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China Destroyed 30,000 'Incorrect' World Maps Showing Arunachal Pradesh As Part Of India: Report

China claims Arunachal Pradesh is part of South Tibet and routinely objects to Indian leaders visiting the state.
Adnan1 Abidi / Reuters

BEIJING — Customs officials in China have destroyed nearly 30,000 world maps printed in the country for not showing Arunachal Pradesh and Taiwan as part of its territory, according to a media report.

Almost 30,000 “incorrect” world maps, showing Taiwan as a separate country and “wrong” depiction of the India-China border, were destroyed by the customs authorities in Qingdao province, state-run Global Times said.

China claims the north-eastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh as part of South Tibet and routinely objects to Indian leaders visiting the state to highlight its stand.

India says the State of Arunachal Pradesh is its integral and inalienable part and Indian leaders visit Arunachal Pradesh from time to time, as they visit other parts of the country.

The two countries have so far held 21 rounds of talks to resolve the border dispute covering 3,488-km-long Line of Actual Control (LAC).

China also claims the estranged island of Taiwan as its part.

The maps, which were shredded in a secret location, were manufactured by a company in the province of Anhui and were in English, reported the Hindustan Times.

“A total of 803 boxes of the 28,908 wrong maps were seized and destroyed, the largest amount to be disposed of in recent years,” the province’s Natural Resources ministry said at a press conference, news website Dazhongwang Qingdao quoted.

“Maps reflected national sovereignty and were a political statement”, Ma Wei, from the Natural Resources ministry’s geographical information centre, was quoted as saying.

The maps were meant for export to an unspecified country, the Global Times reported on Tuesday.

“What China did in the map market was absolutely legitimate and necessary, because sovereignty and territorial integrity are the most important things to a country. Both Taiwan and South Tibet are parts of China’s territory which is sacred and inviolable based on the international law,” Liu Wenzong, professor from the department of International Law of China Foreign Affairs University said.

(With PTI inputs)

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.