Aksai Chin - Misplaced Pages

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Aksai Chin (simplified Chinese: 阿克赛钦; traditional Chinese: 阿克賽欽; pinyin: Ākèsàiqīn) is a region located at the junction of the People's Republic of China, Pakistan, and India. It is administered by China and claimed by India. Aksai Chin is one of the two main border disputes between India and China, the other being Arunachal Pradesh. Aksai Chin (which literally means 'desert of white stones') is a vast desert of salt. This land is also called the Soda Plain. The region is almost uninhabited. One of the proximate causes of the Sino-Indian War of 1962 was India's discovery of a road China had built through the region, which India considers its territory. The road, which connects Tibet and Xinjiang, passes through the settlement of Tianshuihai, the only sizeable town in the region, with about 1600 inhabitants.

Aksai Chin is currently under the administration of the People's Republic of China, with the vast majority of it as a part of Hotan County, in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. India claims the area as a part of Ladakh district of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The area is strategically important because it contains China National Highway 219, a major road between Tibet and Xinjiang.

Both sides in the dispute have agreed to respect the Line of Actual Control and this dispute is considered very unlikely to result in actual hostilities.

See also