“Absurd, baseless”: India responds to China’s latest Arunachal claim
The Chinese Defense Ministry’s “absurd claims over the territory of the Indian state of Arunachal” have drawn criticism from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), which further emphasized that “repeating baseless arguments in this regard does not lend such claims any validity.”
According to Senior Colonel Zhang Xiaogang, a spokesman for the Chinese Defense Ministry, the southern region of Xizang—the Chinese term for Tibet—is an integral component of China’s territory. According to the official media in Beijing, he said, Beijing “never acknowledges and firmly opposes” the “so-called Arunachal Pradesh illegally established by India.”
The remarks made by the Chinese military were directed at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh earlier this month and came after those made by the foreign ministry.
“Repeating erroneous reasoning in this respect does not provide legitimacy to such assertions. Arunachal Pradesh is an essential and unalienable component of India and has always been so. Our infrastructure initiatives and development programs will continue to serve its people, according to MEA spokesman Randhir Jaiswal.
PM Modi spoke at the “Viksit Bharat Viksit North-East Programme” earlier this month in Itanagar, where he also set the groundwork for other development projects in Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura, and Arunachal Pradesh that would cost around Rs 55,600 crore.
Beijing was retaliated against by South Block last week for opposing Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh. Arunachal Pradesh is sometimes visited by Indian leaders on their trips to other Indian states. It is illogical to object to such trips or India’s development initiatives, Jaiswal has previously said.
