Not all quiet on Eastern Front? China renames 27 places in India's Arunachal to re-assert claim

'Creative naming will not alter the undeniable reality that Arunachal Pradesh was, is, and will always remain an integral and inalienable part of India', MEA's Randhir Jaiswal said.

New Delhi: 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 names to 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.

Beijing made its latest move to assert its territorial claim over Arunachal Pradesh just after the cross-border military actions between India and Pakistan came to a halt following an understanding between the two sides on May 10.

“We have noticed that China has persisted with its vain and preposterous attempts to name places in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. Consistent with our principled position, we reject such attempts categorically,” Randhir Jaiswal, the spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, said in New Delhi. “Creative naming will not alter the undeniable reality that Arunachal Pradesh was, is, and will always remain an integral and inalienable part of India.”

“Southern Tibet is Chinese territory. The Chinese government has standardised the names of some places in Southern Tibet. This is entirely within the scope of the sovereignty of China,” Lin Jian, a spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, said.

The relations between New Delhi and Beijing were on the mend since the four-and-a-half-year-long military stand-off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh had come to its end in October 2024.

But the bilateral ties again came under a shadow, with Beijing extending its support to Islamabad after India-Pakistan tensions escalated in the wake of the April 22 terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir. Even before India launched ‘Operation Sindoor’ targeting terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan as well as areas under illegal occupation of Pakistan, China vowed to support its “all-weather ally” Pakistan in “safeguarding its territorial integrity and sovereignty”. Beijing also supported Islamabad’s call for an impartial probe into the killing of 26 people at Baisaran near Pahalgam in J&K, although The Resistance Force, an offshoot of Lashkar-e-Taiba based in Pakistan, claimed responsibility for the latest carnage in India.

The special representatives of India and China had started talks to resolve the boundary dispute in 2003. They had reached an agreement in 2005 on Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for Settlement of the Boundary Question.

Construction of new settlements along the disputed boundary, enactment of new land boundary law, publication of new maps, renaming areas China claims in India’s Arunachal Pradesh in Chinese and Tibetan languages – Beijing over the past few years resorted to many measures to counter New Delhi’s territorial claims, including by taking advantage of the Article V and VII of the 2005 agreement.

Article V of the 2005 agreement stipulates that the two sides would take into account, inter alia, historical evidence, national sentiments, practical difficulties, reasonable concerns and sensitivities of both sides and the actual state of border areas. Article VII of the agreement adds that the two sides would safeguard the interests of the settled populations in the border areas while settling the boundary row.

New Delhi claims that China is illegally occupying about 38,000 sq. km of India’s territory in Aksai Chin, which borders eastern Ladakh. Pakistan also ceded to China about 5,180 sq. km of India’s territory in Shaksgam Valley in 1963. Beijing claims 90000 sq. km of area in Arunachal Pradesh of India as part of the territory of China. Beijing also claims a 2,000 sq. km area in the Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand states of India.