Articles by Neville Maxwell

Behind the nationalist hysteria which has been whipped up over the Chinese army setting up camp in territory claimed by India in Ladakh lies a long history of self-delusion and aggressive posturing on the border. This article throws a contrary, and sobering, light on India’s latest border scrap.

There are two components to the India-China border dispute and they are separate, distinct and different. The first dispute was over the north-eastern sector and the second was over Aksai Chin. Jawaharlal Nehru's refusal to submit the dispute to negotiation meant it became diplomatically insoluble and his attempt to make the Indian claims good on the ground through military force challenged China to war. Successor governments have maintained his refusal to submit India's border claims to negotiation and the "talks" in which they have engaged Beijing cannot lead to settlement. But if the Government of India reversed Nehru's approach and agreed to negotiate, settlement could still be reached because each country holds the territory vital to it.

Except in the case of Vietnam, China has tried to stick to its cooperation strategy of settling boundary problems declared by Zhou Enlai at the Bandung Conference in 1955 and has acted as a responsible and disciplined member of the international community and as an observant of its treaty commitments. Against the backdrop of recent allegations about the intractable border disputes between China and its neighbours, this article traces China's subsequent adherence to or divergence from its earlier approach in resolving territorial disputes and achieving boundary settlements over the succeeding decades.

Primarily as a consequence of the antagonistic and confrontational strategy the last British governor, Chris Patten, followed in his policy towards Beijing, the political atmosphere in Hong Kong when the colony reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 was envenomed and polarised.

The Nehru government sought to decide for itself where India's borders with China should lie and then impose the alignments it had chosen on Beijing, refusing to negotiate them. That meant that unless Beijing surrendered to India's territorial claims to Aksai Chin and areas north of the McMahon Line conflict was inevitable. China's military action in 1962 was reactive and pre-emptive, and that India suffered 'unprovoked aggression' is a selfserving myth. That there has been no settlement of the Sino-Indian borders is the consequence of Nehru's policies, to which successor governments, except Narasimha Rao's, have strictly adhered.