(TibetanReview.net, Nov26’25) – India has on Nov 25 rejected China’s false explanation on the allegation of the latter’s Shanghai airport ill-treatment of a UK-based woman last week because she belongs to the country’s Arunachal Pradesh state, which Beijing claims is its territory. China also sought to make the point that Arunachal Pradesh is its territory called “Zangnan” (Southern Tibet) and that it had never recognized it as part of India.
Chinese media quoted foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning as saying that the woman, Pema Wangjom Thongdok, born in 1989, had only undergone some “verification procedures” and faced no harassment or coercion. Border inspection authorities had “carried out verification procedures in accordance with laws and regulations, enforced the law fairly and civilly, and fully safeguarded the legitimate rights and interests of the individual concerned”, the scmp.com Nov 25 quoted Mao as saying.
On the other hand, Thongdok had posted on X on Nov 23 that while flying from London to Japan, she had been detained for over 18 hours under tough conditions during a layover at Shanghai airport on Nov 21. She also said Chinese immigration officials declared her Indian passport “invalid” because it mentioned Arunachal as her birthplace, claiming this meant she was a Chinese citizen and she should have applied for a Chinese passport instead.
While Thongdok had described her experience as “traumatic” and said she was not allowed to buy food, Mao has claimed that she was neither coerced nor detained nor harassed and that the airline had “provided the individual with a place to rest, as well as food and drinks”.
On Arunachal, Mao has claimed: “Zangnan is Chinese territory. China has never recognised the so-called Arunachal Pradesh illegally established by India.”
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India had lodged a demarché (diplomatic protest) with Beijing on Nov 24 over the airport incident and also reacted strongly on Nov 25 over Mao’s claim about Arunachal being part of China and her claim that Thongdok was not ill-treated.
India’s External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on Nov 25: “We have seen statements made by the Chinese ministry of foreign affairs…. Arunachal Pradesh is an integral and inalienable part of India, and this is a self-evident fact. No amount of denial by the Chinese side is going to change this indisputable reality.”
Jaiswal also said, calling Thongdok’s detention “arbitrary”: “The issue of the detention has been taken up strongly with the Chinese side. Chinese authorities have still not been able to explain their actions, which are in violation of several conventions governing international air travel. The actions by the Chinese authorities also violate their own regulations that allow visa-free transit up to 24 hours for nationals of all countries.”
The current border between Arunachal Pradesh and Tibet, called the “McMahon Line”, is based on a tripartite convention held in Shimla in 1914 among British India, Kuomintang-ruled Republic of China and Tibet. China signed the border agreement but failed to ratify it.
China became assertive over Arunachal only over the last decade or so. In a process that it began in 2017, China, on several occasions, renamed a number of locations within the Indian state, including the latest “standardised place names” list issued by its civil affairs ministry in May.