New Delhi: The Chinese foreign ministry on Thursday slammed the US’s remarks on Arunachal Pradesh, saying the boundary issue between New Delhi and Beijing was a bilateral matter and that had “nothing to do with the US”.
At a media briefing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said, “Delimitation of the China-India boundary has never been completed… Everyone knows that the US has always used indiscriminate means to provoke and use other countries’ disputes to serve its own selfish geopolitical interests,” during a regular press briefing, Reuters reported.
This is the third time the Chinese foreign ministry has raised this issue since 11 March. The latest pushback comes a day after Vedant Patel, the principal deputy spokesperson of the US department of state, said that Washington D.C. recognised Arunachal Pradesh as a part of India.
“The United States recognises Arunachal Pradesh as Indian territory. We strongly oppose any unilateral attempts to advance territorial claims by incursions or encroachments, military or civilian, across the Line of Actual Control,” said Patel during a daily press briefing Wednesday.
China’s claims over Arunachal Pradesh have repeatedly surfaced after Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the strategically important Sela tunnel on 9 March, connecting Tezpur in Assam to Tawang in Arunachal.
On 11 March, Wang Wenbin, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, said that Beijing had never recognised the “illegally” established state of Arunachal Pradesh.
“India has no right to arbitrarily develop the area of Zangnan in China. India’s relevant moves will only complicate the boundary question and disrupt the situation in the border areas between the two countries,” said Wang during the press briefing. China calls Arunachal ‘Zangnan’, or Southern Tibet.
Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal, in a statement on 12 March, said that Chinese objections would not “change the reality that the state of Arunachal Pradesh was, is, and will always be an integral and inalienable part of India”.
On 15 March, the Chinese defence ministry responded that Zangnan was an “inherent” part of China. Jaiswal in a statement on 19 March called China’s statement “baseless” and “absurd” and reiterated that Arunachal Pradesh was an “integral” and “inalienable” part of India.
The tit-for-tat public statements come as ties between India and China have remained tense since the military clashes in Galwan during the summer of 2020.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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