China To Rename Indian Territory
- 11-Apr-2023
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China attempt to rename 11 places in Arunachal Pradesh and standardise those names on the basis of a map is an exercise of the Chinese perspective of international law, as opposed to the international law widely adhered to by most of the members of the United Nations.
The Chinese perspective of international law rests on its strong stress on the principle of sovereignty. Under the Chinese view, sovereign states have an inalienable right to exercise jurisdiction over their territories and their people without interference from other states. But China combines its vision of sovereignty with the historic right to exercise jurisdiction over those territories or maritime areas as well which were once ruled by a Chinese dynasty in the mediaeval or ancient era.
The South China Sea offers an example where China provides historical records, maps, and cultural relics to demonstrate that the islands in the Sea had been China’s territory since the Song Dynasty.
This was one of the grounds for China’s rejection of the South China Sea arbitral procedure in 2015, envisaged under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) 1982. The historic right approach makes China undermine the basis of the international legal system grounded in the sovereign equality of states and the general rules of international law.
