The Long Game: How the Chinese Negotiate with India

by Vijay Gokhale

It is also believed that it was around this time that China decided to accelerate its nuclear cooperation with Pakistan by ‘grandfathering’ a deal for

The US-led global nuclear crusade had created an entire community of experts and officials who lived and breathed non-proliferation.

called Group of Six—Ireland, New Zealand, Austria, Switzerland, Norway and the Netherlands.

The Chinese publicly declared that their participation had always been with a responsible and constructive attitude, a standard phrase used to justify its opposition on any issue.

India and China resumed normal exchanges. The Indian NSA M.K. Narayanan travelled to China later in the same month. He became the first senior member of the Government of India to officially meet with the new Vice President of China, Xi Jinping (the author accompanied the NSA for this meeting). Xi Jinping told Narayanan that China took a strategic view of India and that he had great confidence in the future of the relationship.

The way the principle was formulated also left room for China to move in either direction, since it juxtaposed the right of all countries to have access to nuclear energy along with non-proliferation concerns. It was difficult for India to take issue publicly with China on the matter. This showed the manner in which China thought ahead to the endgame in the negotiations and kept an exit route that would be available if things did not pan out as expected.

The Chinese think-tanks flatter them by giving the impression that by engaging with Chinese academicians, they are gaining insight into Chinese thinking. As a result, senior Chinese academics have had greater access to policy-making circles in America than those from India or any other major developing country. The lack of reciprocal access at the official level in China even for the United States makes the Chinese think-tanks a potent force multiplier in the Chinese negotiating arsenal. It speaks for China, but this is deniable if it suits the Chinese government.

At least some of the amendments to the original US draft that were suggested by Austria, New Zealand, Ireland and the others, may have come directly or through more subtle means from China. In other words, China was able to secure these concessions not by directly negotiating with America, but by getting others to do their work for them.

China has been successful in changing the definition of ‘consensus’ from one meaning the largest possible majority to a more authoritarian definition that means every last one in the room. This allows the Chinese to paralyse international negotiations, compels others to approach China for relief and enables the Chinese to extract concessions in return even when they are the lone ones standing out.

As an active member of the terrorist group Harkat-ul-Ansar, he had been apprehended in India in the early 1990s.

Masood Azhar went on to establish the Jaish-e-Mohammed (The Army of Mohammed or JeM). JeM has been responsible for several deadly terrorist attacks in India, including on the Houses of Parliament in Delhi in December 2001, and later on the Indian Air Force base at Pathankot in January 2016 and on a security convoy of the Central Reserve Police Force in Pulwama in February 2019.

In June 2011, the Security Council decided that the list of individuals and entities associated with Al-Qaida would be handled by the 1267 Committee, also known as the Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee, and a separate committee was created to oversee sanctions against the Taliban. The 1267 Sanctions Committee comprises fifteen members of the Security Council.

In December 2008, three major LeT operatives who were involved in the Mumbai attacks—Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi, Hafiz Saeed and Haji Muhammed Ashraf—were listed by the 1267 Committee. The listing did not, however, contain a reference to the attack on Mumbai. The listing of the three individuals was a consequence of the association that LeT had kept with Al-Qaida. Nonetheless, it was a positive sign that entities and individuals based in Pakistan who had trained their sights on India, were being sanctioned.

India’s first attempt at listing Masood Azhar revealed that, logic apart, the interplay of relationships was much more important in determining the decisions of the committee. Three relationships were in play: India and China, China and Pakistan, and China and the United States of America.

The 2016 listing request was important in giving several insights into how China negotiated one-to-one on multilateral issues, which was to prove useful in the final successful effort that India made to list Masood Azhar in 2019. India also saw the repeated Chinese attempts to shelve the listing as a manifestation that China’s foreign policy in South Asia was neither balanced nor neutral.

Pakistan’s dependence on China alone to help its cause became an added pressure point because China did not want to be seen as ‘defending’ or ‘justifying’ terrorism.

Under the rules of procedure, any committee member is entitled to keep the ‘hold’ in place for up to nine months. By placing a hold, China bought itself some time. In discussions with India, the Chinese claimed that the criteria for listing had to be based on solid evidence, and that the material supplied by the Indian side needed more discussion. In this manner, China was also able to stave off matters coming to a head inside the committee by claiming that they were engaging with India.

China pleaded that all it was attempting to do by placing the ‘hold’ on India’s proposal was to fulfil the letter and spirit of the UN Security Council resolutions relating to the listing of entities and individuals associated with Al-Qaida.

Informal feelers were put out in New Delhi suggesting that China might reconsider if India consented to remove all direct references to the Pakistan government’s involvement in terrorism and if India undertook not to make further proposals to list Pakistani individuals and entities in the future.

The spotlight now shone on China as a lone hold-out. This is a situation that China did not wish to see. It works hard to cultivate a certain sort of public profile, where it is seen as a responsible and constructive member of the international community.

Therefore, India’s counter-response was that this matter was not procedural but entirely political, not multilateral but bilateral, and that any further delay by the Chinese in blocking the listing of Masood Azhar might have an adverse impact on India–China relations. The Russians presumably conveyed this to the Chinese.

If China does not wish to discuss a matter, the standard ploy is to claim that an issue is not ‘ripe for settlement’.

The tendency of the opposite party is to acquiesce to the Chinese agenda out of a sense of politeness or in order to keep the atmosphere of talks positive, and that is precisely what the Chinese desire. It is, therefore, important for the other party to raise its own issues of interest in the working level negotiations even if these are not on the formal agenda, as a means of conveying to China that the other party has equal interest and the right to put forward its own issues in the discussion.

Therefore, paying close attention to agenda-setting and not conceding any negotiating point in advance are important in talks with China on any issue.

The negotiator of the other party is affected by the propaganda and at pains to avoid further confrontation in the talks. It is, therefore, advisable for the Indian interlocutor to openly call out such media reports and ask the Chinese side to clarify its view on record at the beginning of the talks, so that there is no pressure on the negotiator.

Something Dr Jaishankar has done with regard to canadian killing accusations

The Chinese use this tactic especially in difficult negotiations, as it limits the ability of the Indian negotiator to consult in detail with the decision makers in the home country, and is an added psychological factor in China’s favour. A variation on this theme is to hold meetings in venues outside Beijing.

The intention is to put the opposite side on the back foot so that the Indian side spends time defending itself against such allegations during the talks and is not always able to raise contentious concerns of its own. It is important for the Indian side to have its own set of problems ready to raise with the Chinese side if they use this tactic during the negotiations.

It is important to insist that there cannot be preconditions for any negotiation, and to maintain this position even if the Chinese threaten to withdraw from the talks. This is also a means of determining whether the Chinese intend to talk for form’s sake alone, or desire an outcome.

This pitfall may be avoided by equal preparation on the Indian side. The Indian interlocutor must have full knowledge of facts, know his own bottom line, avoid time deadlines and, as Richard H. Solomon puts it, demonstrate competence and control over the negotiating process.

This is their way of avoiding an open admission of compromise or surrender in a negotiation. It is good practice to, therefore, listen attentively and do a careful comparison of the words or phrases used in a negotiation with what has been used previously, to determine whether there is a change in the negotiating position.

They build relationships with an eye on manipulation. The display of anger is also a put-on. The Chinese negotiator’s objective is to gain psychological advantage over the opposite party before the beginning of any negotiation.

Chinese diplomats are not one of us. At the higher echelons, they are all members of the Communist Party of China, and owe their loyalty to the Party above the State. Diplomats in democracies act as agents of the government; Chinese diplomats act as agents of the Party. This is an important distinction. Chinese diplomats are ideological. Logic or reason is, therefore, not likely to convince the Chinese negotiator.

Chinese negotiator will usually revert on a provisional deal with the expectation of squeezing out a final concession. In short, the oral concurrence of the negotiator to any agreement is not the final word; it is only the written word that counts.

While the prerogative to raise any issue at the highest levels is a legitimate tactic of diplomacy, it can only be used in exceptional cases in China, and only to make a point or to directly sensitize the Chinese leaders, and without any expectation of a desirable outcome.