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China Boundaries
In 1987 China's borders, more than 20,000 kilometers of land
frontier shared with nearly all the nations of mainland East Asia,
were disputed at a number of points. In the western sector, China
claimed portions of the 41,000-square-kilometer Pamir Mountains
area, a region of soaring mountain peaks and glacial valleys where
the borders of Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Soviet Union, and China
meet in Central Asia. North and east of this region, some sections
of the border remained undemarcated in 1987. The 6,542-kilometer
frontier with the Soviet Union has been a source of continual
friction. In 1954 China published maps showing substantial portions
of Soviet Siberian territory as its own. In the northeast, border
friction with the Soviet Union produced a tense situation in remote
regions of Nei Monggol Autonomous Region (Inner Mongolia) and
Heilongjiang Province along segments of the Ergun He (Argun River),
Heilong Jiang (Amur River), and Wusuli Jiang (Ussuri River)
(see
fig. 3). Each side had massed troops and had exchanged charges of
border provocation in this area. In a September 1986 speech in
Vladivostok, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev offered the Chinese
a more conciliatory position on Sino-Soviet border rivers. In 1987
the two sides resumed border talks that had been broken off after
the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
(see Sino-Soviet Relations
, ch. 12;
The Soviet Union
, ch. 14). Although the border issue
remained unresolved as of late 1987, China and the Soviet Union
agreed to consider the northeastern sector first.
A major dispute between China and India focuses on the northern
edge of their shared border, where the Aksai Chin area of
northeastern Jammu and Kashmir is under Chinese control but claimed
by India. Eastward from Bhutan and north of the Brahmaputra River
(Yarlung Zangbo Jiang) lies a large area controlled and
administered by India but claimed by the Chinese in the aftermath
of the 1959 Tibetan revolt. The area was demarcated by the British
McMahon Line, drawn along the Himalayas in 1914 as the Sino-Indian
border; India accepts and China rejects this boundary. In June 1980
China made its first move in twenty years to settle the border
disputes with India, proposing that India cede the Aksai Chin area
in Jammu and Kashmir to China in return for China's recognition of
the McMahon Line; India did not accept the offer, however,
preferring a sector-by-sector approach to the problem. In July 1986
China and India held their seventh round of border talks, but they
made little headway toward resolving the dispute. Each side, but
primarily India, continued to make allegations of incursions into
its territory by the other.
China, Taiwan, and Vietnam all claim sovereignty over both the
Xisha (Paracel) and the Nansha (Spratly) islands, but the major
islands of the Xisha are occupied by China. The Philippines claims
an area known as Kalayaan (Freedom Land), which excludes the Nansha
in the west and some reefs in the south. Malaysia claims the
islands and reefs in the southernmost area, and there also is a
potential for dispute over the islands with Brunei.
The China-Burma border issue was settled October 1, 1960, by
the signing of the Sino-Burmese Boundary Treaty. The first joint
inspection of the border was completed successfully in June 1986.
In 1987 the island province of Taiwan continued to be under the
control of the Guomindang authorities
(see Sino-American Relations
, ch. 12).
Data as of July 1987
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