Beijing: Within days of the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the BRICS Summit in South Africa, China officially released the 2023 edition of its “standard map,” which shows the state of Arunachal Pradesh and the Aksai Chin region as part of its territory.
The map released on August 28 shows Arunachal Pradesh which China claims as South Tibet and Aksai Chin occupied by it as part of its territory. Taiwan and the disputed South China Sea are also included within the Chinese territory in the new map. The map also incorporates China’s claims over the nine-dash line thus laying claim to a large part of the South China Sea. Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei have all claims over the South China Sea areas.
The map was released by China’s Ministry of Natural Resources during the celebration of Surveying and Mapping Publicity Day and the National Mapping Awareness Publicity Week on August 28 in Deqing county, Zhejiang province, as per China Daily newspaper.
Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra had said in his conversation with President Xi Jinping, Prime Minister Modi highlighted India’s concerns on unresolved issues along the Line of Actual Control in the Western Sector of the India-China border areas.
“The Prime Minister underlined that maintenance of peace and tranquillity in the border areas and observing and respecting the LAC are essential for the normalisation of the India-China relationship. In this regard, two leaders agreed to direct their relevant officials to intensify efforts at expeditious disengagement and de-escalation,” Kwatra had said.
According to China Daily, an English-language daily newspaper owned by the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party, the chief planner of China’s Ministry of Natural Resources, Wu Wenzhong, said surveying, mapping and geographic information play an important role in boosting the development of the nation, meeting the needs of all walks of life, supporting the management of natural resources, and helping the construction of ecology and civilisation.
“The next step will be to accelerate the application of geographic information data such as digital maps and navigation and positioning in the development of the digital economy, such as location-based services, precision agriculture, platform economy and intelligent connected vehicles,” Wu said, as per China Daily.
Zhejiang has in recent years focused on the deep integration of the digital and real economies and has continued to promote the development of the digital economy, according to Li Yaowu, deputy secretary-general of the Zhejiang Provincial People’s Government.
China has territorial disputes with more countries than it shares its borders with. The Chinese Communist Party, the CCP, with Xi Jinping at the helm, has used deceitful tactics and manipulation in order to attempt to assert territorial control over other sovereign territories. Beijing has flouted all international norms in its expansionist bid to control more territory.
China has now staked claims on parts of India’s north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, arguing that these locations were part of greater Tibet. A desperate Beijing had in April this year unilaterally “renamed” as many as 11 Indian locations, which included names of mountain peaks, rivers and residential areas.
This is not the first time that Beijing has employed such tactics. Previously in 2017 and 2021, China’s Civil Affair Ministry had renamed other Indian locations triggering another political confrontation. New Delhi called out China’s expansionist plans then.
Previously, the official spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), Arindam Bagchi, while commenting on China’s attempt to show its domination in places belonging to India’s Arunachal Pradesh said: “This is not the first time that China has attempted something like this (changing the names of areas in Arunachal Pradesh) and we have already condemned any such attempts. Regarding Arunachal Pradesh, we had also said that Arunachal Pradesh is an inseparable part of India) and imposing invented names like these will not at all change the reality.”
