Time For A New Border Pact in Sikkim Sector: Chinese Analysts

India and China should sign a new boundary convention in the Sikkim sector to replace the 1890 Great Britain-China agreement and make it more contemporary, said Chinese military analysts asserting that the ongoing Doklam standoff should have no bearing on it.

“For China, early harvest means we want to have a new agreement with India because the 1890 convention was signed between Great Britain and China,” Senior Colonel Zhao Xiaozhou, director at the Centre on China-America Defence Relations of the Academy of Military Science, told an Indian media delegation in Beijing.

“At that time, it was not the People’s Republic of China (PRC). India became independent in 1947. It is better we change the signatures of the convention, that is what I mean by early harvest,” he said.

Of the 3,488 km-long Indo-China border from Jammu and Kashmir to Arunachal Pradesh, a 220-km section runs through Sikkim.

India and China have been locked in a face-off in the Doklam area of the Sikkim sector, a trijunction between India, China and Bhutan, for the last 50 days after Indian troops stopped the Chinese People’s Liberation Army from building a road in the area.

China says the road is within its territory and has been demanding immediate pull-out of the Indian troops from Doklam. Bhutan has contested the claim saying Doklam belongs to it, while India fears that the road, if allowed to come up, will help China cut off New Delhi’s access to the north-east in the case of an armed conflict.

In an August 2 report on Doklam standoff, the Chinese Foreign Ministry too had referred to Beijing’s expectations of an “early harvest” in the Sikkim sector.

“The Chinese and Indian sides have been in discussion on making the boundary in the Sikkim Sector an ‘early harvest’ in the settlement of the entire boundary question during the meetings between the Special Representatives on the China- India Boundary Question,” it had said, referring to the 1890 convention.

“The boundary in the Sikkim sector has long been delimited by the 1890 Convention, which was signed between then China and Great Britain. China and India ought to sign a new boundary convention in their own names to replace the 1890 Convention. This, however, in no way alters the nature of the boundary in the Sikkim sector as having already been delimited,” it had said.

According to a statement by India’s Ministry of External Affairs on June 30, “Where the boundary in the Sikkim sector is concerned, India and China had reached an understanding also in 2012 reconfirming their mutual agreement on the ‘basis of the alignment’. Further discussions regarding finalisation of the boundary have been taking place under the Special Representatives framework.”

Therefore “it is essential that all parties concerned display utmost restraint and abide by their respective bilateral understandings not to change the status quo unilaterally. It is also important that the consensus reached between India and China through the Special Representatives process is scrupulously respected by both sides,” the MEA had said.