Sending out mixed signals to India at a time when bilateral ties are set to get back on track, Beijing on Sunday, released a new list of names of villages in Arunachal Pradesh, fueling further mistrust between the Asian rivals.
This is not the first time that China has renamed areas in Arunachal, which it claims as part of its territory being an extension of south Tibet. It has done so too in 2017, 2021 and now.
Is China sending out a message to India? Beijing, while joining the rest of the world to call for immediate de-escalation in the recent India-Pakistan face-off, had also sided with Pakistan, saying it understood its security concerns and would support its sovereignty.
China’s move comes at the time of tension between India and Pakistan, Beijing’s iron-clad ally in the region.
Following the terrorist strike on holiday makers in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam on April 22, India launched an attack on terror infrastructure sites inside Pakistan which led to a counter-offensive by the Pakistan Army headquarters in Rawalpindi and a retaliation by New Delhi.
As the situation seemed to be getting out of hand, the American’s played a role in brokering a ceasefire between the two arch rivals. However belligerent noises are continuing from both sides. India has repeatedly been claiming that the unfinished business with Pakistan is not Kashmir that Islamabad flags, but retaking POK.
Is stirring up China’s claim to Arunachal is a response to India’s belligerence over POK? There is no clear answer.
The original princely state of Kashmir is now divided between India, Pakistan and China. China administers Aksai Chin, a northwestern Kashmiri region, as part of Xinjiang Autonomous Region. India also claims the territory.
In August 2019, when New Delhi scrapped Kashmir’s special status, Beijing had protested. “China is always opposed to India’s inclusion of the Chinese territory in the western sector of the China-India boundary into its administrative jurisdiction,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying had said in a statement on August 7, two days after India’s announcement.
In the summer of 2020, India and China had a military confrontation, following the PLA moving across the LAC to wrest Indian positions. The chill that followed led to the ban on Tik-Tok and several Chinese companies. Air services were stalled and business suffered.
Last November, the two countries finally went back to their original positions and decided to normalise ties. The resumption of the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra for Indian pilgrims travelling to Tibet was announced recently. Bilateral relations were gradually poised to pick up.
In the middle of all this, China’s move to rename areas in Arunachal is surprising and clearly indicates that Beijing wants to continue to assert its claims on Indian territory.
“According to the relevant regulations of the State Council (China’s cabinet) on the management of geographical names, our ministry, together with relevant departments, has standardised some geographical names in southern Tibet”, China’s civil affairs ministry said in a short statement on Sunday. New Delhi naturally rejected the move.
"We have noticed that China has persisted with its vain and preposterous attempts to name places in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. Consistent with our principled position, we reject such attempts categorically. Creative naming will not alter the undeniable reality that Arunachal Pradesh was, is, and will always remain an integral and inalienable part of India,’’ the MEA said in a statement.
