Editorial: China back to old tricks

India must expeditiously ramp up infrastructure in Arunachal given China's tendency to throw its weight around

Hyderabad: China’s move to rename parts of Arunachal Pradesh is a crude attempt to reiterate its claim on the State, which has been and will continue to remain an integral part of India. The changed names include that of mountain peaks, rivers and residential areas. This provocative action falls into a familiar pattern that Beijing has adopted to demonstrate its territorial hegemony in the region and beyond. It must be pointed out that rechristening some places in the northeastern State will not make any difference to its status. Unilateral attempts to assign invented names will not alter the ground reality. This is the third time China has unilaterally renamed places in Arunachal Pradesh, having done it in April 2017 and in December 2021. Its tendency to throw its weight around is all-pervasive. The Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs has brazenly claimed that it has ‘standardised’ the names of these places in Arunachal, which it refers to as ‘Zangnan, the southern part of Tibet’. While sending an unambiguous message to China, India must continue to actively engage with the communist nation, instead of allowing the friction to deepen further. Already, the military stand-off in eastern Ladakh, which started with a Chinese incursion in May 2020, is yet to be fully resolved. The situation came to a head last December when Indian and Chinese troops clashed along the poorly demarcated Line of Actual Control in Arunachal’s Tawang sector. It is evident that overbearing China is bent on keeping India on tenterhooks with one provocative step after another.

The unprovoked actions by China make it imperative for India to expeditiously ramp up infrastructure in Arunachal. During his visit to the border State in January, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh inaugurated 28 projects, including a bridge over the Siyom River, meant for transporting tanks and artillery guns. In the last few years, China has been flexing its muscles by stepping up construction activity along the Himalayan frontier, sparking major security concerns in India. Construction of bases, including new dual-use airports, too has gathered pace ever since the Galwan Valley clash. It is also building islands in the South China Sea and contesting the territorial claims of neighbours in the East China Sea. The Centre’s ‘Vibrant Villages’ programme, designed to develop over 600 villages and growth centres covering border areas of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Ladakh, is an important initiative to counter Chinese aggression. However, India has a long way to go if it has to catch up with China on border infrastructure. Building ‘vibrant’ villages and developing infrastructure on the border are important, and convey politically that the government is seized of the urgency of the situation on the border, but by themselves, they may not be sufficient. They have to be part of a broader defence strategy which should include modernisation of the forces.

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