India shoots down China’s 1959 Line

NEW DELHI: India rejected China’s claim that Beijing only accepted the 1959 Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the India-China border areas and asked Beijing to abide by existing agreements and stop trying to alter the status quo unilaterally.
In a sternly worded statement, MEA spokesman Anurag Srivastava said: “India has never accepted the so-called unilaterally defined 1959 LAC. This position has been consistent and well known, including to the Chinese side.” The Chinese claim, made to Hindustan Times on Tuesday, was also put forward in 2017 after a scuffle at Pangong Tso.
The Chinese foreign ministry statement to Hindustan Times came even as its spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Tuesday: “China does not recognise the so-called Union territory of Ladakh illegally established by India, and opposes infrastructure construction in disputed border areas for military control purposes.” Srivastava said Beijing’s “insistence” was contrary to the “solemn commitments made by China” to abide by existing bilateral agreements.
Former foreign secretary Nirupama Rao said this line was referenced by former Chinese premier Zhou Enlai to Jawaharlal Nehru in 1959 “and it’s used as a reference point” by the Chinese. “Thereafter, the ‘1959 Line’ was described without much precision by the Chinese during the 1960 officials’ talks. They physically came up to most of this line in the 1962 conflict,” she added.
Srivastava said that under various agreements — 1993 Agreement on Maintenance of Peace and Tranquillity along the LAC, 1996 Agreement on Confidence Building Measures in the Military Field, 2005 Protocol on Implementation of CBMs, 2005 Agreement on Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for Settlement of the India-China Boundary Question — China committed to a process of clarification of the LAC to reach a “common understanding” of the border.
This process had started and India and China exchanged maps of the central sector. But in 2003, China refused to exchange maps of the western sector which was then being discussed. The process stalled and in recent years, Beijing has refused to sit down to a discussion aimed at defining the LAC.
The MEA quoted defence minister Rajnath Singh to say: “It is the Chinese side which, by its attempts to transgress the LAC in various parts of the western sector, has tried to unilaterally alter status quo.”
Gautam Bambawale, former envoy to China, said, “The problem here is that the LAC cannot be defined unilaterally. It was unacceptable to us in 1959. It is unacceptable to us in 2020.”