By EDWARD WONG
JULY 31, 2014
http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/31/on-the-chinese-militarys-new-map-what-borders/?ref=world
Indian soldiers visiting the Buddhist monastery in Tawang, in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which some official Chinese maps have shown as part of China.Credit Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
In recent weeks, there has been chatter online about a new map of China that the People’s Liberation Army is issuing to its troops. It is the Chinese military’s first major revision of a physical map in 30 years, the P.L.A. has said. Official word of the new map first emerged when the P.L.A. announced the publication on its microblog this month. An article in People’s Liberation Army Daily, the military newspaper, said this new map was “more accurate” than the current ones and would be handed out to major units.
Officials said that the Lanzhou Military Command, in northwestern China, had completed the distribution of more than 15 million maps by July 9 and that troops from other units would also have the new maps in hand soon. Revision of the P.L.A.’s decades-old map began in early 2013. Wang Mingxiao, director of the Lanzhou Military Command’s survey information center, said in an official news report that the new map identified locations based on a geocentric coordinate system and had more accurate geographic information, which would allow soldiers to spend less time planning operations and would in theory improve strike accuracy, among other benefits.
But the real question for China’s neighbors is: Which borderlands does the map include? Photographs online show soldiers in uniform handling wrapped bundles of the maps, but there are no images of the map itself.
Do the nine dashes delineating China’s expansive claims to the South China Sea show up on the new map? Those dashes are based on a map drawn up by the Chinese government before the Communists ousted the ruling Kuomintang party in 1949. The dashes sometimes number up to 11, with the northernmost dash off the coast of Taiwan, the self-governing island that China claims as its territory.
And what about the pieces of rock in the East China Sea known as the Senkakus to Japan and the Diaoyu to China, the subject of much acrimony between the two countries, which in turn makes it of growing concern to the Obama administration?
One foreign news organization, the Press Trust of India, noted in a July 18 article published by The Times of India and other Indian newspapers that Chinese state media had yet to print the military map. Yet the Press Trust said the new map “reportedly incorporated China’s claims over the disputed borders with India as well as South and East China Seas, which were hotly contested by many of China’s neighbors.” The article published by The Times of India did not provide any visual evidence of the new map.
In June, a publishing house in the central Chinese province of Hunan unveiled a vertical map of China that immediately drew criticism across Asia. Not only did the map show 10 dashes cordoning off the South China Sea, but it also marked Arunachal Pradesh, a state in northeastern India, as Chinese territory.
In India, this map ignited the same kind of outcry as when the Chinese government issued a new passport in 2012 that contained a map on an inside page showing Arunachal Pradesh as part of China. China and India share a 2,520-mile border along the Himalayas, and territorial disputes at the far ends of the mountain range have been a long-running source of diplomatic tensions between the two nations.
The Indian Ministry of External Affairs condemned the vertical Chinese map. “The fact that Arunachal Pradesh is an integral and inalienable part of India has been conveyed to Chinese authorities on several occasions, including at the highest level,” a ministry spokesman said on June 28, according to Hindustan Times.
The mountainous Tawang area of Arunachal Pradesh lies just south of Tibet, and has centuries-old ties to Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, which the Chinese Army invaded and occupied in 1951. The people of Tawang practice Tibetan Buddhism, and there is a notable monastery there. The boy who became the Sixth Dalai Lama was born in Tawang in the 17th century. He moved to Lhasa after senior lamas designated him the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, whom Tibetans believe is a manifestation of Chenrezig, the bodhisattva of compassion. (The current Dalai Lama, the 14th, lives in exile in Dharamsala, India.)
Chinese troops invaded Tawang in 1962 and moved onward to the southern part of Arunachal Pradesh, but later withdrew back to the borders of Tibet.
China and India also dispute a swath of high, arid land in the western Himalayas. This patch of land, called the Aksai Chin, lies in China, in a remote area between oasis towns in Xinjiang and the holy mountain of Kailash in western Tibet. The area shares a border with the Ladakh region of India, where most inhabitants also practice Tibetan Buddhism. Last year, Chinese soldiers crossed the de facto border between Tibet and India and set up camp in Ladakh, infuriating Indian officials.
Indian news organizations have also reported that Chinese soldiers made an incursion into India in June, using boats to cross a border that runs down the middle of Pangong Lake, which is divided between Tibet and Ladakh. The reports said the soldiers returned to the Tibetan side after being confronted by the Indian military.
Becky Davis contributed research from Beijing, and Suhasini Raj from New Delhi.
Indian soldiers visiting the Buddhist monastery in Tawang, in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which some official Chinese maps have shown as part of China.Credit Shiho Fukada for The New York TimesIn recent weeks, there has been chatter online about a new map of China that the People’s Liberation Army is issuing to its troops. It is the Chinese military’s first major revision of a physical map in 30 years, the P.L.A. has said. Official word of the new map first emerged when the P.L.A. announced the publication on its microblog this month. An article in People’s Liberation Army Daily, the military newspaper, said this new map was “more accurate” than the current ones and would be handed out to major units.
Officials said that the Lanzhou Military Command, in northwestern China, had completed the distribution of more than 15 million maps by July 9 and that troops from other units would also have the new maps in hand soon. Revision of the P.L.A.’s decades-old map began in early 2013. Wang Mingxiao, director of the Lanzhou Military Command’s survey information center, said in an official news report that the new map identified locations based on a geocentric coordinate system and had more accurate geographic information, which would allow soldiers to spend less time planning operations and would in theory improve strike accuracy, among other benefits.
But the real question for China’s neighbors is: Which borderlands does the map include? Photographs online show soldiers in uniform handling wrapped bundles of the maps, but there are no images of the map itself.
Do the nine dashes delineating China’s expansive claims to the South China Sea show up on the new map? Those dashes are based on a map drawn up by the Chinese government before the Communists ousted the ruling Kuomintang party in 1949. The dashes sometimes number up to 11, with the northernmost dash off the coast of Taiwan, the self-governing island that China claims as its territory.
And what about the pieces of rock in the East China Sea known as the Senkakus to Japan and the Diaoyu to China, the subject of much acrimony between the two countries, which in turn makes it of growing concern to the Obama administration?
One foreign news organization, the Press Trust of India, noted in a July 18 article published by The Times of India and other Indian newspapers that Chinese state media had yet to print the military map. Yet the Press Trust said the new map “reportedly incorporated China’s claims over the disputed borders with India as well as South and East China Seas, which were hotly contested by many of China’s neighbors.” The article published by The Times of India did not provide any visual evidence of the new map.
In June, a publishing house in the central Chinese province of Hunan unveiled a vertical map of China that immediately drew criticism across Asia. Not only did the map show 10 dashes cordoning off the South China Sea, but it also marked Arunachal Pradesh, a state in northeastern India, as Chinese territory.
In India, this map ignited the same kind of outcry as when the Chinese government issued a new passport in 2012 that contained a map on an inside page showing Arunachal Pradesh as part of China. China and India share a 2,520-mile border along the Himalayas, and territorial disputes at the far ends of the mountain range have been a long-running source of diplomatic tensions between the two nations.
The Indian Ministry of External Affairs condemned the vertical Chinese map. “The fact that Arunachal Pradesh is an integral and inalienable part of India has been conveyed to Chinese authorities on several occasions, including at the highest level,” a ministry spokesman said on June 28, according to Hindustan Times.
The mountainous Tawang area of Arunachal Pradesh lies just south of Tibet, and has centuries-old ties to Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, which the Chinese Army invaded and occupied in 1951. The people of Tawang practice Tibetan Buddhism, and there is a notable monastery there. The boy who became the Sixth Dalai Lama was born in Tawang in the 17th century. He moved to Lhasa after senior lamas designated him the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, whom Tibetans believe is a manifestation of Chenrezig, the bodhisattva of compassion. (The current Dalai Lama, the 14th, lives in exile in Dharamsala, India.)
Chinese troops invaded Tawang in 1962 and moved onward to the southern part of Arunachal Pradesh, but later withdrew back to the borders of Tibet.
China and India also dispute a swath of high, arid land in the western Himalayas. This patch of land, called the Aksai Chin, lies in China, in a remote area between oasis towns in Xinjiang and the holy mountain of Kailash in western Tibet. The area shares a border with the Ladakh region of India, where most inhabitants also practice Tibetan Buddhism. Last year, Chinese soldiers crossed the de facto border between Tibet and India and set up camp in Ladakh, infuriating Indian officials.
Indian news organizations have also reported that Chinese soldiers made an incursion into India in June, using boats to cross a border that runs down the middle of Pangong Lake, which is divided between Tibet and Ladakh. The reports said the soldiers returned to the Tibetan side after being confronted by the Indian military.
Becky Davis contributed research from Beijing, and Suhasini Raj from New Delhi.
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