NEW DELHI - India is stamping its map on visas given to Chinese visitors, an Indian official said Saturday, after China began issuing passports showing disputed territories as its own.
“We have started issuing visas with India’s map as we know it,” said a foreign ministry official, who did not wish to be named, declining to comment further.
India’s tit-for-tat action comes after China began issuing new biometric passports showing Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai China - regions that New Delhi claims - as part of Chinese territory.
And the response comes amid already strained ties between the two Asian giants.
Beijing has also included disputed islands in the South China Sea in the map outline on the new passports, angering both the Philippines and Vietnam, as well as areas including two of Taiwan’s most famous scenic spots. Early this week, the Philippines foreign secretary wrote a protest note to the Chinese embassy and the Vietnam government said it has also lodged its objections with Beijing. India’s The Hindu newspaper said the Indian government had decided not to take up the issue formally with China. “It feels it will be better to speak through actions... than words,” the newspaper quoted an unidentified govt official as saying. Beijing has attempted to downplay the diplomatic fallout from the recently introduced passports, with a foreign ministry spokeswoman saying the maps were “not made to target any specific country”. The disputed border between India and China has been the subject of 14 rounds of fruitless talks since 1962, when the two nations fought a brief, bloody war over the state of Arunachal Pradesh.
China’s build-up of military infrastructure along the frontier has become a major source of concern for India, which increasingly sees Beijing as a longer-term threat to its security tha traditional rival Pakistan.
India is also wary of increased Chinese activity in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh which New Delhi sees as within its sphere of influence.
Meanwhile, Indian External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid says the Chinese passport map showing Arunachal Pradesh state and the Himalayan region of Aksai Chin as part of China is ‘unacceptable.’
In New Delhi, China is viewed with suspicion as a longtime ally and weapons supplier to Pakistan, India’s bitter rival. For Beijing, the presence in India of the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and 120,000 other exiles from Tibet remains a source of tension.
India claims China controls 41,440 square kilometers of its territory in Aksai Chin in Kashmir, while Beijing says that the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which shares a 1,050-kilometer border with the Chinese-run region of Tibet, is rightfully Chinese territory.
India and China fought a brief border war in 1962, and large stretches of the India-China border are still undemarcated.
But relations between China and India have improved in recent years as both countries’ trade has grown exponentially to reach more than $75 billion last year. However, the trade remains heavily skewed in favour of China, which is now India’s biggest trading partner.