Chinese shenanigans on Arunachal Pradesh Premium

Whether it is in the Himalayas or the East and South China Seas, China’s unfounded claims are many

For the third time in recent years, China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs, on April 2, made a provocative move by releasing new names for 11 places in Arunachal Pradesh under the fig leaf of standardising geographical names in “Zangnan” (a phoney term invented by Beijing to claim that Arunachal Pradesh is “South Tibet”). According to media reports, these names include “two residential areas, five mountain peaks, two rivers, and two other areas”. In 2017, China had ‘renamed’ six places that lie in Arunachal Pradesh. It had also ‘standardised’ the names of 15 places in 2021, which had similarly included population centres, mountains, rivers, and a mountain pass.

Taken together, and on the face of it, some of the places are located along the Pangchen-Tawang-Jang-Sela axis running down from the Line of Actual Control; others are near old Buddhist pilgrimage circuits near Taksing in Upper Subansiri district, Menchuka-Tato tehsil in West Siang, and still others towards the Lohit and Anjaw districts, near Walong.

Whether it is in the Himalayas or the East and South China Seas, China’s depredations and unfounded irredentist claims are legion. In 2020, China gave names to 80 geographical features in the Paracels and Spratlys in the South China Sea, where China is embroiled in maritime disputes with several states. In 1983, it had named 287 geographical features in the South China Sea. It began using the term “Diaoyutai” for the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea in the 1950s, even before raking up the Senkaku issue with Japan. Often, the Chinese modus operandi is to lay the groundwork through fictional renaming of alien territories as a basis for sham “historical” claims which are then pursued using the “three warfares” strategy — of waging propaganda, psychological and legal warfare. China also struck a jarring note in the wake of the apocryphal exercise concerning place names in Arunachal Pradesh by naming several under-sea features in the Indian Ocean, ironically using the names of Chinese musical instruments.

China issued the Geographical Name Regulation in 1986 designed to regulate naming, renaming, and so-called standardisation exercises. It introduced an amended rule that came into force on May 1, 2022. While these pieces of legislation have mainly dealt with naming, renaming, and standardising names within China, they also cover several alien territories claimed by China.

It is instructive to recall two related developments. China enacted a new Coast Guard Law that came into effect on February 1, 2021, to take necessary measures, including the use of force, to safeguard “sovereignty”. China also passed a new law on the protection and exploitation of the country’s land border areas that came into effect on January 1, 2022. This unilateral step has the effect of converting the boundary dispute with India into a sovereignty issue. In the run-up, from 2017 onwards, China launched the construction of dual-purpose villages, the so-called Xiaokang villages, in areas adjacent to the border with India, from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh. One can discern a new and aggressive thrust by China to emphasise its territorial claims, whether land or maritime.

The Government of India has consistently dismissed such shenanigans on China’s part. After the latest move by China on Arunachal Pradesh, the Ministry of External Affairs said that “this is not the first time that China has made such an attempt. We reject this outright. Arunachal Pradesh is an integral, inalienable part of India. Attempts to assign invented names will not alter this reality”.

China’s claim on Arunachal Pradesh is as bogus as can be. A reading of Tibet And Its History by Hugh Edward Richardson clearly suggests that the Qing presence in Tibet began to emerge around 1720, after Chinese intervention in the internecine succession struggle following the death of the Sixth Dalai Lama (1683-1706).