BEIJING, 14 Apr: China on Tuesday said its policy to improve relations with India has not changed as it defended its move to publish new names for various regions in Arunachal Pradesh.
India on Sunday categorically rejected China’s efforts to assign “fictitious names” to Indian territory, asserting that such attempts to create “baseless narratives” cannot alter “undeniable reality” and could derail efforts to normalise bilateral ties.
New Delhi’s sharp reaction came against the backdrop of Beijing establishing a third new administrative county in Aksai Chin, a region India maintains is its sovereign territory.
“India categorically rejects any mischievous attempts by the Chinese side to assign fictitious names to places which form part of the territory of India,” External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said.
Reacting to Jaiswal’s remarks, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun told a media briefing here that the “Zangnan region is China’s territory. China does not recognise the so-called ‘Arunachal Pradesh’ illegally set up by India,” Jiakun said.
Zangnan is the Chinese name for Arunachal. China claims Arunachal as part of southern Tibet.
“It is fully within China’s sovereign rights for the Chinese government to issue standard names for some of the places in Zangnan,” he said.
“China-India relations are generally stable at the moment. China’s commitment to improving and growing China-India relations has not changed,” Jiakun said.
“We hope the two sides will work in the same direction and act more in ways conducive to bilateral relations,” he added.
On 26 March, China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region announced the creation of Cenling county, a strategic region located near the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and Afghanistan. It is also reportedly close to the western sector of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with India.
Cenling, located near the Karakoram mountain range, is the third new county established by China in Xinjiang, a predominantly Muslim Uyghur region.
India last year lodged a protest with China over the creation of Hean and Hekang counties, stating that parts of their jurisdiction fall within the union territory of Ladakh.
China has been publishing its names for various regions in Arunachal since 2017, to which India has been consistently objecting, saying that “fictitious names” assigned to Indian territory cannot alter the “undeniable reality.” (PTI)
