The Chinese government has asserted that the renaming of places in Zangnan—what India refers to as Arunachal Pradesh—is a matter of China’s sovereignty.
India and China share a poorly demarcated 3,800-km (2,360-mile) frontier and fought a brief but brutal war in 1962. There have also been infrequent clashes between their troops, with 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers killed in the 2020 fighting.
According to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the region holds historical, geographical, and administrative significance as an integral part of China.
In a formal statement, the ministry emphasized that the decision to assign Chinese names to locations in Zangnan falls under China’s internal affairs and is in line with its sovereign administrative authority.
Read more: China’s premier says Tibet inseparable part of country’s ‘sacred’ territory
Tensions between Beijing and New Delhi have long existed over this disputed region, and this latest move is expected to further strain relations between the two neighbors.
China has been carrying out this renaming the region since 2017, with the last one in Apr 2024 listing 30 sites with new Chinese names.
Since the first batch in 2017, China has released a total of 89 names for places in Arunachal Pradesh, which had been part of Tibet prior to the Shimla Convention (of 1014), which was arranged among Tibet, China, and Britain in the tailwind of the “Great Game” between the British and Russian empires, noted the ICT statement.
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