Amid continuing tensions in Ladakh, India and China on Wednesday exchanged sharp statements on Indian Vice President Venkaiah Naidu's visit to Arunachal Pradesh.
Naidu visited Arunachal Pradesh on October 9 and addressed a special session of the Provincial Assembly.
On Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said: "The Chinese government never recognizes the so-called Arunachal Pradesh established unilaterally and illegally by the Indian side, and is firmly opposed to the Indian leaders' visits to the area concerned. We urge the Indian side to earnestly respect China's major concerns, stop taking any action that would complicate and expand the boundary issue, and refrain from undermining mutual trust and bilateral relations. It should instead take real concrete actions to maintain peace and stability in the China-India border areas and help bring the bilateral relations back on to the track of sound and steady development."
New Delhi said it "rejected" a Chinese statement "firmly opposing" the visit. The Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) responded that it "reject[s] such comments". "Arunachal Pradesh is an integral and inalienable part of India," its spokesperson Arindam Bagchi stated. "Indian leaders routinely travel to the state of Arunachal Pradesh as they do to any other state of India. Objecting to the visit of Indian leaders to a state of India does not stand to reason and understanding of Indian people."
China claims up to 90,000 sq km in Arunachal in the eastern sector, while India sees China occupying 38,000 sq km in Aksai Chin in the western sector. While recent tensions have been focused on Ladakh in the western sector, both sides have also had recently face-offs in Uttarakhand, in the middle sector, and last week near Tawang in Arunachal, where some Chinese soldiers of a large patrol were detained for a few hours by the Indian Army after a minor face-off near Yangtse, according to Indian reports last Friday.
According to The Hindu, neither China issuing a statement on an Indian leader visiting Arunachal nor India responding to it was unusual in of itself; what was new was the sharpness of the exchange, underlining the current state of ties, the lowest since 1988, with an 18-month-long LAC crisis still unresolved.
CNN: With all eyes on Taiwan, tensions are building on another Chinese frontier, India
China's increased military activity in the Taiwan Strait may have grabbed all the headlines in recent weeks, but thousands of miles to the west, another simmering territorial dispute on the country's borders looks more likely to boil over first, CNN said Wednesday.
Just 16 months ago, Chinese and Indian troops fought a deadly hand-to-hand battle in the Himalayas along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the ill-defined de facto border between the two nuclear powers.
And now, tensions appear to be rising again.
As to why the India-China border situation should be heating up now, Chinese state media offers a familiar answer. Just as it does concerning tensions over Taiwan -- near which Chinese warplanes have flown more than 150 sorties this month alone -- Global Times points a finger at the United States.
"(India) sees that Washington attaches great importance to New Delhi, as US President Joe Biden has frequently interacted with the Indian government since taking office, and jointly discussed plans to thwart China's growth," Lin Minwang, professor with the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University, is quoted as saying in the Global Times report.
Taiwan and the Himalayas may be 2,800 miles (4,500 kilometers) apart and completely different environments, but in both territorial disputes with Beijing, the temperature appears to be rising -- and according to China, the US is at the center of it all, CNN concluded.
Russia says Taiwan is part of China as two powers further align against U.S.
Russia has unambiguously stated its position that the self-ruling island of Taiwan is a part of the mainland-based People's Republic of China, as strategic partners Moscow and Beijing seek to further align their positions regarding geopolitical issues across the globe, Newsweek reported Tuesday.
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