A Chinese diplomat reacting to the standoff in Ladakh has said that the move is linked to the Indian government’s unilateral decision to scrap Article 370 in August last year.
The move changed the laws that prohibited Indians from buying land in Kashmir, and made the constitution of Jammu and Kashmir defunct, triggering fears of demographic change in the Muslims majority region of Kashmir.
The Chinese diplomat has created a flutter in diplomatic circles suggesting that the standoff between Indian and Chinese border troops was linked to New Delhi’s decision to scrap Jammu and Kashmir’s special status last year.
Chinese diplomat, Wang Xianfeng tweeted,“India’s actions of unilaterally changing the status quo of Kashmir and continuing to exacerbate regional tensions have posed a challenge to the sovereignty of China and Pakistan and made the India-Pakistan relations and China-India relations more complex.”
Hindustan Times reported, Wang Xianfeng, included in his tweet a link to an article by a scholar from an influential think tank affiliated with China’s ministry of state security or main intelligence agency, which also suggested a connection between the border tensions and the change in Kashmir’s status.
This is the first time a Chinese official has sought to link the border standoff with the change in Kashmir’s status, including the creation of the union territory of Ladakh, which particularly angered China.
India and China are currently engaged in military level talks to disengage in the Ladakh region where tensions have been building up. Indian side maintains that both parties have mutually agreed to pull back troops, but Chinese media has been upping its rhetoric and moving heavy weaponry to the border and conducting military drills.
When India scrapped Jammu and Kashmir’s special status on August 5 last year, the Chinese foreign ministry had issued two statements criticising the development, including one that focused on the splitting of the state into union territories.
This statement, while urging India to be “cautious” on the border issue and to avoid “actions that further complicate the border issue”, said: “China has always opposed India’s inclusion of Chinese territory in India’s administrative jurisdiction in the western part of the Sino-Indian border.” This was a reference to the area in Ladakh that New Delhi claims but is controlled by Beijing.
Wang’s tweet linked to the article by scholar Wang Shida of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, which began by saying India had since last August “taken constant actions to unilaterally change the status quo of Kashmir and continued to exacerbate regional tensions”.
The article, titled “India blinded by ‘double confidence’”, said India’s move to change the status quo in Kashmir “constitutes a serious threat to regional peace” and “posed a challenge to the sovereignty of Pakistan and China”.
“On the Chinese side, India ‘opened up new territory on the map’, incorporated part of the areas under the local jurisdiction of Xinjiang and Tibet into its Ladakh union territory, and placed Pakistani-administered Kashmir within its so-called union territories of Jammu and Kashmir,” the article said.
“This forced China into the Kashmir dispute, stimulated China and Pakistan to take counter-actions on the Kashmir issue, and dramatically increased the difficulty in resolving the border issue between China and India,” it added.
The article noted that China’s foreign minister Wang Yi had conveyed his country’s position on these issues to external affairs minister S Jaishankar when he visited Beijing last year – that “India’s moves challenged China’s sovereign rights and interests and violated the agreement on maintaining peace and tranquillity in the border areas between the two countries”.
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