Sino-Soviet Detente in the Making

Increasingly, the trend in Sino-Soviet normalization has acquired the kind of high visibility which compels serious attention within India. There are several valid reasons for our interest in the matter. Historically, both the Sino-Indian dispute and the Sino-Soviet split occurred in the fifties when the parties concerned had appeared to the outside world as friends and allies. In subsequent developments, the sixties began with a border war between India and China and ended with another border war between China and the Soviet Union. Although the nature of China's bilateral controversies, leading to actual confrontation with India and Soviet Union, were not identical in their origin and evolution, chronologically, its durability with either protagonist has spanned more than a quarter of a century. More recently, an almost parallel movement towards a rapprochement is taking place, formally signified by an ongoing process of seven rounds of Sino-Soviet consultations and six meetings between the Indian and the Chinese representatives till date. Although their initial differences concerning some political issues persist, China and the Soviet Union have been interacting with each other at a frequency which was unimaginable barely a couple of years ago. In 1985, for example, more than 70 visits were exchanged between the two erstwhile adversaries. Following the 27th Congress of the CPSU which ended on 3 March 1986, in the forthcoming weeks sometime, Soviet First Vice-Premier Arkhipov is scheduled to visit Beijing to review bilateral, economic, scientific and cultural relations. Later, in the summer of 1'86, Soviet and Chinese Foreign Ministers will hold important talks with each other which are expected to contribute further towards normalization. Similarly, Sino-Indian contacts at several levels have also grown considerably. It may be explained that it does not lie within the scope of this article to examine the derivative triangular linkages present in the Sino-Indian and the Sino-Soviet issues or to argue that the apparent dynamic of the Sino-Soviet thaw would weaken India's bargaining position vis-a-vis China and therefore a border settlement should be precipitated in order to match the pace of the evolving pattern in Sino-Soviet relations. Rather, the following presentation precludes any juxtaposition with the Sino-Indian problems and focuses almost entirely on certain initiatives taken by the Chinese leadership which have rendered its earlier posturing somewhat obsolete and created an opportunity for it to weigh the Soviet factor afresh in the immediate perspective. Finally, the article seeks to analyse the imperatives behind Beijing's current moves within the larger framework of the primary objective of removing once for all the backward economic status of the country. However, to the extent that the process of Sino-Soviet normalization flows from the shifts in China's foreign and domestic policies, its implications for India are self-evident and for that very reason worthy of our deep interest.