China on Friday called on India and Pakistan to “peacefully” resolve their differences in Kashmir, on the third anniversary of the move to revoke the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370.
“On the Kashmir issue, China’s position is consistent and clear,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said.
Asked by the Pakistani media to comment on the anniversary, the spokesperson referred to China’s comments made three years ago on the move, calling for parties to “avoid taking unilateral actions to change the status quo or escalate tensions”.
Ms. Hua added that China “calls on India and Pakistan to peacefully resolve the dispute through dialogue and consultation”.
China had in 2019 strongly hit out at the move, particularly with regard to the creation of the Union Territory of Ladakh, although India had, at the time, conveyed to Beijing that the changes were entirely internal with no bearing on the boundary dispute. Union Home Minister Amit Shah had also referred to taking back Aksai Chin, speaking in Parliament in 2019.
A 2020 article by a scholar at a prominent Chinese think tank, the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), had at the time linked the move to the LAC tensions that began following the PLA’s multiple transgressions in eastern Ladakh, saying India had “incorporated part of the areas under the local jurisdiction of Xinjiang and Tibet into its Ladakh union territory” and “forced China into the Kashmir dispute, stimulated China and Pakistan to take counter-actions on the Kashmir issue, and dramatically increased the difficulty in resolving the border issue between China and India”.
