China Accepts People of Arunachal as Indian Citizens — or Does It?

In January 2011, Indian media reported that China had begun issuing stapled visas to residents of Arunachal Pradesh — a notable shift, since Beijing had previously refused visas to Arunachalis outright, on the grounds that the state was China's own "South Tibet" and its people needed no permission to visit. Some observers of the India-China border talks read the development optimistically: stapling a visa to an Indian passport, rather than denying it, implicitly acknowledged the holder as an Indian citizen.

Not everyone bought that reading. Other Indian analysts argued the stapled visas were a continuation of the same obstacle course — a bureaucratic way of questioning India's sovereignty over the state without conceding anything. A Chinese scholar quoted in the Indian press, Hu Shisheng of the state-run Institute of South and Southeast Asian Studies, called it a possible setback for Beijing's own position, or a major concession — if the reports were correct. India, meanwhile, made its displeasure known in its own way: New Delhi maintained that Arunachal residents should need no Chinese visa at all.

History's verdict favored the skeptics. The stapled-visa practice continued to irritate — China later refused visas outright to Arunachali athletes and officials traveling on Indian passports, and the visa spat recurred for years. January 2011's "good omen" turned out to be a blip, not a policy.