(TibetanReview.net, May15’25) – China has on May 14 doubled down on its latest renaming of places in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, insisting that the territory belongs to it on account of its claim over Tibet.
Zangnan is part of China’s territory, and the Chinese government has standardized the names of some parts of Zangnan. “This is within China’s sovereign rights,” China’s official globaltimes.cn May 14 quoted Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin as saying.
“Zangnan” is Chinese for south or southern Tibet.
The report said Lin made the remarks in response to media inquiries that India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had released a statement in which it made clear its opposition to China naming places in “Arunachal Pradesh” (China’s Zangnan), citing Chinese foreign ministry website.
The report said China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs had released the fifth batch of standardized geographical names in Zangnan on May 11, after its previous one in in Mar 2024.
The report said Qian Feng, director of the Research Department at the National Strategy Institute at Tsinghua University, had told the Global Times that India had no right to say anything about China’s legitimate exercise of its sovereignty, that China’s action is in a manner consistent with international law. He has added that the Indian side’s claim also did not align with the facts.
China came to share a common border with India only after it annexed Tibet in the 1950s. No wonder the report said that previously, in 2024, when answering a question related to Zangnan, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin said that the China-India boundary had never been delimited and was divided into the eastern sector, the middle sector, the western sector and Sikkim sector.
India’s claim is based on the 1914 tripartite Shimla convention of British India, Tibet and China. China also signed the Shimla agreement but eventually did not ratify it and was therefore not to claim many rights based on it.