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China’s Gold Mine At Arunachal Pradesh Border Is Becoming Another Flashpoint With India

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China’s Gold Mine At Arunachal Pradesh Border Is Becoming Another Flashpoint With India:

China has begun large-scale mining operations on its side of the border with Arunachal Pradesh where a considerable value of gold, silver and other precious minerals valued at about US 60 billion has found, a media report says today.

China’s Gold Mine At Arunachal Pradesh Border Is Becoming Another Flashpoint With India

The mine project is undertaking in Lhunze county under the Chinese control adjacent to the Indian border, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reporting.

China is claiming Arunachal Pradesh as a part of the southern Tibet.

Projecting the mining operations as a part of China’s move to take over Arunachal Pradesh, the report says people familiar with the project say the mines which are part of an ambitious plan by Beijing to reclaim South Tibet.

China’s moves to lay claim to the region’s natural resources while rapidly building up infrastructure can turn it into another South China Sea they say, it said.

The Post report with inputs from local officials, Chinese geologists as well as strategic experts comes less than a month after the first ever informal summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping that was aims at cooling tensions to avert incidents like the Dokalam military standoff in last year.

The 73-day standoff is marking the new low in the bilateral tie.

Lhunze is in the news last October, just about two months after Dokalam when Xi in a rare gesture replies to correspondence from a herding family in Lhunze County underscoring Beijing’s claim to the area.

The family is in Yuma, China’s smallest town regarding the population locating close to the Arunachal Pradesh.

Xi is thanks to the father and his two daughters for their loyalty and contributions to China and also urged the people of Lhunze to set down roots to develop the area for the national interest.

The Post report says although mining has been going in the world’s highest mountain range for thousands of years, the challenge of accessing the remote terrain and concerns about environmental damage had until now limited the extent of the activities.

But the unprecedented massive investment by the Chinese government to build roads and other infrastructure in the area have made travel easy.

Most of the precious minerals which include rare piles of the earth using to make hi-tech products which are hidden under Lhunze county, the report says.

By the end of last year, a scale of mining activity in the Lhunze has surpassed that of all other areas in Tibet, it says.

People have poured into an area so fast that even local government officials cannot provide a precise count for the current population, it says.

Enormous, deep tunnels have dug into the mountains along the military confrontation line, allowing thousands of tonnes of ore to load and transporting out by trucks daily, along roads built through every village, it says.

Extensive power lines and communication networks have established, while construction is underway on an airport that can handle passenger jets, it says.

With more mines dug in Lhunze and surroundings, a county official told the Post that more than 80 percent of county government’s tax income comes from mining.

The mines will also lead to a situation akin to another South China Sea arising out of the world’s highest mountain range, it says.

Zheng Youye, a professor at the china’s University of Geosciences in Beijing and the lead scientist for a Beijing-funding Northern Himalayan Minerals Survey.

Confirming to the Post that a series of discoveries in recent years which is put potential value of ores under Lhunze and the nearby area at 370 billion yuan USD 58 billion.

It is just a preliminary estimate. More surveys are underway, says.

There c more big discoveries as Chinese researchers learn more about the area. With the strong financial backing from the government, they have already amassed extensive data in the region.

According to Zheng, the new-found ores can tip the balance of power between China and India in the Himalayas.

He says Chinese troops withdrew in the year 1962 war from the areas in Arunachal Pradesh as they have no people to hold the territory.

The new mining activities will lead to a rapid and significant increase in the Chinese population in the Himalayas, Zheng says, which will provide stable, long-term support for any diplomatic or military operations aiming at gradually driving Indian forces out of territory claims by China.

It is similar to what was happening in the South China Sea.

It is similar to what has happened in the South China Sea where Beijing has asserted its claim to much of the contested waters by building artificial islands and increasing its naval activity, he says.

Hao Xiaoguang, a researcher with the Institute of Geodesy and Geophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Wuhan, Hubei who specializes in India-China issues says Beijing was likely to take the same approach to the Himalayas as in the South China Sea.

As China’s economic, geopolitical and military strength continues to increase, it is only a matter of time before South Tibet returns to Chinese control, Hao claims.

What China has achieved today in the South China Sea was almost unthinkable a decade ago.

I am optimistic on what will happen in the Himalayas in coming years because President Xi has made it clear that not a single inch of our land will or can cede from the China, which includes South Tibet.

But Hao says the Lhunze mining boom will not be expanding to the other areas due to an environmental reason.

In Lhunze some of the newcomers are acclimatizing. The city is already teeming with people from different parts of China.

Weng Qingzhen, who owns a Sichuan restaurant in the county, says she is moving there less than two months ago after friends and relatives tell her about the mining boom.

So, these are the points to describes on China’s gold mine at Arunachal Pradesh border may become another flash point with India.

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