BEIJING: The Indian government has strongly rejected China’s recent renaming of places in Arunachal Pradesh, a northeastern state that China claims as part of its territory, called Zangnan. India has called the move by China a bid to unilaterally change the status quo along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the border between the two nations.
On Sunday, China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs announced that it had “standardized” the names of eleven places, including five mountains, in what China declares its southern Tibet region. The statement was accompanied by a map that showed the eleven places renamed by China as being within “Zangnan,” or southern Tibet region in Chinese, with Arunachal Pradesh included in the southern Tibet region and China’s border with India, demarcated as just north of the Brahmaputra river.
India has rejected China’s move, stating, “Arunachal Pradesh is, was, and will always be an integral and inalienable part of India.” Indian foreign ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi said on Twitter, “This unilateral action by China to rename some parts of Arunachal Pradesh is not accepted by India, and is devoid of any legality.”
On the other hand, China defended its actions, saying that the name changes were “completely within the scope of China’s sovereignty.” A spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry stated that China’s move to rename the places was a legitimate action that has been undertaken to further safeguard China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
India terms the move as a provocation by China
The renaming of the places has been seen as another provocative move by China in its ongoing border disputes with India. The two countries fought a war along parts of their poorly demarcated 2,360-mile (3,800-km) frontier in 1962 and have been involved in border skirmishes in recent years, leading to strained relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.
Last year, at least 24 soldiers were killed when the two countries clashed in the Ladakh region, on the western area of their border. The situation was later defused through diplomatic and military talks. However, tensions have remained high, with troops from both sides engaged in scuffles in the Tawang sector of Arunachal Pradesh in December last year.
Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar has recently stated that the situation in Ladakh remains fragile and dangerous, with military forces deployed very close to each other in some places. China’s recent renaming of places is likely to further escalate tensions between the two nations and create further obstacles to resolving their long-standing border disputes.
The headline for the news story could be “India Condemns China’s Unilateral Move to Rename Places in Arunachal Pradesh”.
