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China’s moves to assert control along disputed border risk further tensions with India
- Plans to upgrade 2 frontier towns to city status are likely to lead to more investment in an area that includes territory claimed by both sides
- The two sides have clashed over a ‘standardised’ place names in territory Beijing claims is part of Tibet but is held by India as the state of Arunachal Pradesh
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China is planning to upgrade two Tibetan towns along the disputed border with India to city status, in a move that may help consolidate its hold over the region but risks further inflaming tensions.
The announcement, which one analyst said amounted to an assertion of its sovereignty, follows a row this week with India after the Chinese authorities published a map of newly “standardised” place names that included Indian-held territory south of the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
China and India have never agreed on their border demarcation and since a short but bloody war over the issue in 1962 they have been divided by the 3,200km (1,990-mile) LAC – although they have not even been able to agree on precisely where that lies.
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The territory at the heart of the latest dispute is claimed by China as Southern Tibet, but is held by India as the state of Arunachal Pradesh.
In December last year, troops from both sides clashed in the Tawang sector, leaving dozens with what the Indian army described as “minor injuries”.
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The two sides have also been involved in a prolonged stand-off thousands of kilometres to the west along another section of the LAC, where both hold territory claimed by the other. This section was the scene of the deadliest clash for years between the two sides in the Galwan valley in Ladakh in June 2020.
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