In rebuttal to China claim over Ladakh, Arunachal, India drops a clear warning

India-China border: New Delhi’s sharp rebuttal comes amid efforts by the United States to pinprick Beijing over its ‘One China’ policy

Updated on: Oct 16, 2020, 10:42:30 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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India on Thursday told off Beijing for its repeated complaints about infrastructure projects on the Indian side of the border with a clear warning, asserting that China should not comment on India’s internal matters just as it expects other countries to steer clear of its internal affairs.

India has told China on several occasions including at the highest level that Arunachal Pradesh is an integral part of India. (Agencies)

New Delhi’s harsher-than-usual message comes days after the Chinese foreign ministry linked infrastructure development on the Indian side to the five-month long stand-off in East Ladakh. China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian had pointed to the infrastructure development along the border this week and gone ahead to describe the infra push along with military deployment as “the root cause for the tensions between the two sides”.

“The union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh have been, are, and would remain an integral part of India,,” external affairs ministry spokesperson Anurag Srivastava told reporters on Thursday.

Also Watch | Amid tension, India responds to China’s ‘Ladakh infra development’ comment

“Our position on Arunachal Pradesh has also been made clear several times. Arunachal Pradesh is an integral and inalienable part of India. This fact has also been clearly conveyed to the Chinese side on several occasions, including at the highest level,” the spokesperson said.

India reminded China that it had “no locus standi to comment on India’s internal matters” and sent a clear message that New Delhi may not always act with restraint on speaking about China’s internal affairs.

Also Read: Pushback to Xi Jinping to reflect in US approach to ‘One China’ policy | Analysis

“We hope that countries will not comment on India’s internal matters, as much as they expect the same of others,” Srivastava said.

India’s sharp retort came hours after the Donald Trump administration appointed a senior official to oversee Tibetan issues, a move that is seen in line with the United States’ new approach to expand the scope of its running feud with China to call into question the ‘One China’ policy that President Xi Jinping holds dear.

The US administration’s decision to appoint Robert Destro as the new Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues is significant because the post had been left vacant for the last four years.

Also Read: India demolishes China’s new excuse for Ladakh stand-off in 3 points

According to the state department, Destro will primarily be responsible for advancing dialogue between Beijing and the Dalai Lama and protecting the identity of Tibetans. China’s authority over Tibet has been an irritant in US-China relations. In July, the Trump administration had imposed travel restrictions on Chinese officials “substantially involved” in restricting access to Tibet.

In discussions with other India, Japan and Australia as part of the four-nation Quadrilateral security dialogue, US secretary of state Mike Pompeo had signalled that the US could harden its stance on China and even call into question Beijing’s ‘One China’ mantra..

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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