How China's Neighbors Have Reacted To Map Claiming Their Land

Some of China's neighbors have criticized the release of a map that appears to revise the nation's territorial borders to stake a claim to the sovereign territory of other countries.

After the map was released on Monday by China's Ministry of Natural Resources, the governments of India, Taiwan, and the Philippines were among those to protest the revisions, which treated contested border regions and areas of the South China Sea as under Chinese control.

Beijing has for a long time laid claim to the areas, but has in recent years increasingly used saber-rattling tactics to intimidate neighboring countries, raising fears President Xi Jinping may seek to assert Chinese territorial claims by force.

Following outcry over the new map, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said the nation hoped others would see the map in an "objective and rational" way.

Nepal

Nepal, which sits on China's southwestern border, has said it would stick by its own, recently approved map of the shared boundary, but appears to have had the softest response to the latest Chinese map.

Rekha Sharma, the country's communications minister, said government officials "need to talk through diplomatic channel[s]" with China about the map, after which it would make its views on the map public, according to Nepal News.

However, Balen Shah, the mayor of Nepal's capital, Kathmandu, cancelled a trip to China—due to start on Thursday—over the disparities between China's map and Nepal's own, local outlet Khabarhub reported.

Newsweek approached the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs via email for further comment on Thursday.

Taiwan

Unsurprisingly, Taiwan is among the areas of the South China Sea that the new map counts as Chinese territory. China has continuously claimed ownership of the island nation, set up by those escaping the communist revolution in the late 1940s.

Jeff Liu, a spokesperson for Taiwan's Foreign Ministry, told reporters on Wednesday that "the People's Republic of China has never ruled Taiwan. That is the fact and the status quo universally recognized by the international community."

"Regardless of how the Chinese government distorts its claims to Taiwan's sovereignty, it cannot change the objective reality of our country's existence," he said.

India

China and India—two of the most populated and largest industrialized nations—have had a fraught relationship when it comes to their shared border, leading to occasional skirmishes between the two nation's militaries.

Indian officials reacted angrily to the map portraying an area along the border which it claims as Chinese. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India's foreign minister, told a TV audience on Tuesday night: "Just making absurd claims don't make other people's territory yours."

"We have today lodged a strong protest through diplomatic channels with the Chinese side on the so-called 2023 'standard map' of China that lays claim to India's territory," Arindam Bagchi, a spokesperson for India's External Affairs Ministry, said on Wednesday.

"We reject these claims as they have no basis. Such steps by the Chinese side only complicate the resolution of the boundary question," he added.

Malaysia

"Malaysia does not recognize China's 2023 standard map, which outlines portions of Malaysian waters near Sabah and Sarawak as belonging to China," the nation's foreign ministry said in a statement.

While Malaysia does not share a land border with China, it took umbrage at the map's claims to a larger stake in the South China Sea, which it also has a claim to.

"Malaysia is of the view that the South China Sea issue is a complex and sensitive matter," the foreign ministry said, adding that the issue "must be handled in a peaceful and rational manner through dialogues and negotiations based on international laws."

The Philippines

The Philippines, whose islands form the eastern edge of the South China Sea, was also none too happy with Beijing's "latest attempt to legitimize China's purported sovereignty and jurisdiction over Philippine features and maritime zones," which its Department of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Thursday "has no basis under international law."

In particular, the Philippines government took issue with the map revising the so-called "nine-dash line" denoting China's generally accepted territorial claims in the sea, which had been enlarged to include a tenth dash.

It called on China to "act responsibly" and abide by its commitments in international treaties regarding the South China Sea.

Russia

Russia, which shares a northern border with China, has yet to comment publicly on the revised map. Even though it settled its border dispute with China in 2005 with an agreement ratified by both nations' governments, the new map stakes a claim to Bolshoy Ussuriysky Island—otherwise recognized as part of Russia's eastern territory.

However, one expert suggested the Kremlin's silence may be because Russian President Vladimir Putin "is not in a position to loudly complain about this since Moscow has become so dependent on economic relations with China" after facing Western sanctions for invading Ukraine.

Russia has also unilaterally claimed several regions of Ukraine during the course of the war, despite having a shaky grip on the territory and such claims being widely ignored.