New Delhi

Less than a week after India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese leader Xi Jinping stood against each other during BRICS summit in Johannesburg, Beijing launched its 2023 edition of 'standard map' that wrongly showed parts of India as Chinese territories. 

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The map, which wrongly shows parts of India inside China, as well as transition of 9-dash line into 10-dash line, comes just before G-20 summit in New Delhi, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping's potential visit to India to attend the same. 

The 9-dash line is a U-shaped line etched on map in the 1940s by a Chinese geographer that asserts claim to 90 per cent of the South China Sea, which the Philippines calls North Philippines Sea. This is against international laws, particularly the United Nations Convention of the Laws of the Sea (UNCLOS). 

Also read | Explained | Arunachal Pradesh Foundation Day: What is China’s so-called claim over the Indian state?

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The latest map shows Taiwan inside China, in what analysts interpreted as transition of 9-dash line into 10-dash line.

"The 2023 edition of China's standard map was officially released on Monday and launched on the website of the standard map service hosted by the Ministry of Natural Resources. This map is compiled based on the drawing method of national boundaries of China and various countries in the world," Chinese state-owned publication Global Times wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. 

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The cartographic aggression, reflecting Chinese Communist Party's expansionist drive since 1949, shows India's Arunachal Pradesh state, parts of India's Jammu and Kashmir inside China.

Also watch | Gravitas: India-China relations hit an all-time low. Here's why

In past, China submitted a map marking the nine-dash line in the documents submitted to the United Nations during a dispute with Vietnam.

At present, Chinese passports are "emblazoned with a map with nine dashes through the South China Sea", as well as a tenth one that ensures Taiwan is counted as Chinese territory, TIME magazine has reported.

India-China boundary dispute

India and China do not share an official international border. What they share is a Line of Actual Control and differing perception of de-facto boundary along over 3,400 km. 

The two countries have fought a war in 1962, when the Chinese occupied Aksai Chin area, historically part of India's Jammu and Kashmir and vacated Arunachal Pradesh in northeast, which it sees as part of Tibet region. 

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