India-China Tensions Flair as Beijing Releases Map Claiming Indian Territories
India’s Foreign Minister Jaishankar: “Making absurd claims does not make other people’s territories yours.”
Nearly a week after leaders from China, India and other emerging economies demonstrated their unity at the BRICS summit in South Africa, tensions are mounting between Beijing and New Delhi over decades-old border dispute.
India reacted sharply after China last week released a new official map which showed parts of Indian territory under Beijing control. The revised “map shows the north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh and the disputed Aksai Chin plateau as China’s territory,” the BBC reported Wednesday citing Indian sources.
China disputes large parts of the 2100-mile border it shares with India. In the summer of 2020, Chinese military invaded India’s northern Kashmir region, killing 20 Indian soldiers, making it the first deadly clash between the two nuclear powers since the China-India war of 1962.
In early 2023, Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered the People’s Liberation Army to stay “ready for combat” along the Indian border.
India’s New Delhi Television (NDTV) reported country’s official response:
China has responded to India’s objection of its new “standard” map – which claims ownership of Arunachal Pradesh and the Aksai Chin region in eastern Ladakh – calling it “the normal exercise of sovereignty in accordance with law”. Wang Xiaojian, spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy in India, shared details of a briefing by Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin, in which he said, “We hope relevant sides stay objective and calm, and refrain from over-interpreting the issue.”
On Tuesday External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had summarily dismissed China’s new “map”, telling NDTV in an exclusive interview Beijing has a “habit” of releasing such maps.
“China has put out maps with territories (that are) not theirs. (It is an) old habit. Just by putting out maps with parts of India… this doesn’t change in anything. Our government is very clear about what our territory. Making absurd claims does not make other people’s territories yours,” he said.
New Map claims South China Sea
Besides including parts of India, the Chinese map also stakes claim over most of the South China Sea, which violates the maritime sovereignty of Taiwan, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. “The map showed the “nine-dash line,” which depicts all of Taiwan and the entire South China Sea as Chinese territory,” the German state-owned DW TV reported.
The Chinese provocation prompted some of these countries to lodge official protest. “Two other Asian governments, Malaysia and Taiwan, joined in Wednesday to criticize China’s claims over nearly the entire South China Sea and over self-ruled Taiwan. The Philippines said Thursday it also “rejected” the map’s depiction of Chinese maritime claims,” The Washington Post reported Thursday.
The latest round of conflict highlights the fragile nature of BRICS alliance, comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Facing U.S. and European sanctions, Russia seeks to create an anti-Western alliance, banking largely on the support from China and India. The BRICS has lofty ambitions of floating a new reserve currency to replacing the U.S. dollar and creating a payment system to rival U.S.-based SWIFT.
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Comments
Ah, yes, just what the world needs: a possible conflict between two nations which, combined, comprise 3 Billion in population (almost half of the world’s total population) and – the bonus – which are both nuclear armed. Beautiful!
GOD Help This World!
Bill Gates and friends would be ecstatic. Think how much of the world’s population could be vaporized if the two countries got into a nuclear exchange.
You are insane if you really believe this.
Actually I believe [and txvet2 if I am wrong, just correct me and you can consider this withdrawn] that txvet2 is functionally calling out Bill Gates and his friends as insane for their oft repeated desires to reduce the world’s population by 50% or more.
Subotai Bahadur
You’re right. He’s an idiot.
My favorite Bill Gates factoid. Mr. “Save The Environment” Gates has the 21st largest house in the USA. The majority of larger houses have been turned into museums.
And the WEF to boot. Gates and all have their bunkers. Think of all the useless eaters and breathers gone …. and… the fallout…. can almost here “Waltzing Matilda”. Just a matter of who is Eloi and who is Morloch.
Why?
“Flare”?
So if you put it in a map it must be true, no?
Dear Prime Minister Modi,
If you go through with the BRICS strategy of undermining the US Dollar as the world’s reserve currency, please consider yourself alone when it comes time to stand up to Chinese aggression.
Sincerely,
The United State
Russia and China are both benefiting hugely by their alliance (as is Iran), but it’s still an uneasy truce between two historical rivals. If they run out of external enemies, I don’t doubt they will eventually turn on each other.
The alliance between Nazi Germany and the USSR that ushered in WWII is something to keep in mind. At least in terms of how much totalitarian states can be trusted.
India will keep what it can hold in conventional war; while making absolutely certain that they can destroy many Chinese cities and the Chinese believing that India will do so. MAD lives on as the only viable solution. Australia, Japan, Taiwan, VietNam, anyone who can build an maintain a solid second strike capability against China had better get to work. It is the only way to stop them now. They are going into a population decline and if a country could guarantee that their major cities would be destroyed it would adjust their thinking about aggression.
The two countries have been fighting off-and-on over the borderline of Arunachal Pradesh for decades.
There are numerous crash sites of WWII aircraft from the US in the region. The tension between the two countries has been used as an excuse by our government to neglect our fallen airmen, even though the locations of numerous remains are known. It’s shameful.
Can’t we all just get along?
Who has China pissed off today?
1-Philippines
2-Indonesia
3-VietNam
4-India
5-Taiwan
6-Malaysia?
7-Brunei?
And like night follows day, ,our Great Siohisticates Who Soeak On TV — on the right and on the left — will bloviate confidently smugly asserting that it’s alllll really quite simple: Why? Because it’s alllll just America’s fault.
Count on it