China's Territorial Disputes (5 page)

Given that a state’s interests and policies are affected not only by material capabilities such as economic might or military capabilities, but also by identities, fears and shared norms that are socially, culturally, and historically contingent to its people, the “moral” or psychological basis of China’s “realist” foreign policy is worthy of our attention. A common national identity and shared nationalist discourse between the people of China and Taiwan is the reason why, despite their difference over ideology, regime legitimacy, and even what constitutes China, the Taipei government has always supported the PRC stance in its territorial disputes, albeit in the name of the Chinese nation and not the Beijing government. Without a cultural understanding, the application of our two-level game analysis would be a vacuous and meaningless exercise.

Notes

I    Introduction

1    John Alcock, Guy Arnold, Alan Day, D. S. Lewis, Lorimer Poutney, Roland Lance and D. J. Sagar,
Border and Territorial Disputes,
revised 3rd edn (London: Longman, 1992). The figure for the number of disputes is calculated from appendix A, a listing and summary of disputes between 1950 and 1990.

2    Paul K. Huth,
Standing Your Ground: Territorial Disputes and International Conflict
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), 4.

3    John Vasquez, “Why Do Neighbours Fight?: Proximity, Interaction, Territoriality,”
Journal of Peace Research,
August 1995, vol.32, no. 2, 277-294.

4    Alastair Iain Johnston, “China’s Militarized Interstate Dispute Behaviour 1949-1992: A First Cut at the Data,”
China Quarterly,
March 1998, no. 153, 29.

5    United Nations Third Convention of the Law of the Sea, (UNCLOS III) 1982, Part VIII, Regime of Islands, Article 121, Paragraph 3.

6    Jeanette Greenfield,
China
’
s Practice in the Law of the Sea
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 229. Appendix 1, “Declaration on China’s Territorial Sea, 4 September 1958.”

7    Anonymous,
Shi Jing
. This saying first appeared in the anthology of poems called the
Sh Jing
[Book of Poems], under the section on “Xiao Ya” [Minor Odes], in the poem entitled “Bei Shan” [Northern Mountains]. The
Shi Jing
was compiled some time in the last decades of the Western Zhou dynasty (1046-771 BCE).

8    John Wilson Lewis and Xue Litai,
China
’
s Strategic Seapower: The Politics of Force Modernization in the Nuclear Age
(Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 219.

9    
Ibid.

10
Md.,
225.

II    
Ibid.
, 229.

12 You Ji, ‘A Test Case for China’s Defense and Foreign Policies,”
Contemporar
y
Southeast Asia,
March 1995, vol.16, no. 4, 377.

13    You, “A Test Case for China’s Defense and Foreign Policies,” 378-379.

14    William W. Bain, “Sino-Indian Military Modernization: The Potential for Destabilization,”
Asian Affairs,
fall 1994, vol.21,no. 3,135.

15    
Ibid.
, 136.

16    You Ji, “A Test Case for China’s Defense and Foreign Policies,” 380.

17    Huth,
Standing Your Ground,
7.

18    Robert D. Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-level Games,” in Peter B. Evans, Harold K. Jacobson and Robert D. Putnam (eds)
DoubleEdged Diplomacy: International Bargaining and Domestic politics
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 436.

19    Glenn H. Snyder and Paul Diesing,
Conflict Among Nations: Bargaining, Decision Making,

and System Structure in International Crises
(Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977), 510-525.    
'

20    Rosemary Foot, “From Deterrence To Reassurance?: Cooperative Security in Asia and the Chinese Response,” paper presented at the Center for International Studies, University of Southern California, Los Angeles,16 April 1996.

21    Major works in this genre include Arthur Samuel Lall,
Modern International Negotiations: principles and practices
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1966); Richard H. Solomon,
Chinese Political Negotiating Behavior: A Briefing Analysis
(Santa Monica CA: Rand Corporation, 1985); and Lucian Pye,
Chinese Negotiating Style: Commercial Approaches and Cultural Principles
(New Jersey: Greenwood Publishers, 1992).

22    Robert D. Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-level Games,”
International Organization,
summer 1988, vol.42, no. 3, 423-460.

23    Lyle J. Goldstein, “Return to Zhenbao Island: Who Started Shooting and Why It Matters,”
China Quarterly,
December 2001, no. 168, 985-997.

24    Y. B. Chavan,
India's Foreign Policy
(New Delhi: Frank Cass, 1979),19.

25    International Boundaries Research Unit (IBRU) Boundary and Security Bulletin, Autumn 1999, 38.

26    “Vietnam’s Government Defends Border Agreement with China,”
Associated Press,
3 April 2002.

27    
Jane's Foreign Report,
2627, 8 February 2001.

28    
Ibid.,
459.

29    Jeffrey W. Knopf, “Beyond Two-level Games: Domestic-international Interaction in the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Negotiations,”
International Organization
, autumn 1993, vol.47, no. 4, 605. Knopf went on to explore the implications for state government negotiations by taking into account three (societal, state and regime) levels of analysis. However, since regimes as a common set of norms, rules and expectations which governs inter-state behavior are not at present established among the countries of East Asia, I will not consider the third (regime) level of analysis in applying the traditional “two-level games” concept.

30    Janice Gross Stein, “The Political Economy of Security Agreements: The Link Costs of Failure at Camp David,” in Peter B. Evans, Harold K. Jacobson and Robert D. Putnam (eds)
Double-Edged Diplomacy: International Bargaining and Domestic Politics
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 77-103.

31    Carol Hamlin, “Domestic Component and China’s Evolving Three World Theory,” in Lillian Harris and Robert Worden (eds)
China and the Third World: Champion or Challenger
(Dover MA: Auburn House, 1986), 50-51.

32    Zhao Quansheng,
Interpreting Chinese Foreign Policy: The Micro-Macro Linkage Approach
(Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1996),19.

33    
Ibid.
, 23.

2 The two-level game hypothesis

Toward a theory of negotiation and ratification

My objective in this study is to explore the dynamics of China’s conflict, negotiations, and settlement attempts over disputed territories with its neighbors. At the same time, I hope to contribute to two-level games bargaining theory by testing its integrative approach against this particular territorial aspect of foreign policy making. For various reasons, states choose to bargain, make promises, or use threats, to exact concessions from other states on issues of territorial claims, economic disputes and security challenges. The appearance in 1988 of Robert Putnam’s seminal work on “two-level games,” focused on the effect diplomacy has on domestic politics and vice-versa. Since then, there have been many studies on why and how certain bargaining strategies and negotiating positions as employed by statesmen or diplomats led either to success in achieving the results they want, or at least some measure of it, or to the collapse of negotiations. Much less work seemed to have been done on comparing why some inter-state disputes in the territorial, economic or security arenas failed to get off the ground, or were quickly aborted at the stage of preliminary talks, while others were speedily disposed of to the satisfaction of both sides, even after long years of intermittent and fruitless negotiations. In other words, the bulk of the work done on illustrating or stretching Putnam’s “two-level game” hypothesis focus on the challenges faced by the statesmen/diplomats in negotiating an agreement with their (Level I) counterparts elsewhere, and submitting the agreement for ratification by their domestic (Level II) constituents, and the art of politicking, coalition-forming, and opinion-making involved in both levels of negotiations.
¹

Not at all to gainsay the importance of this continuing line of fruitful research, perhaps we should also pay attention to why outstanding inter-state disputes are left to simmer and linger in the popular consciousness and stand in the way of better relations between the disputant states without any of their governments taking action to force a confrontation, to withdraw from the contention, or to take steps in achieving a comprehensive solution, or even a piecemeal settlement, by starting negotiations. Could it be due to the absence of an intersecting “win-set” or common grounds for agreement, as a result of exactly overlapping areas of contested sovereignty, uncompromising popular feelings arising out of historical grievances, extremely prejudiced cultural bias or perceptions, or some other factors which lead states to adopt intransigent positions if and when they even contemplate negotiations? Could it be that mutual distrust and lingering hostility among the people of the disputant states is so deep that the uniformly intransigent position taken by pressure groups or social forces on the issue or issues at hand make it impossible for negotiators on one side to appeal to, or take advantage of, a possible breach or division of public opinion on the other side, which would allow for meaningful dialog even to begin, let alone concessions to be made?

In answering the two foregoing questions, I hope to be able to bring the rationality of “two-level game” theory to rest on a cultural paradigm, by shedding light on how one type of analysis is enriched by the other in terms of the power to explain the international and domestic forces of interaction. It is not my purpose to get entangled in the often-animated academic discussion on the relative virtues of rational choice versus cultural analysis, except to say that I believe that rational goal-achieving behavior of an individual or a group can have no meaning except within the context of historical knowledge and cultural assumptions. Culture in this sense refers to the political, social, legal and value system of a particular people in a particular place at a particular time. This is because the cultural milieu in which an individual finds herself enters into her objective calculations, her assumptions of what is possible or not permissible in her society, the circumstances under which she makes her choices, and the formal and informal constraints facing her. For a two-level theory of international bargaining to be rooted in a theory of domestic politics, it is crucial for us to recognize the roles played by the perceptions, preferences and priorities of both leaders and masses of a country, as expressed in historical grievances, cultural prejudices and irredentist claims, if and when it chooses to start, end, continue, or forgo negotiations. It is for this reason, if nothing else, that we must appreciate the degree to which the goal-directed rationality of an individual or collective is conditioned by the historical background and cultural particularity of a country and its people.

The importance of win-sets and their determinants

One way to think about two-level games is as a contest between constraining forces at each of the two levels. Pressure from one level, for example, by the action of a nationalist group asserting a territorial claim, will push statesmen to consider and exploit whatever ambiguous room for maneuver exists on the other level, for example, by expressing willingness to compromise, confront or concede the claim, up to the point where contrary constraints, such as the success, failure or reactivation of the nationalist action, becomes manifest. Although bargaining is a strategic and interactive process, shaped at the same time by the pursuit of international gains and the political dynamics of domestic ratification, any testable two-level theory of international negotiation must be rooted in a theory of domestic politics, that is, a theory about the power and preferences of major actors at Level II.
²
In Putnam’s model, changes in the size of the win-sets change the domestic constraints and the feasibility of international cooperation through the diplomacy of bargaining. Changes in the size of the win-sets are the result of alterations in perception, preferences and priorities explainable in terms of rational learning by leaders and masses of a country responding to the national interest and the constraints and opportunities of the international system. For this reason, even if the principal driving force behind a diplomatic engagement is purely domestic, the fact that domestic pressure arises in response to objective economic, security or historical factors means that two-level games cannot be disaggregated into the separate dynamics of two different though related games while striving to analyze the interaction between them.