Reassuring and Unnerving India } 737
Sardar Vallabhi Patel). The UN then decided that the disposition of the dis-
puted Kashmir territory should be determined by a plebiscite. Nehru had
agreed to that as well. Ever since, Pakistan had demanded a Kashmir plebi-
scite held under UN auspices. India, on the other hand, maintained, inter
alia, that Pakistan had agreed at the end of the December 1971 war that the
future of Kashmir would be determined via bilateral negotiations between
India and Pakistan, thus rendering obsolete the notion of a UN plebiscite.
Alignment on Kashmir became a litmus issue for all countries in the India-
Pakistan relation, including China.
In 1964, at the inception of the Sino-Pakistan entente cordiale, China came
down squarely on Pakistan’s side of this issue: the people of Kashmir were
entitled to exercise self-determination regarding their future as a people. Once
China entered the United Nations, it began framing self-determination in
terms of UN resolutions. Then, in the lead-up to Li Peng’s 1991 visit, India had
weighed in, leveraged Beijing’s desire for better ties, and demanded Chinese
neutrality on the Kashmir issue. Out of a strong desire for a breakthrough
in relations with India, Beijing agreed, and for a period of several months,
references to the United Nations disappeared from China’s statements on
Kashmir. Pakistan countered Indian lobbying, and references to UN resolu-
tions reappeared in Chinese statements, before finally disappearing for good
except for rare occasions when Beijing wished to give New Delhi a shock, as
after India’s May 1998 “China threat” justification of its nuclear tests.
Li Peng delivered what became the authoritative Chinese statement on
Kashmir during his 1991 visit: “As for disputes between India and Pakistan,
we hope the two countries will settle them properly through negotiation ...
and will not resort to force.”^4 Several years later, just prior to a 1996 visit by
Jiang Zemin to India (the first ever visit by China’s paramount leader to India)
and Pakistan, and in the midst of a Pakistani effort to “internationalize the
Kashmir issue,” China’s ambassador to India stated “We do not stand for the
internationalization of the Kashmir question,” thereby quietly but publicly
rejecting Pakistan’s appeal for support on its “internationalization” push.
Regarding “disputes” between Indian and Pakistan, they should be resolved
via “consultation and negotiation,” Jiang said during his visit. Beijing had be-
come neutral on the Kashmir question as part of its effort to open the door to
better Sino-Indian relations.
But China’s assistance to Pakistan’s military development continued
unimpaired by China’s push for improved relations with India. This was
one of several shoals upon which China’s friendship diplomacy toward
India foundered. Beijing insisted that Sino-Pakistan and Sino-Indian rela-
tions were not linked, but were independent of each other. China sought
to develop multidimensional friendly cooperative relations with all it ’s
neighbors, Beijing said, and none of China’s cooperative relations with
any neighbor were directed against or threatened any other neighbor.