China's Territorial Disputes (4 page)

Putnam recognizes the strategic implications of direct communication between societal players within negotiating states, and in fact called for subsequent work to explore this aspect of his bargaining theory.
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Putnam’s challenge has been partially taken up by Jeffrey Knopf in his analysis of domestic-international interaction in the intermediate range nuclear forces (INF) negotiations, where he distinguishes between three types of cross-border relations - “trans-governmental,” “transnational,” and “cross-level.” Broadly speaking, while “transgovernmental” connections refer to the usual form of interaction and communication between national governments, the “transnational” pathway involves interactions between domestic actors on both sides outside the government, and “cross-level” processes involve communication between leaders on one side and domestic constituents on the other side.
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This study expects to find “transnational” and “cross-level” links to be much weaker, as compared to the links between a state and another state, or a society and its own state. Even so, if pressure groups within one society perceive that their own government is opposed to their troublesome demands, they may try to gain additional leverage against decision-makers in their own state by taking some action in the dispute at hand to pressure the government and people of the other state. The home pressure groups would like to provoke an uncompromising response by the government of the other state, backed up by protest actions organized by nationalist groups on the other side, which they hope, will force their own government to take an equally confrontational stance toward the other state in defense of the “national interest.”

We will see if the strategy of the domestic nationalist groups involved in the Diaoyu/Tiao-yu-tai/Senkaku controversy, the Zhenbao/Chenpao/Damansky dispute, and the Sino-Indian border dispute, both within and outside the government, is similar in trying to pressure their own governments to back up their rhetoric and action with force. We will also discern whether the governments of the claimant states have been tacitly coordinating with one another by employing a counter-strategy of restating their sovereignty claim, while cooperating in negotiations over economic resources and other non-sovereignty issues, thus effectively deflecting or subverting the confrontational stance adopted by their own nationalist constituents. What the two sets of domestic and state strategies are, how well they succeed or fail, what the objective or subjective conditions are which allow these territorial controversies to recur time and again, and how well these disputes reveal the strengths and limitations of the “two-level game” hypothesis, together form the subject of my analysis.

Overall, this study should enable us to illuminate the conditions existing between the society and the state, and between the state and the international system, which might impede or hasten state-to-state negotiations on border disputes. To do that, we must pay attention to similarities and differences between society and state, segments within the same society, and groups within the same state; similarities and differences as expressed in terms of historical memories, political preferences, economic priorities, strategic vulnerability, absolute and relative gains and losses to be accrued from various outcomes of boundary negotiations, the importance of institutions, and expectation of future relations. The role of institutions may not be discernible if and when public opinion toward a particular issue is uniformly positive or negative, but which may become very relevant in the event that societal responses are “non-uniform” and diplomats/negotiators have to create and manipulate “win-sets” or negotiation space in both their domestic and foreign constituencies to achieve results and have their agreements ratified. The changes in the international scene are also very pertinent to investigating and understanding how border disputes are raised, contested, negotiated and settled or not settled, and so are negotiating strategies, such as decisions to publicize talks or keep them secret, to adopt flexible or intransigent positions, or to establish synergistic inter-state linkages or resort to threats.

There are ten separate series of observations on territorial negotiations (Sino-Russian before and after 1986, Sino-Indian 1956-1963, 1981-1987, and after 1987, and Sino-Japanese 1970-1972, 1978, 1990, 1996, and after 1996), eleven if including the Spratly case after 1988, the diplomatic success and failure of which I seek to explain, and slightly fewer propositions of the theory that I would like to falsify or verify. In other words, I have a typical small-
n
, many-variables study. As such, it behooves me to employ the qualitative comparative case studies approach of in-depth description that reflects the awareness of contemporary and historical relations between China and its neighboring countries with which it had, and still has, territorial claims and boundary disputes. The cases were chosen because they were contested by China and uninhabited. The absence of a local population whose interests must be taken into account and their small area and lack of intrinsic value to outsiders makes them an excellent control for a “pure” study of boundary disputes and negotiations. We can now be sure that bargaining concerns are dictated by domestic forces and the security perception and economic interest of the state, and not out of any special consideration for the value of the territory under contest, or the interest of the people on it.

Nested within this “most similar” design was a second layer of “most different” comparisons, which attempted to address the question: “What factors really made the difference between success and failure in efforts to complete this particular type of agreement?” Also, I have an abiding interest in the culture and politics of China, and have often wondered under what circumstances are the Chinese most likely to exercise restraint or use force in contesting territorial disputes. The fact that the first three contemporaneous disputes flared up in the 1960s and lingered on in various degrees into the early twenty-first century means that we can see more clearly if and how changes in the international climate, the set of state leaders, and societal preferences and priorities, determine the bargaining postures, both tacit and overt, adopted by negotiators to deal with the three issues, and how these bargaining postures affect their chances of success. We see that popular irredentist sentiments, the strategies of negotiators, institutional constraints, the different impact of costs and benefits on sectarian interests, and the possibility of domestic restructuring of state priorities, dominate the discussion of the Diaoyutai/Senkaku, Zhenbao/Damansky, and Aksai Chin/McMahon Line disputes. Besides national and subnational forces, we also witness the role of transnational actors such as foreign oil companies and semi-formal confidence-building workshops where government officials and academicians participate in their private capacities in the disputes involving the South China Sea islands. Hopefully, in future, more work will be done to test the appropriateness, strengths and limitations of using “two-level games” analysis to explain state and social behavior over other Chinese or non-Chinese territorial claims.

Now that I have briefly described what this study is about, I will proceed to say what it is not. This is not a treatise on Chinese conflict management, strategic behavior, or coercive diplomacy, and certainly not an overview or a detailed examination of Chinese foreign policy. My study should be regarded as an elaborate exercise in hypothesis-testing, that is, to verify, falsify or modify the several hypotheses of “two-level games” as applied to boundary negotiations between China and its neighbors. It attempts to trace the domestic sources of Chinese behavior on boundary disputes and settlements by comparing this aspect of Chinese foreign policy-making across time and countries. Of course, Chinese attempts at crisis management and diplomatic maneuvering that resolve or otherwise deepen border conflicts will be described and analyzed in some detail, but Chinese crisis behavior or diplomacy in general is not the focus of my study.

Contribution to the field

I am unaware of anyone who has attempted to bring together an analysis of
two-level games
and the
territorial
disputes of
China
with neighboring countries, although scholarly literature dealing with each field separately is not hard to find. My major challenge in putting together this study, however, is not so much to furnish a meticulous but forthright account of why and how the border incidents took place, which I believe I have managed to do. Rather, it is to combine a holistic explanation for the rise, continuation and settlement, or prolongation, of China’s land and maritime border disputes, with a rigorous theoretical framework analyzing the pattern of international negotiations and domestic politics linking these disparate events, to provide analysis of the past, and guide actions for the future, for scholars and statesmen alike.

Since two-level games as a framework for analyzing international bargaining has only been developed as recently as 1988, it is perhaps not surprising that studies to test its power and applicability have been almost entirely confined to economic bargaining over trade disputes, and security issues regarding arms control agreements. The two-level game framework has, to the best of my knowledge, only been applied in one case to analyze inter-state negotiations over boundary disputes and territorial claims, and their effect on domestic politics and vice-versa. The work of political scientist Janice Gross Stein on diplomatic negotiations and pre-negotiations in the initiation and resolution of the Arab-Israeli peace process of 1973 is this notable exception,
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and even then, her work is only indirectly related to boundary disputes. Thus the one minor contribution that I hope I have made to this rather new and still relatively scant scholarly literature is to affirm, modify or refine the several significant propositions of two-level game theory which have already been investigated by well known scholars, using China’s boundary disputes as case studies. As such, my study should be construed of as an attempt to add more findings to the collaborative work on two-level game analysis directed by Peter Evans, Harold Jacobson and Robert Putnam, and published as
Double-Edged Diplomacy: International Bargaining and Domestic Politics.

Carol Hamrin has stated that in order to understand Chinese international behavior at any given time, one must look at both the international situation to which China must respond and the attitude toward the outside world prevailing within the Chinese leadership.
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This call, which is as true today as it was then, was echoed recently by Chinese scholar Zhao Quansheng when he made reference to Putnam’s two-level games, but who then went on to develop his own “micromacro linkage approach” to analyzing Chinese foreign policy.
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By micro level, Zhao meant investigating the role of the individual or group decision-makers, and macro-level analysis referred to the influence of the domestic society and institutions as well as the international system and structures in the formulation of China’s foreign policy.
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Unfortunately, Zhao’s approach was really an in-depth description of power play and the workings of Chinese foreign policy from various levels of analysis rather than a coherent theory of foreign policy making, much less a framework for dispute negotiation or conflict resolution. My book will try to redress this inadequacy, by employing two-level games as a framework to analyze Chinese foreign policy making, particularly with respect to the making of border policies.

Paul Kuth’s book on territorial disputes, entitled
Standing Your Ground: Territorial Disputes and International Conflict,
deserves mention as one of the most complete studies of boundary disputes throughout the world, although he does not deal with maritime disputes in detail. Employing a quantitative model of logic analysis, he arrived at the conclusion that domestic political factors can shape how leaders define what issues and problems are given priority in foreign policy, and leaders’ foreign policy response to the actions of other states is shaped by expectations regarding the domestic political support or opposition that a policy is expected to produce. His most important findings were that, while international political and security variables were the principle factors pushing state leaders toward a settlement, domestic politics typically explained why leaders were reluctant to take the initiative and seek a settlement. The decision to dispute territory could be linked to the political benefits of increased popular support and legitimacy when claims were directed at achieving national unification, the recovery of lost national territory, or gaining access to valuable economic resources. Just as important was the desire of leaders in many cases to avoid the political costs of failing to support a long-standing policy of disputing territory. My study will affirm Kuth’s main findings.

Particularly relevant to this study was Chih-yu Shih’s analysis of the “moral” basis of Chinese foreign policy, which I will have occasion to refer to in the last chapter of the book. In his book,
China's Just World: The Morality of Chinese Foreign Policy,
Shih argues that the internal order, external influence, and indeed, the legitimacy of a Chinese regime has historically been based on the moral character of the ruler and the moral pretension of “good government” being accepted by both subjects and foreigners alike. As such, Chinese leaders have for

2,000 years conceived of China’s role in world affairs as a model of morality in an ethical hierarchy, as they defined it to be, until this self-defined role as the paragon of civilization to its neighbors was demolished through internal disorders and foreign invasions in the nineteenth century.

Indeed, one may argue that the People’s Republic of China for its first three decades rediscovered China’s moral responsibility to the world through proletarian internationalism and anti-imperialism, with anti-hegemony added in the 1960s after it tried unsuccessfully to challenge the Soviet Union for leadership of the socialist camp. With the collapse of world socialism and the reorientation in the 1980s of Chinese foreign policy toward its home region of Asia, a more statist role conception of China as an independent regional power seemed to have arisen for the Chinese, buttressed by officially sanctioned patriotic emotions in the 1990s. While the need to be supremo of the world socialist movement led China all the way to the Sino-Soviet split and consequently the Zhenbao/Damansky Island dispute, the desire to be respected as a regional power may make China hyper-sensitive about any perceived challenges to its territorial integrity, such as Japan’s claim to the Diaoyutai/Senkaku Islands. Traditional Chinese unfamiliarity with, even disdain for, the darker people of South Asia may also explain why they were ignorant and insensitive toward Indian concerns about their territorial integrity with regard to the Sino-Indian borderlands.