China map release timed just before Xi Jinping’s India visit for G-20 | CPT PPP Coverage

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Military negotiations at the senior commander level may have resolved five of the seven friction areas in eastern Ladakh along the Line of Actual Control (LAC)—with only Demchok and Depsang remaining—two major legacy territorial disputes stay in the back-burner—that of Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin.

These two disputes are considered outside the pale of the day-to-day border relationship till China looks for an opportune time to rake them up.

And no time is more conducive than just before a major interaction between the top-level political leadership of the two Asian giants on the sidelines of the upcoming G-20 Summit.

And that is why on Monday, China released the 2023 edition of its ‘standard map’ which depicts India’s Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin across Ladakh as part of China.

The map was published on Monday by China’s Ministry of Natural Resources to mark the Surveying and Mapping Publicity Day and the National Mapping Awareness Publicity Week.

While there is nothing new for India in the China map, what is interesting is the timing of the map’s release with Chinese President and communist party supremo Xi Jinping expected to arrive in New Delhi for the G-20 Leaders’ Summit scheduled from September 9-10.

Highlighting the territorial dispute now would enable China to negotiate from a position of strength to gain an upper hand in the bilateral meeting likely during the G-20 Summit.

On August 23, Indian PM Modi and President Xi met for an informal conversation in the leaders’ lounge during the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg where the two leaders are reported to have exchanged views on the current India-China relations and other questions of shared interest.

The two had also interacted person-to-person for a brief chat on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Bali in November.

If President Xi lands in New Delhi as expected, it will be his third India visit.

The first visit was in September 2014 a few months after the Narendra Modi-led government swept to power.

Just days before the 2014 visit, about 200 PLA soldiers had made an incursion into the Indian side near Chumar in eastern Ladakh with earth-cutting and earth-moving equipment to build a road in a stretch that India considered its territory.

The second visit was in October 2019. The trip was organized in the shadow of China’s open support to Pakistan which had opposed the August 5, 2019 abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir while China opposed ‘Exercise Himvijay’—a huge Indian military war games in Arunachal Pradesh held just days before Xi’s visit. Notably, the then-Pakistan PM Imran Khan had also visited Beijing just before the Chinese leader embarked on his India visit.

That the two neighbours are keen to ‘disengage, de-escalate and de-induct’ in eastern Ladakh is evident from the fact that the recently-concluded 19th round of military talks continued for two days and then continued by talks at the major-general level—an indicator that the border conflict is being evaluated at the operational level.

Arunachal Pradesh is an Indian state while China occupied Aksai Chin in 1962 and stayed put henceforth despite a longstanding Indian demand seeking a vacation of the cold desert region by China.

The current ongoing border conflict in eastern Ladakh began in April-May 2020 which climaxed in a brutal border fight in Galwan on June 15, 2020, that claimed a total of at least 24 lives on both sides.