Arunachal Pradesh Is India—China’s Denials Only Expose Its Strategic Anxiety

The latest Chinese effort to question the status of Arunachal Pradesh-this time through quibbling over an Indian woman's birthplace on her passport-says more about Beijing's insecurity than its diplomacy. The Shanghai airport episode, in which UK-based Indian citizen Pema Wangjom Thongdok was subjected to an inexplicable claim of passport "invalidity", is not an isolated incident. This is part of a bigger, decades-long playbook in which China deploys bureaucratic harassment, renaming exercises, and provocative statements to keep the border alive as a pressure point.

As always, India's response was firm and unambiguous. The Ministry of External Affairs reiterated what history, geography, and democratic mandate had established long ago: Arunachal Pradesh is an integral and inalienable part of India. The state has sent elected representatives to the Indian Parliament since 1978. It has over 13 lakh Indian citizens, 2,000 plus polling stations, and a fully functional democratic system-none of which fits Beijing's rhetoric of "Zangnan".

What makes the Shanghai incident more distressing is the breach of international travel protocol. China provides 24-hour visa-free transit for all nationalities. Yet Thongdok’s three-hour transit became a humiliating experience just because her birthplace contested China’s territorial revisionism. The MEA was right to issue a robust demarche, condemning the breach of conventions governing international air travel.

Beijing's response was entirely predictable. The Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning rejected the charges and reprised China's standard refrain: that Arunachal Pradesh is "illegally established by India". But Beijing's claims fall apart under scrutiny of data and history. The McMahon Line, drawn up in 1914, has been India's acknowledged frontier. China started seriously disputing it only after the 1950s as part of its general expansionist stance in Tibet and the Himalayas.

China's own aggressive moves betray its anxiety. Over the last three years, for example, Beijing renamed over 30 locations in Arunachal Pradesh. It was an act symbolic at best, legally irrelevant at worst. Quite simply, no amount of digital cartography and semantic warfare can replace ground realities: Indian troops patrol the border, Indian infrastructure exists on the ground, and Indian citizens live their daily lives there.

The Shanghai incident is only the most recent reminder that China uses each and every opportunity—diplomatic, bureaucratic, even personal—to push territorial claims that the world does not recognize. India’s message is clear: our borders are not negotiable, our citizens are not disposable, and Arunachal Pradesh is not a bargaining chip. Beijing can continue to deny, rename, or dramatise. But it changes nothing. Facts, democracy, and the people of Arunachal Pradesh stand firmly with India—and no airport counter or foreign ministry press briefing can alter that truth.