China’s Administrative Changes in Aksai Chin Pose Long-Term Challenges for India
On 26 March, China’s State Council announced the creation of a new county – equivalent to a district-level administrative unit in the Chinese political-administrative system – in Xinjiang, called Cenling. Its creation is the result of administrative restructuring of the Kargilik County (Yecheng County, in Chinese) in the western half of Aksai Chin under Kashgar Prefecture.
India’s Ministry of External Affairs waited more than two weeks before it responded to questions from the media to say it “categorically rejected any mischievous attempts by the Chinese side to assign fictitious names to places which form part of the territory of India.” New Delhi’s official statement was perhaps a little more strongly worded than its response in January 2025 following the similar creation in December 2024 of two new counties, He’an and Hekang in Hotan Prefecture, in the eastern half of Aksai Chin.
The MEA’s pattern of such delayed and curt responses cannot, however, cover up the fact that China’s administrative changes in Aksai Chin and in border areas opposite Arunachal Pradesh as well as its renaming of places in Arunachal itself in recent years, carry significant implications for India. While China’s renaming of places is aimed at claiming Indian territory as its own, creating new administrative units or changing their status and rank is aimed at facilitating, among other things, permanent settlements of nomadic populations in the region and of the Han from inland Chinese provinces.
Together with its willingness to use force on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with India as witnessed in 2020, these nominally administrative measures highlight China’s consistent attention to the boundary dispute with India and its attempts to creatively shape the situation in its own favour.
China’s Objectives
The formal announcement of the creation of Cenling County is the culmination of a year-long preparation to create new villages and townships including the new county seat, Xinhua Town. The new county has a population of around 6,600 as per the latest census in 2020 and a predominantly agricultural and animal husbandry-based economy. Over the last decade, the Han population has gradually increased, primarily in agricultural farms run by the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps-run, a paramilitary organization cum state-owned enterprise.
Like their counterparts elsewhere in the world, Chinese authorities, too, change the administrative status of rural administrative units and create new ones across the country for various reasons, including improving administrative efficiency and empowering county-level administrations with greater powers over revenue and land.
However, China’s long-term objectives for administrative changes are different in sparsely populated, politically unstable areas such as ethnic minority provinces that lack a growing population and significant levels of industrialization.
China’s rationale in Cenling and other minority regions is not to promote industrialization or administrative efficiency. Rather, a key objective is to expand the presence of the state. By facilitating the migration of the Han from inland provinces and forcing the settlement of nomadic communities, Chinese authorities are attempting to tame ethnic minority discontent, particularly in areas south of Kunlun Mountains including, Aksai Chin, where the Uyghur ethnic minority dominates. Similar objectives are at play in the east of Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), where two rural counties — Tsona in Lhoka opposite Tawang District and Menling in Nyingchi opposite Siang District in Arunachal Pradesh — were promoted to urban status as county cities in 2023.
Implications for India
The forced settlement of nomadic populations as well as influx of the Han from other parts of China in newly constituted administrative units, including xiaokang cun – newly-settled or rejuvenated villages – along the LAC have several long-term implications for India.
For one, with forced settling of nomadic populations and greater Chinese administrative and political control over them, sustaining traditional practices, culture and language become that much harder for these groups. Further, even limited trans-boundary cultural and family links – as exist between certain ethnic groups on both side of the LAC in the eastern sector – become close to impossible to maintain.
Two, increasing numbers of a loyal Han population near border areas can help sustain a larger PLA presence for longer durations.
Three, the closer Chinese settlements get to the LAC, the less likely they are to accept large territorial concessions that are required as part of any settlement of the boundary dispute with India. For instance, shifting the new county seat of Tsona County in TAR, from Tsona Town to Mama Monpa Town, farther away and with a population of just 167 people but closer to the LAC opposite Tawang, suggests that the latter will now be a target of greater infrastructure development and likely to grow into a bigger urban centre.
Four, China’s urbanization efforts in its border areas are designed to also support economic development and related opportunities with neighbouring countries. While such linkages are likely to be resisted by India, others among China’s neighbours might be more open to them. Despite challenges, the push to urbanize southern Xinjiang through Aksai Chin potentially helps sustain a commercial corridor to Pakistan-occupied Indian territory.
Taken together, these constitute long-term efforts by China to integrate its social stability objectives with those of consolidating its territorial claims and to promote wider foreign policy objectives. While the Indian government has responded to China’s development of xiaokang villages with its own Vibrant Villages programme, it needs to do a better job of responding to Chinese administrative changes on occupied Indian territory than with rhetoric. Like its LAC transgressions in 2020, China’s latest moves violate bilateral agreements with India and demand both local administrative as well as international legal and media responses from New Delhi.
This article was originally published in The Tribune as part of an arrangement with the Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies