Xi Jinping shakes hands with Narendra Modi at the 6th BRICS summit in Fortaleza, Brazil on July 14, 2014. (Photo/Xinhua)
With Xi due to visit New Delhi later this month, India's minister of external affairs Sushma Swaraj said Monday that China must respect India's territorial claim over the Indian-controlled region in the northeastern part of the country.
"For India to agree to a one-China policy, China should reaffirm one-India policy," she said at a press conference. "If we understand China's sensitivity on Tibet and Taiwan, they should also understand that we have sensitivity about Arunachal Pradesh," she added.
In response, China's assistant foreign minister Liu Jianchao said a day later that the leaders of both countries have pledged to work together to manage and control their differences.
"India is a country with which China has been friendly for thousands of years," Liu said, adding, "China has never, and will not, use so-called military or other means to try and hem in India. There is no strategic competition between China and India in our relationship."
Swaraj also attempted to diffuse tensions after Indian prime minister Narendra Modi spoke of the "expansionist" mindset of some countries during a recent visit to Japan, which is also embroiled in a territorial dispute with China over the Diaoyutai islands (Diaoyu to China, Senkaku to Japan) in the East China Sea.
"He never referred to any specific country," Swaraj said in trying to explain that Modi's remarks were not directed at China. "It was media's guess. He spoke about 18th century expansionism."
Earlier, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Qin Gang said in a guarded response to Modi's comments that he did not know what the prime minister was referring to, adding "China and India are strategic partners for common development."
China and India have butted heads over Arunachal Pradesh, which officially became an Indian state in February 1987, for over a century. China continues to claim the state, including its strategically important Tawang district, as a part of Tibet.
According to Duowei, the war of words about the region between the two countries has been going on since a visit to India by former Chinese president Hu Jintao in November 2006.
Sun Yuxi, China's then-ambassador to India, said at the time that Beijing's position is that "the whole of Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory and Tawang is only one place in it. We are claiming [the] whole of that. That is our position."
Pranab Mukherjee, India's current president and then-minister of external affairs, retorted that "Arunachal is an integral part of India."
The war of words did not stop even after Beijing and New Delhi signing a border pact in October 2013 to ensure that differences on the border do not spark a confrontation.
Mukherjee made a visit to Arunachal Pradesh in late November 2013 and told members of the state's legislative assembly that it was "a core stakeholder in India's Look East foreign policy" that intends to link the country's northeast with Southeast Asia.
In reply, Qin was quoted by China's official Xinhua news agency as saying, "We hope that India will proceed along with China, protecting our broad relationship, and will not take any measures that could complicate the problem, and together we can protect peace and security in the border regions."
China had appeared to have been content not to stir up the issue prior to this, as neither former Chinese premier Wen Jiabao nor current premier Li Keqiang made any mention of the one-China policy during their respective state visits to India in 2010 and last May.
Duowei believes, however, that for India to be raising the one-India policy at this time suggests that the border dispute could become the focus of Xi's upcoming visit.