A Decades-Old Playbook

On this last day of the year, let us recall the incident when an Indian citizen travelling from the United Kingdom to Japan was harassed during her stopover at the Shanghai airport. She was detained for over 18 hours by Chinese authorities who refused to accept her passport’s validity, stating that her place of birth, indicated Arunachal Pradesh, was “part of China,” which they call “Zangnan.” Interestingly, she claimed that she had not faced such issues while transiting through Shanghai earlier. In a robust diplomatic reaction to the incident, MEA Spokesperson Randeep Jaiswal stated that the Northeastern state “is an integral and inalienable part of India, and this is a self-evident fact. No amount of denial by the Chinese side is going to change this indisputable reality.”

The ‘Dhurta’ Strategy

Amidst seemingly thawing bilateral relations with resumed direct flights and e-visas issuance for citizens of both countries, this incident brings the fundamental issues of bilateral tensions back into sharp focus. It is a textbook demonstration of Beijing’s Cartographic Aggression, a calculated, long-term approach that relies on the repeated assertion of a territorial lie until it gains perceptual acceptance. This tactic closely mirrors the strategy of the three cunning dhurtas (thugs) in one of the most famous stories from Vishnu Sharma’s Panchatantra. That tale, Kakulukiyam, discussing scenarios in foreign policy, illustrates a core principle: if a falsehood is repeated often enough, its sheer familiarity makes it feel true, regardless of the facts.

This incident is not an anomaly; it is a calculated facet of China’s broader Cognitive Warfare Strategy, a campaign designed to shift international and domestic perceptions to accommodate Beijing’s unilateral territorial claims, much like its practices in the South China Sea. As the character of warfare evolves, battles in the mind heavily rule how they translate on the ground. While realities on the boundary are secured by the Indian security forces and diplomatic engagements, international perceptions are vulnerable to such misadventures.

The tale ‘The Brahmin and the Crooks’ from Panchatantra holds relevance in this context. It narrates a brahman carrying a goat he received from a donor back to his village. Three cunning thugs or dhurtas, who were hungry and cold, watched him cross their path. They planned to manipulate him into believing that he was not carrying a goat by repeatedly lying to him. One by one, they approached him, claiming that he was carrying a dog, a dead calf, and a donkey. He angrily dismissed the first two lies, but the seeds of suspicion were subconsciously sown. When he was exposed to another lie for the third time, his suspicions turned too strong to ignore. He dropped the animal and left, thinking that it might actually not be a goat. Modern psychology terms this phenomenon the illusory truth effect, where an individual starts believing disinformation due to prolonged exposure to it. This is precisely the cognitive weapon utilised by China.

History of Aggression

The Chinese have historically engaged in issuing incorrect maps, official communication regarding inappropriate territorial claims, expanding to issuing stapled visas for Indian citizens travelling to China, and, most recently, renaming territories. This goes back to as early as the 1950s, when the issue of incorrect maps was raised by the Indian PM Jawaharlal Nehru with his Chinese counterpart, which was dismissed as “old Kuomintang maps.” The CCP had not released any fresh official maps by then. In 1959, for the first time, they depicted over 40,000 sq km of territory in India’s North East Frontier Agency (NEFA), along with Aksai Chin in Eastern Ladakh, as Chinese territory. These were the primary areas of contention during the 1962 Sino-Indian War. While Aksai Chin was occupied, the Chinese pulled back in NEFA.

China transitioned to issuing stapled visas to Indian citizens from Arunachal Pradesh (which they claim in totality) since 2005, arguing that they are Chinese nationals. The following year, in 2006, Chinese Ambassador to India, Sun Yuxi, claimed all of Arunachal Pradesh for the first time, expanding from the previous position of claiming only the Tawang tract, and began calling the Indian state “South Tibet.” This started creating issues for citizens from Arunachal Pradesh and travelling to China, including Indian officials and serving armed forces personnel.

This further expanded to the release of maps with new names of territories 2015 onwards, which has continued a decade later. The most recent such incident occurred in May 2025, when China renamed about 27 locations, claiming all of them as Chinese. This has impacted a number of Indian officials and sports contingents travelling to the country, as well as other Indian nationals transiting via Chinese airports, as in this recent case. Evolving from silence to strong responses against such misadventures, Indian diplomacy has become firmer and vocal about its sovereignty and national interests. Having said that, while such misadventures drive no immediate changes to realities on the ground, they do have implications that warrant attention at several levels.

Implications

At present, China claims over 90,000 sq km in the Eastern Sector in Arunachal Pradesh and occupies 38,000 sq km in the Western Sector in Eastern Ladakh and 5,180 sq km in the Shaksgam Valley (illegally ceded by Pakistan to China in 1963). This symbolic assertion in the form of cartographic aggression is aimed at justifying such claims. To explain, Cartographic Aggression refers to the act of using maps or cartography to justify or lead to certain political objectives. It is one among the many tools modern nation-states use while undertaking Cognitive Warfare aimed at influencing national and international cognitions in favour of their home states. This may be aimed at repeated incorrect territorial claims, subconsciously impacting international perceptions about the India-China international boundary.

This gets trickier when the Line of Actual Control between the two has neither been delineated nor therefore demarcated. Since the Line of Actual Control (LAC) between the two nations has never been delineated—meaning it is not drawn with mutual agreement on maps—and therefore, it has not been demarcated with physical markings on the ground, offering ambiguity that China’s cartographic aggression exploits. Of late, several instances of usage of Chinese names of places have come to the fore, including a few Indian journalists referring to Tibet as Xizang while covering the resumed Kailash-Mansarovar Yatra or foreign delegates from friendly countries using Chinese maps during Track II and Track III dialogues, as well as other friendly engagements. Most of these incidents are a result of either a lack of awareness or source material.

All of these cast implications on three levels: at the level of the people of India who face discriminatory harassment, especially hardworking Indian sports contingents; bilaterally, amidst warming India-China relations in terms of mutual trust; and internationally in terms of inappropriately impacting perceptions against Indian sovereignty and territorial integrity. While New Delhi has taken note of firmly responding to any such misadventures, our response must involve actively producing and globally disseminating high-quality, authoritative cartographic and historical content that reflects Indian sovereignty, thereby inoculating international discourse against the corrosive effects of Beijing’s acts in this domain.

The Chinese Consul General in Kolkata, Xu Wei, recently wrote in his article in The Hindu, “as two ancient civilisations awakening to new horizons, China and India are not just neighbours but partners in shaping the future…” This partnership, however, remains aspirational until China ceases the very ‘misadventures’ that destroy the mutual trust and respect essential to that shared future.

Views expressed are personal. The writer is the Assistant Director (Research), Bharat ki Soch