India protests to China over a chart that claims border territory
The latest boundary dispute between the two Asian neighbors has led to a loud protest from India to China over a new map that claims area that New Delhi claims is Indian.
Following allegations in the Indian media that Beijing had published an official “standard map” depicting the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh and the Aksai Chin plateau as official Chinese territory, New Delhi protested on Tuesday.
Arindam Bagchi, the spokesman for India’s foreign ministry, said in a statement on Tuesday, “We have now raised a strong protest with the Chinese side through diplomatic channels on the so-called 2023’standard map’ of China that makes claims to India’s territory.
“These claims are false, thus we reject them. Such actions by the Chinese side simply make it more difficult to settle the boundary dispute, according to Bagchi.
Two locations on a map published by Beijing’s state-owned Global Times, according to New Delhi, are part of India. One of these was the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China views as a part of Tibet and where in 1962 the two nations engaged in a full-scale border conflict. The second was Aksai Chin, a crucial high-altitude route that connected Tibet with western China.
In April, a map labeling 11 locations in the state as being within “Zangnan,” or southern Tibet in Chinese, was published by China, which asserts that Arunachal Pradesh in the eastern Himalayas is a part of southern Tibet. China rules Aksai Chin, a region in the western Himalayas that India claims as its own.
China’s territorial claims were rejected earlier on Tuesday by India’s Foreign Minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.
Making ridiculous claims about India’s land does not transform it into Chinese territory, according to Jaishankar, who spoke to news outlet NDTV. After forces from both sides engaged in combat in the Himalayas in June 2020, which resulted in the deaths of 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers, relations between the two Asian neighbors deteriorated.
Tens of thousands of soldiers have gathered on both sides of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), which separates the adversaries, in a few places along the long China-India border, despite the fact that the situation there has been calm since the conflict in 2020.
Following a conversation between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the margins of the BRICS conference in Johannesburg last week, in which Modi raised concerns about the contentious Himalayan border, New Delhi has expressed its displeasure with the map.
The meeting was described as a “candid and in-depth exchange of views” by Beijing. India claimed that Modi had emphasized the importance of “observing and respecting” the LAC. Additionally, the Modi administration has invested tens of billions of dollars in connection initiatives on its side of the border to increase civilian presence and create new paramilitary battalions.
