China includes Arunachal Pradesh in new 'standard map' of border areas

India lodges protest, says such steps only complicate border dispute

In a resurgence of Beijing’s ongoing cartographic aggression against New Delhi, the Chinese government has released its latest ‘standard map’ of its border areas, continuing to show several Indian regions, including the entire Indian province of Arunachal Pradesh and the Aksai Chin region, as part of the People’s Republic of China.

The map, released by Beijing on Monday, inaccurately reflects inflated territorial claims regarding China’s maritime borders. It depicts China’s maritime borders with the so-called ‘nine-dash line’, covering large swathes of the South China Sea, East China Sea, and the Sea of Japan.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs has outright rejected the Chinese move.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Tuesday stated that it is an “old habit” of China to stake claim on territories that do not belong to them. In an interview with NDTV, the foreign minister dismissed Beijing’s “absurd claims” and said “putting out a map does not mean anything”.

Congress Party member Manish Tewari has rejected the Chinese claim as “absurd and preposterous”.

“Today, the real issue between India and China is that the Chinese have transgressed along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) at multiple points on a theatre level. Analysts believe that the Chinese are currently in occupation of 2,000 square (sq.) kilometres (km) of Indian territory. This is the territory that the National Democratic Alliance-Bharatiya Janata Party government needs to get vacated. Under those circumstances, the government should seriously introspect — though the Group of Twenty is a multinational forum — whether it would be in accordance with India’s self-respect to be feting a person in Delhi, Xi Jinping, who is in illegal occupation of 2,000 sq. km of Indian territory along the LAC,” he told news agency ANI.

Such fallacious Chinese representations have also appeared on other Sino-Indian maps. Other regional countries, including Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei, have all voiced their claims over the waters of the South China Sea.

In one of these maps, a ‘tenth dash’ has been placed east of Taiwan, depicting Beijing’s claims over the island.

The publication of maps incorrectly depicting parts of India as Chinese territory has been a standard tactic employed by Beijing to lay claim to Indian territory and waters.

In the early 1950s, Beijing published its first official map of China, asserting ownership over large portions of Ladakh and the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA). This subsequently became an official claim to those Indian territories.

The latest map has been released by China’s Ministry of Natural Resources. It was unveiled during the celebration of Surveying and Mapping Publicity Day and the National Mapping Awareness Publicity Week in Zhejiang Province.

The English-language news portal ChinaDaily.com.cn has quoted its chief planner, Wu Wenzhong, as stating that “surveying, mapping, and geographic information play an important role in boosting the development of the nation”.

In April 2023, China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs released Chinese language names for 11 places in ‘Zangnam’, or South Tibet — the standard Chinese nomenclature for Arunachal Pradesh.

This marks the third instance in six years that China has announced Chinese names for towns, villages, and geographical features in Arunachal Pradesh, reaffirming its claim to the entire Indian state.