2023-08-30 18:29:22
The timing speaks volumes: after the conference of the major emerging countries and only nine days before the summit of the G-20 countries in New Delhi, Beijing once again publishes an official map on which it appropriates huge areas in Asia. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met at the BRICS summit in Johannesburg, and Xi is also expected in Delhi by Modi. In the run-up, however, there were clear protests from India: Because areas that are probably rich in mineral resources, rare earths and possibly uranium and are of great strategic importance, Beijing is simply encroaching on the “Standard Map of China”.
Christopher Hein
Business correspondent for South Asia/Pacific based in Singapore.
The government publishes the maps so that companies, publishers, universities and schools have an official reference. In the course of the disputes over the areas in recent years, India has instructed companies to invest less in China, has been slow in issuing visas for Chinese and has blocked a number of mobile apps from China.
Chinese mountain regions
“Absurd claims do not make other people’s territories yours,” commented Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. “Simply presenting maps with parts of India means nothing.” There were clear protests through the diplomatic channels. After 2017 and 2021, Beijing unilaterally gave new Chinese names to eleven other places, mountains and rivers in Arunachal Pradesh claimed by India in April. At that time, too, the Indians protested.
Chinese President Xi Jinping at the BRICS summit in South Africa : Photo: Laif
The mountainous regions of Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin are shown as Chinese on the map, which was published by the state-run newspaper “Global Times”, among others. The new map was published by the Chinese Ministry of Natural Resources, which includes mineral resources. Large parts of the South China Sea and Taiwan are also portrayed as Chinese along the “nine-dash line” that Beijing invokes as the historic territorial boundary.
China baut Bunker an der Line of Actual Control
At the same time, satellite images from the Himalayas show that China is building several bunkers on its side of the disputed Line of Actual Control (LAC) in northern India to protect itself from attacks. More than ten thousand soldiers with heavy equipment lie here on both sides. India has invested billions to open up and develop its side of the border. At an informal meeting in Johannesburg, Xi and Modi emphasized that an agreement was urgently needed.
Clear words: banners erected by the Indian army near the Sino-Indian border: Photo: AP
Beijing called the talk an “open and in-depth exchange of views.” India said Modi stressed that “adhering to and respecting” the LAC is fundamental. The almost 3,500-kilometer-long border line is difficult to locate in some parts, as landslides, rivers and lakes move it at times. In recent years, there have been repeated clashes, some of them deadly, between the soldiers stationed there from India and China. In 2020, 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers were killed in such clashes in the Galwan Valley in Ladakh.
Jochen Stahnke, Beijing Published/Updated: Recommendations: 29 Till Fähnders, Singapore and Jochen Stahnke, Beijing Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 25 A comment by Claudia Bröll, Johannesburg Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 46
Beijing claims Arunachal Pradesh as “Southern Tibet” adjoining Tibet it occupies. Aksai Chin occupied China in the 1962 war with India – but the Indians are not giving up the region. Ultimately, the disputes also go back to imprecise and controversial demarcations by the former British colonial rulers.
There are not only mineral resources in the mountainous region – large rivers of Asia originate here, energy can be generated here, and the troops of the nuclear powers collide here directly. The South China Sea is of great importance for sea freight, fishing, mineral resources and submarine traffic.
#Beijing #provokes #neighboring #countries #territorial #claims