The United States has sided with New Delhi by intervening in the flaring territorial dispute between India and China.
A State Department official said the US ‘recognises’ the state of Arunachal Pradesh as part of India and opposes attempts by others to assert control over the region. China, on the other hand, maintains that the region, which it calls Zangnan or southern Tibet, belongs to it.
“We strongly oppose any unilateral attempt to advance territorial claims along the Line of Actual Control through military or civilian attacks or incursions,” US State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters in Washington late on Wednesday when asked about China’s position.
Tensions rose this month after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Arunachal Pradesh on 9 March as he prepares to run for a third term in general elections that begin on 19 April and run until early June. Modi inaugurated a $100 million tunnel project that will provide an ‘all-weather’ link to the remote state’s strategic Tawang region, helping India strengthen its defences along the 3,500-kilometre de facto border with China, known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
China, which regularly takes exception when Indian leaders visit the region, issued a statement “strongly condemning and resolutely opposing” Modi’s trip. India later rejected Beijing’s reaction, insisting that Arunachal Pradesh ‘is and will always remain an integral and inalienable part of India’.
According to Chinese official media, days after the initial tit-for-tat statements, Chinese Defence Ministry spokesman Senior Colonel Zhang Xiaogang told reporters that “the Zangnan area is China’s natural territory”. “China never recognises and resolutely opposes the so-called ‘Arunachal Pradesh’ illegally created by India,” he said.
Indian foreign ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal hit back again on Tuesday, saying New Delhi had taken note of the Chinese defence ministry spokesman’s remarks making “absurd claims” over the region: “Repeating baseless allegations in this regard does not give any validity to such claims.”
India and China have a long-standing border dispute that led the two Asian giants to go to war in 1962. They have also been locked in a border dispute in the eastern Ladakh region since 2020, which has seen deadly clashes between their troops.
