China claims India’s Arunachal Pradesh as its territory in new map

BEIJING: China has released its 2023 standard map that includes contested territories controlled by New Delhi, days after the two nations agreed to de-escalate border disputes.

The map includes India’s north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh and parts of Kashmir. It also shows the island of Taiwan and the South China Sea as Chinese territory.

Beijing and New Delhi have had frosty diplomatic ties after their troops were involved in deadly clashes in 2020 along part of their disputed border in the Ladakh region.

At least 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese soldiers died in fighting in the area.

The map was officially released on Monday on the Ministry of Natural Resources standard map service website, state-run Global Times said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

“This map is compiled based on the drawing method of the national boundaries of China and various countries in the world,” the newspaper said.

The nuclear-armed nations share a 4,000km-long undemarcated border along the Himalayan mountain range from Ladakh in the north to Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh in the east, known as the line of actual control, or LAC.

Arunachal Pradesh lies on the Indian side of the eastern tip of the LAC, which China considers southern Tibet.

India has said the state has “always been” and will “always be” an integral part of the country.

China claims that sections of Ladakh, including Aksai Chin, were part of the ancient Chinese empire.

The map was released days after India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to prioritise efforts to de-escalate border tensions during a brief meeting at the Brics summit in South Africa on Friday.

There have been several rounds of high-level talks between senior military commanders and Foreign Ministry officials from both sides without significant progress.

The two nations held the 19th round of the India-China Corps Commander Level Meeting at the Chushul-Moldo border meeting point on the Indian side on August 13 and 14.

China renamed about a dozen places in Arunachal Pradesh, which it referred to as “Zangnan, the southern part of Tibet”, in April this year. The two countries have fought only one war, in 1962, when India suffered a humiliating defeat. – News Agencies