Arunachal Pradesh in India-China Relations: Trends in Chinese Behaviour and their Implications

Abstract

The importance of Arunachal Pradesh in the boundary dispute between India and China has varied over the years. It has certainly increased in profile over the last two or three decades with key issues being transgressions by Chinese troops across the Line of Actual Control between the two countries, the changing Chinese practice in terms of issuing of visas to Arunachali citizens, and the visits of the Tibetan leader Dalai Lama to the Indian state. This paper examines each of these issues briefly before focusing on a 2017 Chinese exercise of renaming places identified as falling within Arunachal Pradesh. This has so far been the only instance of renaming that has come to light but nevertheless, like in the case of Chinese actions or responses on the first three subjects, also constitutes a Chinese sovereignty-building exercise involving Arunachal Pradesh and might be considered a fresh provocation. India has responded in its own way on the above issues but the sustainability of its responses is limited by structural weaknesses including lack of synergy within and among its civilian bureaucratic, military, and academic institutions. Against this backdrop as well as of the larger international context, Arunachal Pradesh’s importance in the Sino-Indian bilateral relationship might well shift again. The history of relations between India and China in the last century, including that of the boundary conflict between the two countries in 1962 and subsequent skirmishes, is somewhat reasonably well known and documented. It could also be argued that the importance of Arunachal Pradesh in this dispute has increased over time particularly since the mid-2000s. This paper will examine the key issues that animate the India–China boundary dispute insofar as Arunachal is concerned with a focus on the latest Chinese attempt on renaming places within the Northeast Indian state as a way of promoting its sovereignty claims.