Name: Li ling Student ID：b07150
Research paper supervisor:Dr.Seku Conde
Minzu University of China
2007-2008 Academic Year

 
Abstract
The study focuses on India and China, the two most populous nations on earth, how these two emerging great powers manage their cooperation and competition in the coming years will have a major impact on regional security.
The purpose of this research is from the perspective realism of geopolitics approach to analyze the factors of Sino-Indian competition and cooperation, as well as analysis the two countries historical conflict and evolution toward potential cooperation and quiet competition currently.
Key words
China     India       Relation   Economy   Boundary
Introduction
The Sino-Indian relationship is bound to be one of the most important bilateral relationships in the coming decades simply by the sheer weight of numbers: combined, they represent 40 percent of the world's population and their continuing economic growth will project them to second and third place within the next two decades. How they manage their relationship will have a tremendous impact on peace and stability in the regional and, increasingly, global context.
China’s size and extensive border bring it into hard contact with many nations. There are a number of disputed territories on all sides, but an important one is the Himalayan border with India. These countries, as the world's two most populous, fought a bitter war over their largely unmarked border in 1962. Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao officially “ceded” Sikkim to India, after the latter had annexed the small kingdom in 1975, amid strong protests at the time from Beijing. Now, China and India have held 11 negotiations on border issues since the mechanism of the representatives of both governments was established. The two sides have reached a consensus on the political principles involved in resolving the border issue. [1]Until today, the two countries have signed a number of agreements to strengthen their economic ties, including resumption of direct flights, and memoranda of understanding on tourism and for cooperation in space, science and technology. Despite these welcome developments, serious obstacles to normal relations remain. These include the unresolved boundary issue, energy security, Tibet, and the Sino-Pakistani nexus--that require strategic vision, diplomatic skill and mutual accommodation.
1.      Sino-Indian Economy and Security Relations
1-1. Sino-Indian Economy Relation
Among the most encouraging recent developments in India China Economy and India-China ties is the rapid increase in bilateral trade. A few years ago, India Inc had a fear of being swamped by Chinese imports. Today, India enjoys a positive balance of trade with China. In 2004, India's total trade to China crossed US $13.6 billion, with Indian exports to China touching $ 7677.43 million and imports from China at US $ 5926.67 million. But major industry players in India feel there is no need to give the Chinese a free ride into the domestic market so early.[2] This is particularly, when India and China have been directly competing across several product categories. And that is particularly too, when both the applied and bound import tariffs are higher in India compared with China. Indian industry's ambivalence over the proposed Indo-China FTA (Free Trade Agreement) stems from concerns over previous FTAS signed by the government. There's a feeling that some of these FTAS were signed in haste, and without adequate homework. Result: There has been confusion about the country of origin issue as well as the items to be put in the early harvest lists.
In 2005, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao visited India, where Wen Jiabao said “We have set an objective (in the joint statement) to increase the two-way trade volume from 13.6 billion dollar at present to 20 billion dollar by 2008.....we plan to take it to 30 billion dollar by 2010.” Seeing the big growth in Sino-Indian trade, China outlined a five-point agenda, including reducing trade barriers and enhancing multilateral cooperation to boost bilateral trade. India China Economy has also agreed to work together in energy security and at the multilateral level at the WTO to support an “open, fair, equitable and transparent rule-based multilateral trade system”, the joint statement signed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Wen.
1-2.Sino-Indian Security Relations
India’s nuclear tests in May 1998 caused a major setback for the Sino-Indian relationship. Despite measurable improvements in Sino-Indian relations in recent years, the two nations still view each other as geostrategic rivals. The major motivation for New Delhi's bomb decision is that it has felt increasingly uncomfortable with the power asymmetry between India and China, and it wants to sit as an equal to China at the table of world powers by declaring itself a nuclear weapons state.
Beijing reacted strongly to New Delhi's accusation that the Chinese threat was the key rationale behind its May 1998 nuclear tests. China retaliated by canceling the scheduled Joint Working Group meeting on boundary issues and played an active role in pushing through United Nations Security Council Resolution 1172 calling for nuclear rollback in India and Pakistan. Beijing's relentless diplomatic campaigns to isolate New Delhi eventually induced the latter to seek rapprochement. Sino-Indian relations gradually thawed and Indian policymakers publicly retracted from the China threat theory.
China and India have come a long way to restoring the tattered relationship in the wake of the May 1998 nuclear tests. The animosity and enmity between the two countries immediately after Pokhran II are all but gone. Since Jaswant Singh's visit to China in June 1999, a post-test normalization process has gradually taken place. The two sides have on many occasions publicly announced that they do not view each other as a security threat. The Joint Working Group on border issues has resumed its regular meetings and in November the two sides for the first time exchanged maps on the middle sector of the line of actual control (LAC). A security dialogue has been initiated and a number of meetings have been held. And leaders from the two countries, including high-level military officers, have exchanged visits.[3]
2.Obstacles to Normal Relations
2-1.The Issue about China’s Tibet
China’s Tibet will likely constitute another possible point of contention. The strategic significance of Tibet to both India and China is obvious. New Delhi has always regarded China’s Tibet as a security buffer between itself and China. Indian security analysts argue that China's deployment of nuclear missiles on the Tibetan plateau seriously threatens Indian security. For Beijing, the very fact that India provides refuge to more than 120,000 Tibetans, the Karmapa and the Dalai Lama will always be a touchy issue between the two countries. [4]
2-2.The Sino-India Boundary Dispute
China is seeking “fair” and "reasonable” boundary demarcations with its neighbors and has so far signed border treaties or agreements with 12 neighboring countries, settling 90 percent land boundaries, except India and Bhutan.
2-2-1.The history of The Sino-India Boundary Dispute:
The Sino-Indian boundary question was left over from history. In 1914, the British colonialists concocted the illegal "McMahon Line", which was not recognized by all previous Chinese central governments. After its independence in 1947, India inherited British occupation of part of Chinese territory and extended this to the "McMahon Line" in 1953. Based on its revised map, in 1959, India brazenly laid territorial claim to the Aksaiqin prefecture of Xinjiang, China. In October 1962, the Sino-Indian border war broke out.
Today, the Sino-Indian boundary line extending about 2,000 km is divided into three sections, east, middle and west. The area of the disputed regions is about 125,000 sq. km, of which the east section is about 90,000 sq. km, the middle section 2,000 sq. km, and the west section 33,000 sq. km. (People's Daily ,2003-10-28)
2-2-2.Important --- although largely token --- gestures have been made toward each other
The Sino-Indian boundary was once one of the world boundary lines where most troops were deployed. India disposed one-fourth of the nation's troops (about 250,000) in places near China's northern and eastern borders. However, what surprised world opinions most was that on this long un-delimited boundary line, no more conflicts had ever erupted since China and India signed respectively in 1993 and 1996 the two agreements: the agreement on "maintain peace and tranquility in the regions of the Sino-Indian border line of actual control" as well as the agreement on "trust-building measures in the military field in regions of the line of actual control". Furthermore, during the period when the other side was spending festival, officers and men of Chinese and Indian frontier guards would extend congratulations to each other. Leaders of both sides have time and again reiterated that the boundary question should not be an obstacle to the development of bilateral ties between the two countries, instead, the boundary issue should be resolved through peaceful negotiation.
On the other hand, New Delhi has shown greater appreciation of Beijing's sensitivity over the Tibetan issue by affirming for the first time that the Tibetan Autonomous Region is part of the territory of China. Beijing, on the other hand, has extended de facto recognition of Sikkim being a state of India, something that Beijing had refused to do ever since the small Himalayan kingdom acceded to India in 1975. While Chinese diplomats continue to characterize the issue as a historical legacy [...]

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