The purpose of this research is to examine China and India's national interests with regard to Tibet, and the ways in which these interests have been shaped and pursued. While drawing on the sizeable body of academic literature which already addresses this topic, this thesis contends that the conclusions which have been reached to date have tended to be arbitrary, insofar as studies have suffered from a lack of theoretical and conceptual clarity on 'national interest'. The intention here is therefore to discuss the two countries' stances using a more rigorous analytical framework based on explicit theoretical and conceptual foundations. From a rationalist and critical constructivist perspective in tandem, it attempts to identify and compare the rationales behind China and India's pursuit of national interest vis-à-vis Tibet, and to examine the domestic processes of interest formation concerning the Tibet issue in elite discourse. To develop a rationalist account, content analysis is used to argue that both countries are primarily concerned about the security implications of the Tibetan question. For China, Tibet is a domestic issue, and symbolises internal integrity and the modernisation of the nation, especially with regard to minority areas. For India, Tibet remains a useful means of containing China, especially during negotiations over border disputes. To complement these findings, critical discourse analysis is used to develop a constructivist account examining the role of nationalism in the processes whereby elites have shaped, justified and pursued their national interests. This account suggests that the Communist Party of China has constructed a myth of Chinese nationhood partly in order to realise its interests vis-à-vis Tibet. The CPC has drawn on Han nationalism to fortify the concept of the Chinese nation, and on propaganda about development to neutralise Tibetan nationalism. In the case of India, the elite, while acknowledging their inability to contain China with the Tibet card, have attempted to boost nationalism by emphasising their generous, democratic and peaceful approach towards Tibet, and thereby comparing themselves favourably with China. The thesis makes an original contribution to knowledge in two main ways: it departs from the existing literature by taking a constructivist approach to China and India's national interest with regard to Tibet; and it is the first empirical study in this research area to explore the role of nationalism as a strategic means of shaping and pursuing national interest.

This thesis is about the space programmes of China and India, and space as international society. Drawing on key concepts of the English School theory, the argument of the thesis is twofold. First, employing international society as the central analytical idea, it suggests that it is possible to conceptualise space not merely as a system, but as an international space society with a distinct international social structure. This argument is developed by highlighting how the nature of space as a distinctive sectoral interstate society is manifested in the ways in which its primary institutions are differentiated from such institutions at the global level (war, sovereignty, law, diplomacy, balance of power, great power management, the market) in a historical and comparative context. This helps to highlight the constitutive impact of these institutions on China and India as emerging space powers. It also puts forward ‘techno-nationalism’ as a primary institution of international space society. Second, the thesis argues that the pursuit of China and India’s space programmes has been informed by a particular understanding of techno-nationalism in a postcolonial context, what I call ‘postcolonial techno-nationalism’, which is centred on the development of space technology as a normative indicator of the state’s power, status, and modernity. The enduring influence of postcolonial techno-nationalism reflects how technological advancement was seen to function as a sort of an informal ‘standard of civilisation’ during the expansion of the European society of states in the nineteenth century. Essentially, this thesis provides a useful range of innovative analytical tools to consider the relationship between technology and International Relations and how order is constructed, maintained, and contested in space. It also offers a new lens though which to consider the complex dynamics that shape China and India as rising space powers.

In the early hours of 20 October 1962, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) launched a series of devastating assaults on Indian posts stretched along thousands of miles of mountainous border. The attack drew a line under several years of acrimony over the border and an even longer period of uncertainty and ambiguity regarding each sides’ respective claims. However, the SinoIndian War was far more than just a territorial scrap, bloody as it was. It was widely perceived as a Chinese attack on Nehruvian non-alignment, a peculiar foreign policy posture that he had developed to counter the Cold War. By rejecting Nehru so firmly, Beijing was demonstrating a clear turn from the moderation it had pursued in tandem with the Soviets to engage non-socialist Asia through the mid-1950s. Mao’s attack on India was then a firm rejection of both Delhi’s moderation and Soviet partnership and a major turning point in the history of the Cold War and Asia. This thesis adds to the existing histories of the war by exploring Sino-Indian relations from 1949 when the two Asian giants cautiously swapped ambassadors. The ambiguous relationship between Beijing and Delhi is examined from the perspective of Nehru’s ambitious overall foreign policy agenda, rather than just a narrow focus on the border and Tibet. The deterioration of ties between Delhi and Beijing is often characterised as the result of conflicting territorial and indeed imperial ambitions. But it is also true to say that from early in the 1950s there was a remarkable effort at collaboration and accommodation of their respective ambitions. Simultaneously, collaboration was always underpinned by an acute sense of competition for influence in Asia, in particular over the appropriate model of development for the region. In particular, this thesis gives far greater emphasis on Beijing’s function within the dynamics of Sino-Indian relations, and shows how vital were the ideological shifts within the Chinese leadership. The ideologically framed judgements about Indian economic development policies had a major impact on how Beijing assessed the ongoing feasibility of its entire experiment with a moderate foreign policy in general and cooperation with Delhi specifically. By illustrating how these understandings of India also affected Chinese views of the Soviet leadership’s competence, this thesis also makes an important contribution to the historiography of the Sino-Soviet split. Ultimately, relations collapsed with Delhi not just because of hard territorial interests, but because Mao came to believe that the continued deferral of revolutionary goals was leaving the field clear for reactionary elements in China, India and beyond.

With or without global consent, China and India are the rising powers in Asia. After 1962, these two states have experienced enduring rivalries with historical and intricate hostility over the issues of territory, the sanctuary of Tibetan refugees on Indian territory, polarized relations with Pakistan, and geopolitical and resources competition. However, these disagreements have evolved from confrontation to the mixed elements of competition and cooperation to date. Sino-Indian relations have undergone a transformation with momentum toward cooperation on a number of regional and global issues over the last two decades. This thesis aims at exploring why Sino-Indian relations have been transformed from enmity to amity. To do so, I apply the peace and war theory of an international relations theorist, Benjamin Miller, as a main theoretical framework to analyse the transformations of Sino-Indian relations between 1950s and 2013. Thus, this thesis finds alternative explanations of the regional orders to account for why rivals states tend to peacefully coexist, contributing to peace studies. This thesis argues that the transformations of Sino-Indian relations from hot war to cold war, then to cold peace can be contributed to two factors: firstly, the end of superpower competition and the presence of the great powers – Russia, between 1990 and 1999, and the US, after 2000 –imposing regional stability. Secondly, China and India suffered from the problems of a “state-to-nation imbalance”, causing the 1962 war. Moreover, the Sino-Indian relations were characterized by the challenges to the unresolved border disputes associated with China’s Tibet issue, making peace reversible and a high level of warm peace more difficult.