NEW DELHI: In a move that is likely to ruffle feathers in India, China has released a third set of names in Chinese, Tibetan and pinyin characters for 11 places in Arunachal Pradesh.
China has also released a map with these 11 places that shows parts of Arunachal Pradesh as being in Southern Tibet, which China refers to as Zangnan. Reports show that a town close Arunachal Pradesh’s capital Itanagar has also been included in the list.
The 11 places named include five mountain peaks, two residential areas, two land areas and two rivers. The claimed geographical area has always been controlled and administered by India.
This is the third time that China has highlighted such a list attempting to rename places, calling them 'standardised geographical names'.
In 2017, the Chinese Ministry of Civilian Affairs had brought out a similar list of six places and in 2021 it released a list of 15 places that it renamed.
The latest naming was issued through a notification on April 2 which said, “according to the relevant provisions of the State Council on the management of geographical names, [China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs], together with relevant departments, has standardised some geographical names in southern Tibet. The third batch of supplementary place names for public use in southern Tibet (11 in total) is now officially announced.”
The Ministry of External Affairs didn’t respond to requests for a comment on the announcement from Beijing, but has rejected similar renaming and standardisation attempts in the past.
“Arunachal Pradesh has always been and will always be an integral part of India. Assigning invented names to places in Arunachal Pradesh does not alter this fact,” spokesperson Arindam Bagchi had said in 2021. In 2017 and 2021, the Chinese Foreign Ministry had stated that that China’s territorial claims in the so-called “Zangnan region” had a “historical and administrative basis”.
It is worth noting that the publication of the first list had come in the same year as the confrontation between Indian and Chinese troops in Doklam, while the second list and the latest one come after the LAC standoff between the Indian Army and PLA forces began in April 2020. Despite several rounds of official talks and military commander-level talks that have led to disengagement in certain sectors after the Galwan killings in 2020, there have been reports of Chinese attempts at transgressing the boundaries.
The April 2 announcement comes ahead of a visit to India this month by China’s newly appointed Defence Minister General Li Shangfu, who is expected to attend the SCO Defence Ministers' meeting, and a visit by Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, who will attend the SCO Foreign Ministers' meeting in May in Goa.