Door officieel 15 plaatsen in India een nieuwe Chinese naam te geven legt China een claim op dit gebied. India reageerde nog niet formeel.

De Epoch Times meldde:

China has “standardized” the names of 15 places in Arunachal Pradesh, an Indian state on the border with Bhutan and Burma that the Chinese regime has attempted to claim and aggressively intruded upon for the past few decades. However, Indian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said that assigning invented Chinese names to locations in the state won’t alter the fact that Arunachal Pradesh is and always will be an “integral part” of India.

Het gebied behoort tot India sinds de jaren vijftig:

India has governed Arunachal Pradesh since 1954, when the area was established as the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) under the British Raj. After the Sino–Indian war of 1962, relations between the two countries deteriorated and border disputes emerged. These have escalated in recent years with the Doklam standoff in 2017 and the bloody clash in the Galwan Valley in 2020.
In 1972, India renamed the NEFA as Arunachal Pradesh, a federally governed territory, or Union territory, and in 1987, it was given the status of a state under the Indian constitution.

Maar de Chinese actie van afgelopen week is niet zonder betekenis. China legt wel degelijk een claim op het gebied:

However, since 2006, China has claimed the territory and refers to Arunachal Pradesh as “Zangnan,” or South Tibet. On Dec. 29, the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs said it had given formal Chinese names to 15 places in “Zangnan.” The announcement came days before China’s new land border law took effect on Jan. 1.
The Chinese “standardized” names apply to eight residential areas, four mountain peaks, two rivers, and one mountain pass, according to Chinese state-run outlet Global Times.

De naamgeving had nog enige andere consequenties:

Along with assigning names, the Chinese regime has also set up an administrative structure for the area under Chinese counties and prefectures.
These include Sengkezong and Daglungzong in Cuona County of Shannan Prefecture; Mani’gang, Duding, and Migpain in Medog County of Nyingchi Prefecture; Goling and Damba in Zayu County of Nyingchi Prefecture; and Mejag in Lhunze County of Shannan Prefecture.
China’s claims on Arunachal Pradesh began in 2006, when then-Chinese Ambassador to India Sun Yuxi asserted, “The whole of Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory,” ahead of then-Chinese leader Hu Jintao’s official visit to India.

Dit doet sterk denken aan de eertijdse constitutie van West-Duitsland, dat grondwettelijk had opgenomen hoe het toenmalige Oost-Duitsland zou worden ingedeeld als dat ooit met West-Duitsland zou worden herenigd. En inderdaad ging dit in 1989 zoals ooit voorzien kort na de Tweede Wereldoorlog.

Dergelijke acties zijn derhalve niet zonder betekenis.

Frank Lehberger, a sinologist specializing in CCP policies in Tibet and a senior fellow at the Indian think tank Usanas Foundation, compared the Chinese attempt with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s invention and perfection of “death by cartography.” Stalin personally redrew maps in the Central Asian Fergana Valley to ensure that all former Soviet republics in that region would remain dependent on the Soviet Union and would be shaken by inter-ethnic violence if they tried to declare independence.
Lehberger pointed to delimitation exercises, also called “lying maps,” that he said Stalin followed for the purpose of automatically creating civil unrest, in case of a breakup of the Soviet Union.
“Stalin drew those maps of the internal borders in the Soviet Union in such a way that they could not be detangled in case of the collapse of the Soviet Union and that border wars and civil wars would ensue almost automatically,” Lehberger said. “He got his wish. It happened there twice in 1990 and 2010, at the border of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, as well as in 2008 in Georgia, 2014 in Crimea, and 2021 in Armenia.”

De eerste stap in dit proces werd overigens al eerder ondernomen:

The first batch of six modified names for places in Arunachal Pradesh was given by the Chinese ministry in 2017, in what Indian media called a retaliatory move following a visit by the Dalai Lama. The state is also a seat of Vajrayana Buddhism and houses the four-century-old Tawang monastery, one of the biggest Buddhist monasteries in Asia. Lehberger told The Epoch Times that China’s attempt to assign names to places in Arunachal Pradesh is a practice that began even before Sun Yuxi’s statement, in the early 2000s.

Dit proces is onderdeel van de internationale rechtvaardiging van Chinese toekomstige acties. Vergelijkbaar met de Chinese operaties in de Zuid-Chinese Zee, waar onderzeese riffen zijn uitgebouwd tot door Chinezen bewoonde eilanden.

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Meer over de perikelen die India heeft met zowel Kashmir (binnenlands, Pakistan) als China (actueel grensconflict) vindt  u hier op Veren of Lood.