Top level, internal CPC politics is the reason Beijing keeps up aggressive border rhetoricMEA’s statement earlier this week that Arunachal Pradesh is an integral part of India, and that the state of India-China border will reflect on larger ties with Beijing, is a pointed message to Chinese leadership. This comes in the wake of GOI formally identifying 27 locations in Arunachal by their standard names in the Survey of India map.That was in response to China repeatedly assigning Chinese names to these places in recent years. All of this coming just ahead of the Brics summit in New Delhi next month, can only be construed as a strategic move by New Delhi.True, there have been recent attempts by both India and China to move beyond 2020 Galwan clashes. But India-China border issues remain a stumbling block. This is because China, which sees itself as a post-colonial state, is hawkish about sovereignty issues.Three key items that animate elite Chinese politics are Tibet, Taiwan, and the India-China border. These are the issues around which the Chinese leaders, along with their various factions, jostle and engage in high-stakes powerplay, behind the high walls of Zhongnanhai. That’s why India-China border keeps coming up as an irritant in bilateral relations.Officially, Beijing would like to disengage the border issue from the overall India-China equation. But its own politics doesn’t allow this.Just as there is little room for a Chinese leader to manoeuvre on Tibet and Taiwan, India-China border remains fodder for Chinese nationalist sentiments. And with Chinese ethno-nationalism growing under Xi, there is little hope that the border question will ever be resolved.So, India has to stand firm. Allowing China to compartmentalise the border issue only helps Beijing set the stage for future border mischief. Arunachal is Indian. Borders can’t be changed unilaterally. Chinese ‘Zangnan’– as Beijing likes to call Arunachal – is fiction.
Disclaimer: Views expressed above are the author’s own.