NEW DELHI (dpa-AFX) – India’s Interior Minister Amit Shah has visited the disputed border region with China. “No one can take land the size of a pinpoint from us,” Shah said Monday, according to local NDTV. He presented an initiative that aims to improve the living conditions of people in the largely uninhabited region in the Himalayas.
China’s foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin criticized Shah’s visit to the region, which both countries claim and call Zangnan and Arunachal Pradesh respectively. “Zangnan is part of China’s sovereign territory,” Wang said at a news conference. Indian minister’s visit “violates Chinese territorial sovereignty and does not promote peace and stability in border regions”. India recently criticized China for giving names in Mandarin and Tibetan to some places in the region.
Relations between the two most populous countries in the world are strained. The Asian rivals have different views on the border in the mountains at 4,500 to 5,500 meters. Their dispute over the border had led to a brief war in the 1960s, which China won.
In the summer of 2020, soldiers from both sides attacked each other in the border region with stones, sticks and fists. It was the worst such incident in decades, with deaths on both sides. Subsequently, both China and India reinforced their troops in the border region. As a result of talks, some soldiers were withdrawn, but the situation remains unresolved./asg/DP/he