'PRC's hypocrisy': Expert lambasts China for boycotting G20 meeting in Kashmir

India on Monday began a three-day G20 working group meeting on tourism in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir. However, some countries like Pakistan and its all-weather ally China have boycotted the event saying J&K is a "disputed" territory. While New Delhi kickstarted the meeting without these two neighbours, an Indian geostrategist lambasted Beijing for its "hypocrisy".      

Brahma Chellaney, who teaches strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research, said China has no qualms about building major projects in disputed territories, such as Pakistan-held Kashmir, where it has even stationed a large number of its own troops. "Yet it is boycotting a G-20 meeting in India's part of Kashmir, saying the area is 'disputed'." "The double irony lies in the fact that China occupies one-fifth of the original princely state of Jammu and Kashmir but pretends that the region it seized is not disputed," he said.

China's ambitious China–Pakistan Economic Corridor passes through Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (PoK), which New Delhi considers as part of India.  

In September 2012, then Defence Minister AK Antony informed the Lok Sabha that China was in illegal occupation of approximately 38,000 square kms of Indian territory in Jammu & Kashmir since 1962. In addition to this, under the so-called China-Pakistan "Boundary Agreement" of 1963, Pakistan illegally ceded 5,180 square kms of Indian territory in PoK to China. In the eastern sector, China illegally claims approximately 90,000 square km of Indian territory in the state of Arunachal Pradesh.

Last week, China said it was opposed to holding any form of G20 meetings on "disputed territory". "We will not attend such meetings," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told a media briefing in Beijing. Before this, Pakistan's foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto, who recently travelled to India for the SCO summit, said New Delhi was showing a stubborn attitude by organising a G20 meeting in J&K.

MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi rejected his opposition saying the G20 meetings are held in all the Indian states and union territories, "so it is completely natural that it is held there".

Later, India's External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said Pakistan has nothing to do with the G20, nothing to do with even Srinagar and Kashmir. "There is only one issue to discuss on Kashmir which is when does Pakistan vacate its illegal occupation of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, that is the only issue up for discussion."

Meanwhile, 60 foreign delegates arrived in J&K on Monday for the tourism working group meeting of the G20 countries. This is the first international meeting being held in Kashmir after the scrapping of Article 370 and the bifurcation of the erstwhile state into Union Territories - Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh - in August 2019.