India has formally protested China's decision to establish two new counties in the contested Aksai Chin region. While the area is currently under Chinese control, India claims the territory as part of its Ladakh region in the Himalayas. The move has heightened tensions over the long-standing border dispute between the two nations. To learn more, TaiwanPlus spoke to Jabin Jacob, a professor at Shiv Nadar University in Noida, India.
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00:00China has announced two new counties and these counties overlap with the Aksai Chin region
00:05that India claims.
00:07What's the significance of this announcement?
00:10It's part of what I would think is this lawfare approach that the Chinese have employed for
00:19a long time of using legal means to solidify administrative and political control over
00:28disputed territory.
00:30If you recall, the Chinese have been engaged in a similar exercise, somewhat similar exercise
00:39in Arunachal Pradesh, where they've been renaming places well inside Indian jurisdiction, Indian
00:47territory since 2017.
00:50Could you explain the history of the Aksai Chin region and its significance to India-China
00:55relations?
00:56Aksai Chin has always been claimed by India.
01:00This is a claim that has come down to us as a result of the Republic of India taking over
01:09from the British Raj.
01:10Now, the Chinese have obviously never accepted this claim.
01:16And in fact, one of the sort of reasons why the India-China boundary dispute post-Indian
01:25independence and communist liberation in China sort of scales up is the discovery by
01:32the Indian side, by an Indian diplomat in China, in fact, of a road being built through
01:39Aksai Chin, which until, I mean, which has always been shown as part of Indian territory
01:46in our maps and so on.
01:49The road was being built between Xinjiang and Tibet, basically to connect to Tibet.
01:55So this road was discovered and, you know, the Indian side made a representation to the
02:00Chinese and the Chinese simply said, well, old maps and so on, and that they were yet
02:04to update their maps.
02:06But essentially, this area became a site of one of the sectors of conflict in 1962.
02:15Will this development complicate the ongoing talks between India and China to reduce the
02:20military tensions at their mutual border?
02:23So here, I think there is an explicit action in territory that India clearly claims is
02:32part of the India-China boundary dispute.
02:34So what this means, coming so soon after the recent last round, or so-called last round
02:43of the disengagement process, as well as the special representatives meetings in Beijing,
02:52is that, well, the Chinese don't particularly take Indian claims seriously, or Indian reactions
02:58seriously, that they feel that they, you know, can do things without much of a pushback from
03:06the Indian side.
03:08So I don't think it speaks well of the state of India-China relations.
03:13It doesn't speak well of the degree of trust that exists in India-China relations.