need to settle the boundary in a
‘package way…I mean according to the Line of Actual Control.’
When the first round meeting of the renewed Sino-Indian boundary talks
commenced in Beijing from 10-14 December 1980, the Chinese once again put forward
the ‘package proposal,’ a settlement essentially based on the Line of Actual Control.
But when the Indian side requested for a cartographic examination, the Chinese
side demurred and refused. This led to the suspicion that the Chinese offer was
‘non-serious’ and FM Rao accordingly informed Parliament that ‘the government
of India never accepted the premise on which it [the package proposal] is based…’
That position remained till the Chinese, once again, re-interrupted the offer.
At the sixth round of the boundary talks in November 1985 at New Delhi,
the Chinese came out with yet another version of the ‘package deal’. The new
proposal was that if India gave ‘concessions’ in the Eastern sector, the
Chinese in turn would give corresponding ‘concessions’ in the Western sector.
When pressed as where these ‘concessions’ in the Eastern sector were to be
given, the extent of the area to be given; the Chinese demurred and refused and
fell back on the plea that India would first have to accept the principle and
then only would their clarification follow. Hardly a basis on which negotiations
can proceed! But perhaps is that what the Chinese wanted?
In the Special Representative talks that followed PM Vajpayee’s visit to
China in 2003, both sides negotiated and signed on 11 April 2005 the ‘Political
Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the Boundary Question’.
Article VII is most important. It states quite clearly that:
In
reaching a border settlement the two sides shall safeguard due interests of
their settled populations in border areas.
Dai Bingguo, then China’s Special
Representative, was a party to this agreement having negotiated and signed it
on behalf of China. Is the language and meaning not clear; for it says quite
categorically that ‘settled populations’ would be ‘safeguarded’? Is the Tawang
area not a settled area with a sizeable population?
As can be seen from records indicated above that China’s position on
this issue has been changing, just as its political and strategic objectives have changed.
From PM Zhou’s assertion in 1960 that China had no territorial claims south of the McMahon Line, we are now
receiving feelers from Dai Bingguo that cessation of the Tawang area is the
price for a settlement. Perhaps the
Chinese sense that there is a constituency in India that ardently wishes for a
boundary settlement. The government of India should make it clear that
Arunachal Pradesh is a constituent state of the Indian Union and that there is no
question of cessation of any territory, apart from minor rectifications along
the McMahon alignment [emphasis
added].
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[i] Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru [SWJN], Vol 60, p 34
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