New Delhi: China producing a list of 11 “standardised” names for locations within Arunachal Pradesh this week wasn’t exactly a novel move. This is, after all, the third time since 2017 that China has sought to “rename” places in the Indian state, a tactic that serves to assert its territorial claims.
Experts suggest that this latest manoeuvre also reflects China’s growing frustration with India’s refusal to accede to its terms for normalising bilateral ties.
With its latest list of 11 announced Sunday, China has so far renamed a total of 32 places — six in 2017 and 15 in 2021 — to bolster its claim in the Indian region of Arunachal Pradesh.
The Indian Ministry of External Affairs has firmly rejected its claim, noting also that this isn’t the first time that China has tried to assign “invented names” to places in Arunachal Pradesh.
After the first round of re-namings was issued in 2017, scholar Manoj Joshi noted in an article published by Observer Research Foundation (ORF) that China’s tactic is a form of “lawfare”, wherein countries try to “get the legal high ground to press their claims.”
Joshi had also pointed out the renaming wasn’t a new strategy even in 2017. “When China wanted to press a claim to Barahoti Pass in Garhwal (in the middle sector of Line of Actual Control), it renamed it as Wu Je,” he wrote. He also gave the example of China renaming Demchok in Ladakh as Parigas to claim the village.
Beyond Sino-India relations, renaming places to stake claims of sovereignty have also been central to other disputes. For instance, Argentina calls the Falkland Islands, the Malvinas, to stake claim over the British territory. Both countries went into a 10-week-long undeclared war over the archipelago in 1982.
Speaking to ThePrint, Antara Ghoshal Singh, fellow at ORF, said: “The latest renaming in Arunachal could be seen as a reaction due to China’s inability to convince India to normalise ties and the LAC dispute on their terms.”
Further, as seen with the developments this month in Bhutan and China’s inability to impede growing US-India ties, the neighbouring seems to be doubling down in the South Asia region, Singh added.
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Renaming move
The renaming of the 11 places in Arunachal was issued in Mandarin, Tibetan, and Pinyin characters according to reports.
In the list that China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs released Sunday, 11 places inside Arunachal Pradesh were marked as belonging to “Zangnan” or Southern Tibet.
The release also included a map. Significantly, the list and map also marked a place near the Arunachal Pradesh capital Itanagar as part of China.
China also issued specific coordinates for the 11 places. The 11 places include, “two residential areas, five mountain peaks, two rivers, and two other areas,” the state-owned tabloid Global Times reported.
It is “a legitimate move and within China’s sovereign right to standardize the geographical names,” the Global Times added.
India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) issued a sharp rebuke to China’s renaming list and the maps.
The MEA said, “We reject this outright. Arunachal Pradesh is, has been, and will always be an integral and inalienable part of India. Attempts to assign invented names will not alter this reality.”
Our response to media queries regarding the renaming of places in Arunachal Pradesh by China:https://t.co/JcMQoaTzK6 pic.twitter.com/CKBzK36H1K
— Arindam Bagchi (@MEAIndia) April 4, 2023
Central to the dispute over the territories between India and China are the differing perceptions of the LAC, the notional demarcation that separates India and China, along three sectors, western, middle, and eastern.
While India believes the LAC to be 3,488 km long, the Chinese view it to be around 2,000 km. It is neither demarcated on the ground nor delineated on a map between the two sides, leading to overlapping claims between the two sides for many decades.
In 2021, after China’s second round of renaming, ThePrint reported “Out of the 15 changed names announced, eight are for residential areas, four are for mountains, two for rivers and one for a mountain pass.”
(Edited by Geethalakshmi Ramanathan)
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