On Wednesday, India rejected the name of renamed by China with 27 places in the Arunachal Pradesh as a “vain and absurd” decision, claiming that its state of the northeast border, which, according to Beijing, is part of the country of Zangnan or southern Tibet, remains a “integral and inalienable” part of the country.
On Sunday, the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs published its fifth share of “standardized” names for more than 27 places in the Arunachal Pradesh – including mountains, passes, rivers, residential areas and a lake – in its last attempt to strengthen its complaint in the territory that Beijing is Chinese territory and part of the historic Tibet.
“We have noticed that China persisted with its vain and absurd attempts to name places in the Indian state of the Arunachal Pradesh,” said the spokesman for the Ministry of External Affairs of India, Randhir Jaiswal, in a statement.
“In accordance with our position of principle, we reject such categorically attempts. The creative name will not change the undeniable reality that Arunachal Pradesh was, and will always remain an integral and inalienable part of India,” added Jaiswal.
China's latest decision to rename the place of the Indian border state occurs despite recent attempts by the two nations to improve diplomatic ties, after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Russia last October shortly after their governments concluded an agreement in a disputed area along their shared border.
This came after prolonged tensions, when thousands of Indian and Chinese troops faced in June 2020 to three or four locations in the west of Himalayas. India has accused Beijing forces of introducing itself into Indian territory, although China has denied it.
The two countries fought a border war in 1962, and China launched a long -standing campaign to assert its complaint in the areas held by India.
In 2017, China published its first list of standardized names for six places. Subsequently, he made three other attempts to change the name, with new names for 15 places published in 2021, for 11 places in 2023 and 30 places in 2024.
In response to India's condemnation of the last China's last decision, the spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Lin Jian, said that the Chinese government's efforts to “standardize” the names of certain places in the region “is fully under the sovereignty of China”.
“The Zangnan region belongs to China,” Lin said during a press briefing on Wednesday.
India and China have made competing complaints on the territory along the disputed border of 1130 kilometers (700 miles), known as McMahon line, between Tibet and the Indian State of Arunachal Pradesh.
India recognizes the McMahon line, a limit line established between Tibet and British India, as agreed during the Simla Convention in 1914, as an international border. China, on the other hand, argues that the border with India has never been delimited and claims the areas south of the McMahon line in Arunachal Pradesh as South Tibet.
Sriparna Pathak, professor of Chinese studies at the World University of OP Jindal in Haryana, India, and former consultant at the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, characterized China's efforts to change the names as “cartographic assault” – an attempt to strengthen her assertions and normalize her occupation of the regions she claims as hers.
Kalpit Mankikar, a scholarship for studies in China at the foundation of observers based in New Delhi, India, underlined the recent China attempts to push its allies to use “Xizang”, instead of Tibet, to refer to the formerly independent country which it annexed in 1950.
He said that this is another example of Beijing's strategy to rename the premises and ensure their consistent use to erase Tibetan identity and promote its story that Tibet has always been part of China.
“It is the fifth time that the renowned China of places in Arunachal.
Edited by Mat Pennington.