China has standardized the names of six places in south Tibet in public use in accordance with relevant regulations of the State Council, according to information from the website of the Ministry of Civil Affairs on April 14.
There is currently more than 90,000 square kilometers of disputed area with India in south Tibet of China, including part of Lhoka and Nyingchi area, and also the Tawang area, the birthplace of the sixth Dalai Lama.
In fact, since the 13th century AD, south Tibet has been incorporated as part of Chinese territory along with the whole of Tibet, and China's central government exercises sovereignty over Tibet.
In November 1913, under British control, the British Indian authorities held a meeting in Simla, northern India. At the meeting they marked off a "border line", called the McMahon Line, allocating more than 90,000 square kilometers of south Tibet to India. But the Chinese central government has never accepted this, nor has it formally signed any official treaty.
In 1937, India still had this line marked as the "border without demarcation" in its official map. However, with the outbreak of China's anti- Japanese war and the civil war, India took the opportunity to send troops there.
In 1962, India provoked a large-scale border armed conflict. Although gaining a favorable position in the war, China retreated back to areas under its actual control in order to seek a peaceful settlement to the dispute. It is since then that this region has been called a "China-India disputed area".
