China reasserts India border claims with fresh list of ‘standard’ place names

China has reasserted its territorial claims adjacent its contested borderline with India by releasing “standard” names for dozens of places successful the portion – astir of them successful Indian-controlled territory.

Despite caller efforts to amended diplomatic ties with its Southeast Asian neighbour, the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs published its latest names for places successful Arunachal Pradesh, which China calls Zangnan and says is portion of the Tibetan autonomous region.

The renaming of 27 places covered an array of geographical features: 15 mountains, 5 residential areas, 4 upland passes, 2 rivers and 1 lake.

Each determination was assigned a sanction successful Chinese characters, Tibetan, and pinyin – the romanised spelling of Mandarin Chinese – and accompanied by elaborate latitude and longitude coordinates, and a high-resolution map.

“In accordance with the applicable provisions of the State Council connected the absorption of geographical names, we successful conjunction with the applicable departments person standardised immoderate of the geographical names successful Zangnan of China,” the ministry said.

On Wednesday, India dismissed China’s determination arsenic “vain and preposterous”.

“Creative naming volition not change the undeniable world that Arunachal Pradesh was, is, and volition ever stay an integral and inalienable portion of India,” the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said.

Beijing’s determination comes contempt efforts successful the past twelvemonth to amended relations betwixt the 2 countries aft a agelong play of tension.