Even as an uneasy calm has returned on the western front after the flare-up last week, it’s not all quiet on the eastern front again, with China once again subtly asserting its territorial claim over Arunachal Pradesh by assigning Chinese and Tibetan 27 places in the frontier state of India.
New Delhi rejected China’s latest move and asserted that Arunachal Pradesh would always remain an integral and inalienable part of India. Beijing, however, stated that ‘Southern Tibet’ (Arunachal Pradesh) was part of the territory of China and standardising the names of places within its territory was well within the sovereign right of the President Xi Jinping’s government.
The Modi-led’s government in New Delhi also moved to block the X account of Xinhua and some other state-owned or state-controlled media outlets of China in India as they peddled fake news and Pakistan’s propaganda during the four-day-long cross-border military offensives and counter-offensives between the two South Asian nations last week.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs of the Chinese Government recently published the Chinese and Tibetan names of 27 places in Zangnan or Southern Tibet, as China refers to Arunachal Pradesh of India. The places included 15 mountains, five residential areas, four mountain passes, two rivers and a lake.
China similarly renamed places in Arunachal Pradesh of India in the past, too. But the timing of the latest move by Beijing appears to be deliberately chosen to send out a subtle message to New Delhi about India’s strategic challenges on the eastern and northern fronts, given the unsettled boundary dispute with China.
