*Originally published in 2022. Get E-International Relations delivered to your inbox, free of charge. As you sign up, consider becoming a paid subscriber, or make a donation, to support our work.

Today, China is proving to be India’s biggest security dilemma – be it in the Indo-Pacific or on the land frontier. The era of China’s ‘peaceful rise’ is, practically, seeming to be over; as seen by its ‘wolf-warrior diplomacy’ phase kicking in under Xi Jinping’s rule. There is a need for India to understand Chinese negotiators better. The government of India has had its fair share of negotiations with the Chinese officials since independence of the two nations – be it the recognition of People’s Republic of China by Government of India in December 1949, the Agreement on trade between India and Tibet region of China in 1954, Chinese reaction to Indian nuclear tests in 1998, China’s formal recognition of Sikkim in 2005, setting up of special representative mechanism for border negotiations since 2013 (and so on). The challenge of mutual understanding becomes great between the two countries – not only due to differences in terms of capabilities (military or economic) but also due to differing perceptions, approaches and international postures. Culture might also play a role in contributing towards a mismatch between Indian and Chinese negotiations. However, such cultural differences play a greater role between the West and the Chinese on the negotiation table.

Indian and Chinese cultures both have a greater focus on ‘the collective’, rather than the ‘individualistic’ Western societies. But, Indian civilisation goes a step further in balancing both individual and collective interests. Most of the culture-based negotiation style assessments are made by Western scholars. For example, when an American or European instrument to measure assertiveness in negotiation is translated into Japanese, it retains Western idea of assertiveness. A Japanese concept of assertiveness that included avoidance as an adaptive strategy could be easily overlooked, labelled as unassertive because of cultural assumptions about the natures of assertion and avoidance (LeBaron, 2003). Due to the dearth of balanced, intercultural and good studies deploying a multitude of currencies in developing such research itself (as well as an absence of a multicultural team to carry it out), any generalisations post such research are, usually, limited.

This paper seeks to focus on the informal summits at Wuhan (2018) and Mammallapuram (2019) to analyse the nature of Chinese negotiation style with the Indians. This paper also divulges in to corroborate any pattern in the Chinese nature of ‘psychological warfare’ with India and its other neighbours to keep testing waters. Also, this paper hopes to decode possible solutions for the changes required in Indian negotiation style with the Chinese to further improve its standing on the global high table.

The Chinese Style of Negotiation

The Chinese people are bound by four threads of culture throughout their business or political negotiation style – Agrarianism, Confucian Morality (combined with Taoism), Chinese pictographic language style and finally, a wariness about foreigners (Graham and Lam, 2003). The roots of Chinese culture can be traced to their traditional agrarian roots of peasant farming for millennia. It is communal, (not individualistic) and familial hierarchy binds the community together. Survival depends on group cooperation, loyalty and harmony. Many of China’s city dwellers were raised in the country and thus, they have retained their agrarian values. Similarly, the second factor of morality based upon the Confucius benevolent moral code (of 2000 years) and Lao Tsu’s concept of ‘yin yang’ shaped the traditional Chinese thought.

Confucius defined five cardinal relationships: between ruler and ruled, parents and children, husband and wife, older and younger brothers, and friend and friend. All the former four relationships were strictly hierarchical. The ruled—wives, children, and younger brothers—were recommended to trade submission for the benevolence of their rulers—husbands, parents, and older brothers. Rigorous observance of such hierarchy in society generated social harmony, the remedy for the civil war of Confucius’s time. The two forces of Yin (feminine, passive and dark) and Yang (masculine, active and light), as devised by Lao Tsu in his doctrine of Taoism, are opposing yet complementary forces. The main focus was to find ‘the way’ or ‘Tao’, instead of the final truth (opposite to what, usually, most Americans prefer to arrive at the goal/truth, with very little concern of the means). This represents a way of compromise in life – settlements of political, social or commercial nature. Such a middle path can also be attributed to the Buddhist political thought in India- of devising the ‘golden mean’. However, Indian cultural values transcend deeper into social and individual morality – also venturing out to look for ‘the truth’ (as Vedantic traditions show), and not just ‘a way’.

Chinese negotiators are more concerned with the process than the goal. The best compromises are derived only through the ritual back-and-forth of haggling. This process cannot be cut short and a compromise allows the two sides to hold equally valid positions. The method of ‘Haggling’ is also followed by Indians in their ‘Neti-Neti’ approach- as there are many versions of the truth. However, in India, when there is a question of absolute truth/atman/atomism of the individual soul, nothing else matters in the world. The Chinese look at the ‘way’ as the modus vivendi; however, India has a very strong sense of moral anchoring even in politics, essence of national interest expressed in ethical terms, broadly, as quoted by ex-Indian diplomat, Vijay Nambiar.

Chinese thinking tends toward a more holistic processing of information- due to their pictographic language style; as psychological studies show. Chinese children learn to memorise thousands of pictorial characters because, in Chinese, words are pictures rather than sequences of letters. This way, they tend to look at the bigger picture much better than most Westerners, who memorise Roman numbers and letters during childhood, thereby, being more adept at focussing on the details, than holistic information. Finally, a general sense of cynicism towards foreigners is also present in Chinese culture due to a history of invasions and the more recent, ‘century of humiliation’ which has now evoked a stronger sense........

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