China differs with Nepal over height of Mt Everest: Report
Mount Everest
The peak of Mt Everest played a significant role in the settlement of boundary between Nepal and China
China differs with Nepal over the official height of the world's highest peak, Mount Everest.
The official statement from the Chinese side came after a report stated that Beijing has agreed to accept Nepal's measurement at 8,848 meters.
Chinese experts estimate Mount Everest to stand tall at 8844.43 meters, four meters shorter than the Nepalese measurement.
"The different measurements of Mount Qomolangma's (Mount Everest) height between China and Nepal is a competition over the mountain," Xu Jianying, a research fellow of Research Centre for Chinese Borderland History and Geography at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) said.
The peak of Mt Everest played a significant role in the settlement of boundary between Nepal and China, China earlier claimed the whole mountain as part of its territory after it took control of Tibet.
"Each country's surveyors have the intention of making others recognise their own measurements and their own outcome. But the different heights come from different measurement methods," Zhao Kangning, former deputy director of China's National Administration of Global Navigation Satellite Systems and Applications, told the Global Times.
According to the National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geo-information, China had never in any form said it changed the 2005 result which measured Mt Everest's rock base at 8844.43 meters above sea level.
(With inputs from PTI)