Different Systems on Either Side of the Line of Actual Control

On 12 September 2024, India’s National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval met Wang Yi, a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, and Chinese foreign minister. The meeting took place in St. Petersburg, on the sidelines of a BRICS meeting. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Mao Ning, in her press briefing remarked that the two sides discussed the progress made in the recent consultations on border affairs and agreed to deliver on the common understandings reached by leaders of the two countries, enhance mutual understanding and trust, create conditions for improving bilateral ties and maintain communication to this end’.

Wang Yi noted that in the face of a world in turmoil, as two ancient Eastern civilizations and emerging developing countries, ‘China and India should adhere to independence, choose unity and cooperation, and insist on mutual achievement and avoid consuming each other’. With regard to the ongoing standoff at the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the press release by India’s Ministry of External Affairs mentioned that  ‘both sides agreed to work with urgency and redouble their efforts to realise complete disengagement in the remaining areas’.

However, this is much easier said than done, for the simple reason that in the first place, China has never admitted to having changed the status quo by advancing into India’s territory in six places in eastern Ladakh in 2020. Also, the LAC has been moving over the years. The Line, which was agreed by Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in 1956 (and reconfirmed in December 1959) is far from the present Chinese claims.

Recently, India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said that 75 per cent of the disengagement has already been achieved in eastern Ladakh, but the remaining 25 per cent is perhaps the most complex. As in previous meetings with Indian leaders, Wang Yi tried to argue that India and China are in the same boat and if they work together, the two nations can change the whole world.

However, one should not forget that the systems of governance of India and China are vastly different. In fact, they stand at opposite ends - while India is a democracy with all its good and less good aspects, China is an authoritarian regime.

Some examples show the difference between the two Asian nations. Today’s “disputed” border is with an occupied country, namely Tibet. Before 1950, India had no border dispute with its northern neighbour. Beijing tries to change this basic fact with intense propaganda.

On September 11, the International Campaign for Tibet, a think tank based in Washington DC noted the launch of a new propaganda centre in Lhasa, called the Tibet International Communication Centre. While Chinese propaganda would like us to believe that all is well in Tibet, this is not the case. If it were true, why should China stop visitors from coming to Tibet or Tibetans from visiting their leader, the Dalai Lama, in India?

In fact, the border discussed by Wang Yi and Ajit Doval is closed. Even the centuries-old trade exchanges between the Indian Himalayas and Tibet have stopped. This also applies for the Kailash-Manasarovar Yatra which is not any more accessible for Indian devotees.

The first stage of the new propaganda campaign is to replace the name ‘Tibet’ with a Sinicized version, ‘Xizang’. This is in line with the Chinese President Xi Jinping’s call ‘to tell China’s story well’, on the global stage.

Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) party secretary Wang Junzheng argued that ‘external propaganda is an important part of the cause of the Party and the country’ and that efforts must be undertaken to ‘thoroughly implement General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important expositions on external propaganda [and] fully and accurately implement Xi Jinping’s important instructions on Tibet work’. The instructions are that all is fine in Tibet.

One of the tools used by the Chinese propaganda is the Beijing-selected Panchen Lama, the second-highest figure in Tibetan Buddhism. The Tibet Daily recently remarked that the Lama, whom the Tibetans call a ‘fake’ Panchen Lama, ‘carried out a series of Buddhist and social activities in Lhasa, the capital city of southwest China’s Xizang Autonomous Region’. The ‘Panchen’ gave a talk during which he stressed ‘the need to firmly uphold the final say of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on the reincarnation of Living Buddhas of Tibetan Buddhism and voiced strong opposition to secession, while calling for national unity, ethnic unity, and religious and social harmony’. China is already preparing for the Dalai Lama’s succession.

One could ask how this is connected with the border issue between India and China? Forceful propaganda is always linked to a weakness. What immediately comes to mind is the Great Leap Forward, during which 30 or 40 million people perished due to starvation following Mao’s flawed agricultural policies. The years 1958-1961 witnessed more propaganda posters on the bumper harvests and the happiness of the masses than at any other time. Clearly, propaganda always tries to cover a flaw or a shortcoming.

As Tibetans are today prisoners in their own country, they are showcased as beneficiaries of Xi’s policies. This is the crucial difference between populations on the Indian and Tibetan sides of the Himalayas.

Earlier this month, the TAR announced the beginning of the celebrations for the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Since the Ministry of Public Security had already designated Year 2024 as the year of special action to combat and rectify online rumours, public security organs were deployed across the country to carry out a one-year special action. They have taken the initiative to crack down on Internet-related crimes, making every effort to maintain the order of cyberspace and social security and stability.

In sum, there is one border, but two opposite systems on either side of it.  It is certainly something that India should use to its full advantage to counter China’s propaganda.

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This is a modified version of the article originally published as Claude Arpi. 2024. The India-China Standoff: One Border, Two Systems. Deccan Chronicle. 20 September.