Analysis On Cognitive Dislocation In Sino-Indian Relations

Sino-Indian relations are one of the most important bilateral relations in China’s foreign relations.The Sino-Indian border issue is one of the most important and far-reaching issues in bilateral relations.The boundary war in 1962 between China and India made the border issue become increasingly complex,and still influence their bilateral relationship in a negative way.There are a lot of researches on Sino-Indian border dispute,but as one of the key factors in the decision-making process of Sino-Indian border issue,there are few scholars analyze the boundary problem from the perspective of cognitive dislocation.This paper introduces the Misperception Theory in international political psychology and the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance in social cognitive theory,researching historical documents and analyzing cases to construct the basic framework of Cognitive Dislocation Theory,dividing the concept of Cognitive Dislocation into two types – mutual-cognitive dislocation and self-cognitive dislocation.I mainly take the Sino – India border Issue as an example,dividing it into three periods – pre-war,during war and post – war,to analyze the respectively cognitive dislocation of China and India.The pre-war period is from the two countries’ establishment of diplomatic relations in 1950 to deterioration of the relation in 1959,during which the cognitive dislocation is characterized by the disputes on territorial attribution and solution of border issue.During war refers to the period from the border conflict in 1959 to the border war in 1962.During this period,the mutual cognitive dislocation reflected on the different pre-locating and anticipating of the war on October 1962.India’s self-cognitive dislocation is overestimating its influence,while China’s self-cognitive dislocation is considering India as a united collective to support Nehru launch the war.Post-war refers to the period from the absence of ambassador on November 1962 to the period of relationship normalizing.The mutual cognitive dislocation in this period reflected on the divergent understandings of the border war in 1962.India believe that China was expanding its territory,while China think that India’s "Forward Policy" is the fuse,China’s behavior is to react to the invasion.China’s self-cognition dislocation maybe manifest in its assuming that India will learn from the war and commit itself to peaceful coexistence with China.The fact is different from China’s assumption however,the relationship become worse.India’s cognitive dislocation is ignoring the goodwill of China and selectively ignoring the peace-seeking signals released by China.Through the combination of theories and cases,this paper summarizes several characteristics of cognitive dislocation phenomenon,discussing and analyzing the upgrading and downgrading mechanism of cognitive dislocation,trying to provide a new perspective for the relation development between countries and discussing how to avoid negative results rising from misunderstanding.