New Delhi (New Delhi): India rejected on Tuesday the renaming by China of places in what India regards as its eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims as part of its territory.
China and India fought a war along parts of their poorly demarcated 3,800-km (2,360-mile) frontier in 1962 and clashes in mountainous regions in recent years have seriously strained relations between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
The latest angry exchange of words was triggered on Sunday when China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs issued a statement in which it said it had “standardised” the names of 11 places, including five mountains, in what China calls its southern Tibet region.
The statement included a map that showed the 11 places renamed by China as being within “Zangnan”, or southern Tibet in Chinese, with Arunachal Pradesh included in southern Tibet and China’s border with India demarcated as just north of the Brahmaputra river.