China's Territorial Disputes (21 page)

the trial grounds were shifted to a safe distance from the prime site at the junction of the Amur and the Ussuri to a sprinkling of forlorn mud flats farther upstream . A volatile experiment conducted at a doorstep of a major concentration, such as Khabarovsk, entailed excessive risk if a scheduled or ad hoc rehearsal still managed to go awry - while in these sparsely populated stretches of land, neither side had much at stake and so had no reasonable cause to panic, overreact and set in motion a chain of events leading to a full-dress military showdown.
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In other words, confining the trading of quick, small-scale and occasional blows and counterblows to tiny, non-strategic and unpopulated islands was itself a bargaining strategy to keep the business of “border adjustments” strictly compartmentalized as a separate package while firing up the polemics about “unequal treaties” at a doctrinal level. For the purpose of China’s prestige politics and Mao’s ideological polemics, the boundary issue with the Soviet Union must be kept alive but “de-linked.” China as a self-defined great power must file a ritualistic claim to lost territories and rely upon it to secure a symbolic renegotiation of the historically “unequal” border treaties. However, care would be taken by the Chinese to ensure that this live territorial dispute was not exacerbated in any way on the ground so as to trigger an armed conflagration between the two countries. “De-linking” issues, it seems, can be applied as a technique not only for conflict resolution, but short of that, also for conflict minimization. The contested islands thus represented a “salient point,” in the sense employed by Thomas Schelling, to be transgressed by either belligerent party only if it should want to widen the conflagration. Since that was not the case, the dispute over the islands, which meant little in the larger scheme of things, was no longer an issue when both sides agreed to a rapprochement beginning in 1986.

Border negotiations in the Sino-Soviet rapprochement:

28 July 1986-16 May 1991

In January 1983, China suddenly dropped its demand that the Soviet Union acknowledge the nineteenth-century border treaties as “unequal” as a precondition for a general border settlement.
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In July 1985, for the first time since Soviet technical aid and personnel had been withdrawn from China in August 1960, a bilateral agreement on technical cooperation was signed between China and the USSR.
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Between 1982 and 1986, China reduced its troop strength from 4 million to 3 million. These gestures encouraged Gorbachev, in a landmark speech at Vladivostok in July 1986, to speak of a new era in Asian and Chinese relations and offer a package of Soviet concessions. He pledged to open the Soviet Far East to trade with the outside world, and more pertinently to Beijing, agreed to withdraw Soviet troops from Mongolia and Afghanistan. Gorbachev further conceded that the riparian boundary between China and the Soviet Union could run along the main navigational channel, and ordered an intergovernmental agreement to be drawn up jointly on this score.
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Propelled by the impetus of Gorbachev’s Vladivostok address, the foreign ministers of China and the Soviet Union agreed to resume border talks the following year, after a nine-year hiatus.

The first round of Sino-Soviet talks on border questions was held in February 1987 in Moscow, and as in past boundary negotiations, the government delegations from both sides were once again headed by deputy foreign ministers - Igor A. Rogachev on the Soviet side, and Qian Qichen on the Chinese side.
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Rogachev had been appointed by Gorbachev the year before to replace Mikhail Kapitsa, a hard-line holdout from the Brezhnev era.
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Although the course of the state boundary between the two countries was to be examined along its entire length, work was to begin first on the more contentious and intractable eastern section of the border.
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According to a diplomatic source from the Eastern Bloc, the Chinese were surprised at the attitude of compromise displayed by the Soviets.
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According to Rogachev, the Chinese did not raise the issue of “the three obstacles” to normalization, which might have contributed to the easy atmosphere of the talks.
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The delegates had agreed to alternate the venue of the talks between Moscow and Beijing this time, unlike in the past when the Chinese stipulated that these could only be conducted in the Chinese capital. Accordingly, the second round of border negotiations took place “in a calm and businesslike atmosphere” in Beijing in August 1987, headed again by Rogachev and Qian.
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The talks this time seemed to be restricted to dealing with questions pertaining to the eastern sector of the common border. Both sides agreed to decide the boundary question “on the basis of appropriate treaties governing the present Soviet-Chinese border” and “in accordance with the principle of division along the center of the main shipping channel on navigable rivers, and along the center of the river or its main branch on smaller, non-navigable ones.”
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Agreeing to decide the border issue on the basis of “appropriate” treaties was a clear concession on the part of the Chinese not to question the validity of what they had called the “unequal treaties,” while the Soviets relented by agreeing to adopt the
thalweg
principle in demarcating the riparian boundary.

Given the spirit of compromise, it is not surprising that, by the end of 1987, the two sides had reached comprehensive agreement on the principles that would guide future demarcation of the border. A working group of experts was created in September 1987 at the conclusion of the Beijing meeting, to make specific examination of the course of the boundary line along the length of the eastern portion.
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Beginning 17 May 1988 for three months, this group of experts, which included aviators and engineers from the air forces of both countries, completed mapping the border through a joint aerial photographic survey.
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Altogether, three border meetings were held in 1988. When Soviet foreign minister Edward Shevardnadze visited Beijing in February 1989, he announced the reduction from the eastern and western sectors of the Sino-Soviet border of 200,000 and 60,000 Soviet troops respectively, and the withdrawal of three quarters of Soviet troops stationed in Mongolia, the remainder to be withdrawn by 1992.
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With two of Beijing’s three conditions for normalization met, the path was cleared for Gorbachev to come to China. Except for Heixiazi Island at the confluence of the Amur and Ussuri rivers, the two negotiating teams had reached enough agreement by the spring of 1989 to be able to present their proposal for consideration at the planned Sino-Soviet normalization summit awaiting Gorbachev’s visit to Beijing in May 1989.
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Gorbachev’s visit signified the end
oi
the Sino-Soviet split which had begun some thirty years before, and replaced ideological polemics between the two Communist parties of China and the Soviet Union with the so-called “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” based on mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, non-aggression, non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual advantage, and peaceful coexistence.
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Party-to-party relations were from then on to be subsumed under and subordinated to state-to-state relations, at least with respect to boundary affairs, to give both sides some measure of stability in the changing Soviet political landscape. As expected, the joint communique issued at the end of the summit endorsed the general rule of locating demarcation lines in the middle of river channels, and charged the two countries’ foreign ministers with holding discussions on border issues.
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The communique also noted Soviet support for China’s position that Taiwan “is part and parcel of the territory of the PRC and is strongly opposed to any attempts to create ‘two Chinas,’ ‘one China and one Taiwan,’ or an ‘independent Taiwan’,”
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thereby foreclosing the possibility of Moscow succumbing to any financial inducements from, and extending any diplomatic feelers to, Taipei.

After the 1989 summit was over, the foreign ministers of both sides conducted new rounds of intensified negotiations on the border dispute. The upgrading of the border talks from the level of deputy foreign minister to foreign minister demonstrated that the boundary negotiations were nearing fruition. According to Soviet sinologist Vladimir Myasnikov, deputy director of the Far East Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, “bilateral delegations and working groups engaged in negotiations of the border issue have been working in a very good environment, incomparable to those of the 1960s, 1970s, and even the first half of the 1980s.”
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In response to Gorbachev’s call for total demilitarization of the Sino-Soviet border, and to create a friendly atmosphere for the continuation of the border talks, China and the Soviet Union started talks in February 1990 on the reduction of troops massed at their common border. The Soviets at the end of 1990 retrenched 200,000 troops in the eastern sector consisting of twelve army divisions, eleven air force regiments, and sixteen warships of the Soviet Pacific fleet, and ordered the destruction of all 436 medium- and short-range nuclear guided missiles deployed in the Far East theater.
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The mutual desire to maintain a close working relationship was reinforced by the quick and decisive victory of American and allied forces in the Gulf War in early 1991, which served to bond Chinese and Soviets together to some degree, as both shared the apprehension that the United States might seek to translate that achievement into what they perceived to be world hegemony.

After two years of secretive but obviously productive meetings to finalize details, the leaders of both Chinese and Soviet teams initialed a boundary agreement on 16 May 1991, when Chinese Communist Party secretary-general Jiang Zemin paid an official visit to Moscow. Except for Heixiazi Island and an isolated 55-kilometer stretch in the mountainous Altai region between Mongolia and Kazakhstan, this boundary accord settled 98 percent of the 7,400 kilome-ters-long common border, including the entire eastern sector from the headwaters of the Argun River to the mouth of the Tumen River. The agreement thus confirmed that the troublesome island of Damansky/Zhenbao and the rest of the disputed islands in the Ussuri and the Amur were from then on uncontestable Chinese property.
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The agreement also allowed the free passage of all types of ships from both countries on the boundary rivers,
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including the Tumenjiang/Tumangan all the way to the sea,
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which would in future years lead to charges by the Russians of smuggling and over-fishing by Chinese fishermen.

The 1991 Sino-Soviet border agreement soon faced opposition from local authorities and military leaders on both sides. Vitaly Churkin, head of the Soviet Foreign Ministry’s Information Administration, chided articles in regional newspapers and magazines on the need to defend “certain” territories, calling the question “an impetuous act and illogical,” since “Zhenbao” island “had already been under China’s control for twenty years.”
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Since the Soviet breakup, Russian Far Eastern government leaders like Khabarovsk Krai governor Viktor Ishaev and Primorsky Krai governor Evgeniy Nazdratenko have issued protests because of concern over the loss of historical grazing lands and fishing areas with the proposed transfer of Damansky and other islands to China as a result of the border accord.
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Many Russian Far Easterners were displeased that concessions were made at the national level on issues which affect their lives without the consultation, much less agreement, of regional and local leaders. As for some Chinese, it was felt that since Moscow had from 1964 seemed prepared to settle the riparian boundary question along the
thalweg
and prepared to concede the disputed islands, China in effect gained nothing in exchange for giving up claims to the territories lost by the treaties of Aigun and Beijing to Russia. They felt that China should have at least asked for a few miles of land along the mouth of the Tumen to regain access to the Sea of Japan (see Figure 4.1). Although opposition to the agreement was noisy, especially on the Soviet side, it was scattered, unorganized, and disregarded by Moscow. Even then, due to the domestic political chaos of the Soviet Union and its collapse, the treaty needed the solid support of both heads of state to push it through the Russian parliament, which succeeded to all treaty obligations incurred by the former Soviet Union, and the Chinese National People’s Congress, for ratification in February 1992.
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Ratification and demarcation: persistence amidst adversity

Now that the boundary treaty had come into effect, the process of demarcating the eastern sector of the border had to begin. The last demarcation work had been carried out by Manchu China and czarist Russia in July 1886, and many border markers had long since disappeared into the marshes and swamps.
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The official go-ahead for the new bilateral demarcation commission to break ground was given by Jiang Zemin and Boris Yeltsin, when Yeltsin paid his first visit to China as Russian president in December 1992. Yeltsin later told Li Peng, premier of China’s State Council, during the latter’s visit to Moscow in June 1995, that demarcation work would be completed no later than 1997.
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According to Article 86 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, promulgated on 12 December 1993, the president of Russia shall supervise the execution of foreign policy, conduct negotiations and sign international treaties on behalf of the Russian Federation. In fact, rival ministries, the military apparatus, the legislature, the personal emissaries of the president and the premier, and the increasingly powerful and autonomous regional governors, all conducted their own China policies according to their own political, security and economic interests. In February 1995, Russian deputy foreign minister Aleksandr Panov complained to the major Russian daily
Izvestia
that the Russian side had fallen behind schedule in field operations to erect markers at the Sino-Russian border, expressing fear that this would “explode” Russia’s relations with China.
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Panov’s fears might have been exaggerated, but he was certainly expressing a legitimate concern, shared by his president and the Moscow establishment, which was that the hard-fought border agreement could flounder on the ground, sabotaged by the obstructionist actions of recalcitrant Far Eastern political bosses championing narrow regional interests over the economic and security well-being of the entire Russian Federation.