Context
China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs announced that it had “standardised” the names of 15 places in Arunachal Pradesh, acting in accordance with regulations on geographical names issued by the State Council, the equivalent of the Chinese Cabinet.
- Among the 15 locations renamed by China are eight residential areas, four mountains, two rivers and a mountain pass.
China’s claims on Indian Territory
- China claims some 90,000 sq km of Arunachal Pradesh as its territory.
- It calls the area “Zangnan” in the Chinese language and makes repeated references to “South Tibet”.
- Chinese maps show Arunachal Pradesh as part of China, and sometimes parenthetically refer to it as “so-called Arunachal Pradesh”.
Border Dispute
- China shares its 22,457 km land boundary with 14 countries including India, the third longest after the borders with Mongolia and Russia.
- India claims that China is illegally occupying about 38,000 sq km of India’s territory in Aksai Chin, which borders eastern Ladakh.
- Pakistan ceded to China about 5,180 sq km in 1963 from the Indian territory illegally occupied by it.
- The India-China border is divided into three sectors
- Western: The boundary dispute in the Western Sector pertains to the Johnson Line proposed by the British in the 1860s that extended up to the Kunlun Mountains and put Aksai Chin in the then princely state of Jammu and Kashmir.
- Middle: In the Middle Sector, the dispute is a minor one. It is the only one where India and China have exchanged maps on which they broadly agree.
- Eastern: The disputed boundary in the Eastern Sector of the India-China border is over the MacMahon Line.
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