Vijay Gokhale’s The Long Game is a crash course on how China negotiates

Sandeep Dikshit

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It has been raining books on China, especially after the border standoff and the centenary of its Communist Party. Vijay Gokhale, who has taken to authoring slim books on China, has not followed the beaten path of the borders in the choice of content.

‘Tiananmen Square: The Making of a Protest’ was his first book, the bulk of it recollections of a young diplomat who actually had a bird’s-eye view of the events from the balcony of his office in Beijing. His second book is also off the beaten track and equally beguiling. In four of the six case studies, all involving India and China from 1950 onwards, Gokhale was a participant. This allowed him to trace their trajectory in a manner that would escape Indian academics and journalists writing on the subject.

All through, Gokhale gives us a crash course in the way the Chinese set about negotiating with the opposite state, beginning with meticulous preparations that precede the talks to even softening the interpreter whom many states tend to ignore or dismiss as unavoidable appendages.

Chinese negotiators have followed the pattern set by Zhou Enlai for many years (though there is a departure now with aggression seeping into their diplomatic intercourse). Only the lead negotiator speaks; the others simply take notes. The style is theatrical with the lead negotiator opening the proceedings in lofty words. They insert a Chinese proverb or two — ‘How to untie the Tiger’s knot’ was the one bandied at the Indians when they sought to normalise ties after the Pokhran nuclear tests. And tend to select a venue that makes it difficult for the opposite side to frequently consult decision-makers back home. Pay attention to the choice of words, counsels Gokhale, for a different phrase on the same issue shows a shift in the Chinese position.

Gokhale begins with the two sorry but well-trodden chapters in the Indian negotiations on recognition for Communist China and on Tibet. Mercifully, he leaves the even sorrier 1962 chapter out. As he points out, Independent India started with a handicap. Its leadership was rich in political experience but was green around the ears in international diplomacy, as Indians had been bystanders in diplomacy for almost two centuries of colonial rule.

On the other hand, China had just rubbed shoulders with the US, the Soviet Union, Japan and Britain. Gokhale, being from the Foreign Service, naturally pulls up short in examining the doings of his peers that made the Chinese suspicious of Indian protestations about friendship in 1950 and 1954. Didn’t they also ignore clear signs from the 1920s onwards that not just the Chinese Communist Party, the Kuomintang also aimed to absorb Tibet into mainland China?

The decade-long quest to list Masood Azhar as a UN proscribed terrorist also gets slotted in this category. Though India won its battle a few days before the 2019 General Election, the jury is still out on the price India is paying for repeatedly petitioning the Big Powers to stand up at the UN Security Council on its behalf. It is not as if the western abhorrence for terrorists persuaded them to get super-active on behalf of India, coincidentally just days before the make-or-break elections for PM Modi were due in India. The West, after all, has been a much more active player in propping up armed non-state actors.

The post-Pokhran diplomacy to unknot the Chinese tie-up with the Americans to punish India for the nuclear tests — India chose elements from the China’s playbook when it conducted the first nuclear test in 1964 — and the reversal of Chinese position on India’s NSG exemption were the feathers in South Block’s diplomatic cap.

For the outsider, more noteworthy are the nuggets about the Chinese diplomatic strategy that pepper the book — ‘not ripe for settlement’ means Beijing does not wish to discuss the issue; their overdependence on Left parties that led them to misread the Indian resolve after the nuclear tests; or asking the other side to speak first during negotiations, not out of politeness as is assumed, but to read the other side’s cards before responding.

The Chinese also establish a hierarchy in negotiations to talk down to the opposite party. How does India respond? By frequently quoting from the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence to make the point that parity is a must in talks.

The newness of the overall content, especially on the contemporary events, should have readers asking for more. And judging from Gokhale’s articles, there is more in store probably on the innards of the Chinese machinery, the United Front Work Department (UFWD) for example.