China has established a new county in its Xinjiang region near Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and the Afghanistan border, a move that comes amid ongoing tensions with India over disputed territories, particularly in Ladakh.The county, named Cenling, was announced by the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region government on March 26 and will be administered by Kashgar prefecture, according to a report in the South China Morning Post. Located near the Karakoram mountain range and close to PoK and Afghanistan, the new administrative unit holds strategic significance.This is the third county created by China in Xinjiang in just over a year. India had previously lodged a protest with Beijing over the establishment of Hean and Hekang counties, stating that parts of their jurisdiction fall within its Union Territory of Ladakh.
Hean county includes much of the disputed Aksai Chin plateau, which India considers part of Ladakh but has been under Chinese control since the 1962 war and remains a key point of contention between the two countries.Kashgar, which will administer Cenling, is a historic city on the ancient Silk Road and serves as a strategic gateway linking China with South and Central Asia. It is also the starting point of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a project passing through PoK that India has consistently opposed.While specific details about Cenling’s administrative divisions and boundaries have not been disclosed, its proximity to contested regions and earlier objections by India to similar developments highlight the sensitivities surrounding China’s administrative changes in border areas.Lin Minwang, a professor at the Institute of International Studies at Shanghai-based Fudan University, said the move “reflects China’s deeper recognition of the strategic importance of this region”.“At a broader level, the decision signals China’s emphasis on its borderlands,” PTI reported, quoting the professor.He noted that the new county is geographically connected to Afghanistan’s narrow Wakhan Corridor, a 74-km strip bordering Xinjiang that separates Tajikistan and PoK, highlighting China’s security concerns in the region.Beijing has previously expressed concerns about Uyghur militants of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement using the Wakhan Corridor as a route to enter Xinjiang from Afghanistan. Yun Sun, a senior fellow at the Stimson Centre in Washington, said the new county represented a push towards stronger local governance.“It helps to strengthen the stabilisation efforts by the government in the frontier region, which is traditionally more subject to ethnic turbulence and potential infiltration of foreign militants from Central Asia,” she said.
