Examine the changes in China’s India policy in 1990’s. Do you attribute these changes to the altered global environment or to the domestic factors? (1996)
Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to Beijing in December 1988 opened the door; in the 1990s China chose to walk through it. Beijing moved from cold hostility to managed engagement. Both causes in the question operated, but they worked at different levels: the global shift supplied the opportunity, and domestic priorities supplied the motive.
The changes
- Summitry: Li Peng’s visit (December 1991) was the first by a Chinese premier in three decades. Jiang Zemin’s visit in November 1996 was the first by a Chinese head of state.
- Border management: the Agreement on Maintenance of Peace and Tranquillity (September 1993, during P. V. Narasimha Rao’s visit) accepted the LAC as the working line. The Confidence-Building Measures agreement (29 November 1996) barred firing and blasting within two kilometres of it and committed both sides to clarifying the line. Shivshankar Menon, a former Foreign Secretary, presents the 1993 agreement in Choices (2016) as the step that kept the border quiet while both concentrated on development.
- De-linking: the boundary was separated from trade, culture and diplomacy. Consulates reopened in Mumbai and Shanghai, and border trade resumed through Lipulekh (1992) and Shipki La (1994).
- Kashmir and Pakistan: Beijing moved from backing Pakistan’s position towards calling Kashmir a bilateral matter for peaceful settlement. In Islamabad in December 1996, Jiang urged that disputes that could not be solved quickly be set aside.
- Limits: missile and nuclear help to Pakistan continued (the M-11 transfers and the ring-magnet affair), as did the claim to Arunachal Pradesh. The change was in method, not in China’s core interests.
The global environment
- End of bipolarity: the Soviet collapse removed the Indo-Soviet axis Beijing had long seen as encirclement, so India no longer looked like a Soviet proxy.
- Isolation after Tiananmen (1989): Western sanctions made Asian neighbours valuable. India did not join the condemnation, and both resisted Western pressure on human rights at Geneva.
- Unipolar anxiety: the Gulf War showed American power at its height. China’s call for a multipolar world made a quiet southern frontier and a partner against Western conditionality useful, a view shared with Delhi.
Domestic factors
- Economic modernisation: Deng Xiaoping’s southern tour (1992) put growth first, and that required a peaceful periphery. China settled or calmed its borders with Russia, Vietnam and the Central Asian states in the same years.
- Regime security: after Tiananmen the Party’s legitimacy rested on growth and stability. Tibet and Xinjiang mattered more, and Indian restraint over the Dalai Lama gained value.
- Military priorities: Taiwan and the eastern seaboard, tested in the 1995–96 Strait crisis, became the PLA’s focus, making a quiet Himalaya sensible.
Assessment
The global shift was permissive, the domestic agenda decisive. Neoclassical realism, as set out by Gideon Rose (1998), describes this pattern: systemic pressures filtered through domestic priorities. India’s own reforms of 1991 and Look East policy made engagement worthwhile for Beijing. China’s strategy was not new: Deng had already offered a package settlement in 1980, before the Cold War ended.
Conclusion
China’s India policy changed mainly for domestic reasons: growth, stability and regime security needed a peaceful periphery. The post-Cold War world made that easier and cheaper. Because the change was tactical, later shifts in relative power could reverse it, as the Pakistan nexus already suggested and later crises confirmed.