Beijing had previously released similar lists in 2017 and 2021, attempting to lay claim to Indian territory
April 03, 2023 07:14 pm | Updated April 04,
2023 12:23 pm IST - New Delhi
Indian Army personnel keep vigilance at Bumla pass at the India-China border in Arunachal Pradesh. File. | Photo Credit: AFP
In its latest attempt to lay claim to areas inside the
Indian territory, the Chinese government on Sunday announced it would
“standardise” the names of 11 places in Arunachal Pradesh. Releasing a list of
the 11 places along with a map that shows parts of Arunachal Pradesh instead as
inside the southern Tibetan region, that China refers to as Zangnan, the
Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs even included a town close to the Arunachal
Pradesh capital of Itanagar.
This
is Beijing’s third such list on Arunachal Pradesh, attempting to “rename” places
by giving them what it calls “standardised geographical names”. In 2017, the
Chinese Ministry of Civilian Affairs put out a similar list of six places, and
in December 2021, released a list of 15 places
that it sought to rename.
The
notification dated April 2 (No. 548) said that “according to the relevant
provisions of the State Council on the management of geographical names,
[China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs], together with relevant departments, has
standardised some geographical names in southern Tibet. The third batch of
supplementary place names for public use in southern Tibet (11 in total) is now
officially announced.”
The
11 places named include five mountain peaks, two more populated areas, two
land areas and two rivers. The claimed geographical area has always been
controlled and administered by India. An appended list released by China
included names in Mandarin, Tibetan, Pinyin (English transliteration) of the 11
places along with exact Latitude and Longitude coordinates. A map that is also
part of the announcement shows much of Arunachal Pradesh marked as Zangnan, in
the south of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, that China calls Xizang..
The
Ministry of External Affairs didn’t respond to requests for a comment on the
announcement from Beijing, but has rejected similar renaming and
standardisation attempts in the past.
“Arunachal
Pradesh has always been, and will always be an integral part of India.
Assigning invented names to places in Arunachal Pradesh does not alter this
fact,” spokesperson Arindam Bagchi had said in 2021. In 2017 and 2021, the
Chinese Foreign Ministry had stated that China’s territorial claims in the
so-called “Zangnan region” had a “historical and administrative basis”.
Sources in the security establishment termed
the renaming of disputed locations “an attempt to bolster Chinese territorial
claims and to create or alter evidence to support their claims in case of any
sovereignty disagreements in any international court”. Another source said the
repeated renaming would have “no bearing” on the ground situation. Sources also
pointed that apart from Arunachal Pradesh, Beijing has done exactly the same in
the South China Sea and East China Sea.
While
the publication of the first list had come in the same year as the
confrontation between Indian and Chinese troops in Doklam, the second list and
the latest one come after the LAC stand-off between the Indian Army and PLA
forces began in April 2020. Despite several rounds of official talks and
military commander-level talks that have led to disengagement in certain
sectors after the Galwan killings in 2020, there have been reports of Chinese
attempts at transgressing the boundaries.
In
December 2022, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh announced in Parliament that
Chinese PLA soldiers and Indian Army soldiers had been in a physical scuffle
after PLA soldiers attempted to capture a post in Yangtse of the Tawang Sector
but had been successfully pushed back to their side of the Line of Actual
Control (LAC).
The
latest announcement comes ahead of a visit to India this month by China’s newly
appointed Defence Minister General Li Shangfu, who is expected to attend the
SCO Defence Ministers’ meetings, and a visit by Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang,
who will attend the SCO Foreign Ministers’ meeting in May.
In
recent years, and especially since the 2020 stand-off in eastern Ladakh, India
has significantly upgraded firepower along the LAC in Arunachal Pradesh and
ramped up infrastructure in forward areas in the region, particularly the
Tawang sector. Massive infrastructure upgrade is currently under way in eastern
Arunachal.
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/china-releases-third-set-of-chinese-names-to-assert-its-claim-over-arunachal-pradesh/article66695225.ece
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