China-India Border Dispute: Lack of Standard for Border Negotiations​​

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Author : Koo, Jaseon​​​​​​​

Page : 409-456

Abstract   

  China has borders with 14 countries: since its founding, China has experienced large and small border disputes, and it has intensively defined its borders through border treaties in the 1960s and 1990s. However, the border treaty with India has not been established and has been in conflict. Existing studies focused on the causes of border disputes between China and India. This paper focuses on the cause of the dispute not being resolved. After the Opium War, the Qing Dynasty had to make an inequality treaty with Western powers and to cede the territory. After establishing of state, China declared these unequal treaties invalid, but in fact, when demarcating the border, it needed a standard of judgment. Thus, it accepted the past unequal treaties and defined the border, but such grounds were vague with India. The Treaty of Simla was a treaty signed by the Indian colonial authorities and Tibet, and the Qing government refused to sign it; the western region did not sign a treaty with the powers, but only the lines drawn by the Indian colonial authorities remained on the map. After the Dalai Lama's exile to India in 1959, China felt the need for border demarcation, and showed an attitude to recognize the McMahon line, the legacy of the Simla Conference. Instead, they hoped India would transfer the  Aksai Chin region of Jammu Kashmir, where India claims sovereignty.  Aksai Chin is just a wasteland, but there is the only road that connects Tibet and Xinjiang, but the dispute has not been resolved by India's refusal. Therefore, the most fundamental factor in the Chinese Indian border dispute is that there is no standard for border agreements. In addition, the size of disputed area, the importance of the disputed area, nationalism of both countries, and the consciousness of the great nation are lacking of explanation power.​

​<Key Words>​​

Border Disputes, Aksai Chin, McMahon Line, Arunachal Pradesh, Tibet​