India rejects China’s latest renaming of places in Arunachal Pradesh

India said on Wednesday that it rejects China’s move to rename places in the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh where the Asian neighbors share a border, adding that the Himalayan territory was an integral part of India.

Beijing has renamed places in Arunachal Pradesh in the past as well and the issue has been an irritant in ties between the two countries, especially as they deteriorated sharply after a deadly military clash elsewhere on their border in 2020.

They reached an agreement in October to step back from their four-year military stand-off in the western Himalayas, leading to disengagement of troops.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told a media briefing that Beijing had “standardized some place names in (Arunachal Pradesh), which is entirely within China’s sovereignty” – repeating what has been Beijing’s standard response.

Beijing says Arunachal Pradesh, which its calls Zangnan, is a part of South Tibet – a claim New Delhi has repeatedly dismissed.

“Creative naming will not alter the undeniable reality that Arunachal Pradesh was, is, and will always remain an integral and inalienable part of India,” India’s foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on Wednesday.

In April last year, China made a similar move by renaming about 30 locations in Arunachal Pradesh, which India dismissed as “senseless” and reaffirmed the region’s status as an “integral part” of the country.

India and China share a poorly demarcated 3,800-km (2,360-mile) frontier and fought a brief but brutal war in 1962. There have also been infrequent clashes between their troops, with 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers killed in the 2020 fighting.