Reassuring and Unnerving India } 749
From Beijing’s perspective, India was responding to China’s friend-
ship diplomacy of 2000–2005 by aligning with the United States against
China. China’s quest for friendship with India was being repaid by Indian
anti-China alignment with the United States. The key political purpose of
China’s friendly approach was to reassure India, thereby dissuading it from
aligning with the United States. But India responded to China’s friendship not
in kind, but by partnering with Washington to encircle and contain China.
A firmer approach to India was merited. China’s friendship effort was being
taken by Indian leaders as Chinese weakness. India had to be shown that
friendship with China needed to be a two-way street. If New Delhi wanted
China’s friendship, it would have to abstain from actions hostile to China.
New Delhi had to be made to understand that there would be heavy costs
for rejecting China’s friendship. It is important to note that at this juncture
Beijing would not play the one card that might have made a major difference
to India: settlement of the territorial dispute. That approach was probably
impossible because of nationalist sentiment within China, both within the
Politburo and among ordinary citizens.
Starting in 2006, Chinese policy toward India hardened. Beijing withdrew
the suggestion in Article 7 of the Guidelines and Parameters of the previous
year that China might be prepared to give up its claim to all of Arunachal
Pradesh. Speaking shortly before Hu Jintao’s November 2006 visit to India,
PRC Ambassador to India Sun Yuxi told the international press: “In our posi-
tion, the whole of what you call the state of Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese ter-
ritory and Tawang is only one place in it and we are claiming all of that—that’s
our position.”^28 The point was reiterated by foreign minister Yang Jiechi in
talks with his Indian counterpart six months later: the “mere presence” of
settled population did not affect China’s territorial claims. Beijing also told
Indian leaders that China had been moving toward a settlement of the territo-
rial question until New Delhi decided to align with the United States against
China. Whether or not Beijing was actually prepared to settle the territo-
rial dispute, it was in China’s interest that Indian leaders believe that it was.
Meanwhile, on the border, Chinese incursions into the Tawang and Ladakh
sectors increased, according to the Indian government.
Beijing also opposed lending in the Asian Development Bank during 2009
for projects in Arunachal Pradesh. It worked in the Nuclear Suppliers Group
(a forty-five-member group that regulates trade in nuclear materials) during
a 2008 meeting in Vienna against a ruling that would open the way to imple-
mentation of the India-US nuclear technology agreement. China’s represen-
tative lobbied against a special exemption for India and insisted on a similar
exemption for Pakistan. When deliberations became protracted, the Chinese
delegation prepared to leave the conference and return home. Eventually,
only a direct appeal from President Bush to Hu Jintao secured China’s return
to the conference and nonblocking of the exemption for India.