Summary:
Guwahati: Customs officials in China have destroyed about 29,000 world maps, which they labelled as ‘problematic’, for not showing Arunachal Pradesh as Chinese territory (South Tibet) and also for depicting Taiwan as a separate country.A decade ago, names of places in Arunachal were written in Mandarin, instead of English or Hindi, in Google satellite maps. This consistent position has been conveyed to the Chinese side on several occasions.” While China has been trying to impress upon the international community that Taipei is part of its territory, many global companies, including Air India, started listing Taiwan as Chinese Taipei. Those were eventually taken off after India protested. In 2017, China’s civil affairs ministry announced that it had standardised the names of six places in ‘South Tibet’ in Chinese characters, Tibtean and Roman alphabets.China’s state-run Global Times reported that the ‘incorrect’ world maps were destroyed by the Customs authorities at Qingdao in East China’s Shandong province. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the frontier state in February, China’s foreign ministry said its government has never recognised ‘the so called Arunachal Pradesh’ and is firmly opposed to the Indian leader’s visit to the east section of the China-India boundary and that visit of the Indian leadership may further ‘complicate the boundary question’.India had responded by saying, “Indian leaders visit Arunachal from time to time as they visit other parts of India..