Editorial: Chinese mischief

China’s recent announcement renaming 15 places in Arunachal Pradesh in mandarin language appears to be part of psychological warfare to keep India on tenterhooks and gain an upper hand in the border talks. Beijing must realise that merely assigning invented names to places does not alter the truth and that Arunachal Pradesh has been and […]

China’s recent announcement renaming 15 places in Arunachal Pradesh in mandarin language appears to be part of psychological warfare to keep India on tenterhooks and gain an upper hand in the border talks. Beijing must realise that merely assigning invented names to places does not alter the truth and that Arunachal Pradesh has been and will remain an integral part of India. This is not the first time China has attempted such a renaming of places in the border State. It had sought to assign such names in 2017 as well. China claims some 90,000 sq km of Arunachal Pradesh as its territory and calls the area ‘Zangnan’ in the Chinese language. Chinese maps show Arunachal Pradesh as part of China, and sometimes parenthetically refer to it as ‘so-called Arunachal Pradesh’. It makes periodic efforts to underline this unilateral claim to Indian territory. Giving Chinese names to places in Arunachal Pradesh is part of that effort. The communist nation regularly protests visits of top Indian leaders to Arunachal Pradesh to reaffirm its claim. China has been flexing its muscles and displaying its territorial hegemony in the region. The military threats to Taiwan and the attempts to change the facts on the ground in several disputed islands in the South China Sea are examples of China’s growing aggression. Beijing must be made to pay for its continued mischief. Besides, China’s new law on land borders, which came into effect on January 1, is bound to have an impact on how the two sides perceive each other’s position on the unresolved boundary issues.

The new boundary law signals Beijing’s determination to resolve the border disputes on its preferred terms. It appears to be the latest attempt by China to unilaterally delineate and demarcate territorial boundaries with India and Bhutan. There is a growing suspicion that China may have been stalling further negotiations on the standoff in eastern Ladakh for this new law to come into force. India had earlier hoped that China would agree to disengage from Patrolling Point 15 in Hot Springs which it did not. There are concerns that the Chinese delegation can use the new law to try to bolster their existing positions on the border dispute in the subsequent rounds of negotiations. Another sticking point is that the new law prohibits the construction of permanent infrastructure close to the border without China’s permission. Both India and China have been building new roads, bridges and other facilities faster since the standoff began. The People’s Liberation Army has activated the long and disputed frontier all along the Himalayas and is building villages on the unpopulated border with India. At the political level, Beijing has been relentlessly trying to drive a wedge between India and its close Himalayan neighbours — Nepal and Bhutan — and undermine Indian influence in the Maldives and Sri Lanka.

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