China's boundaries.

In Chris Richards' fascinating insight into China's economic presence in Papua New Guinea (China in charge, NI 423) one sentence, 'China is not interested in expanding the land boundaries of its empire', is not true.

For a long time now China has been engaged in rhetoric to the effect that large chunks of India's north-eastern province of Arunachal Pradesh belong to China. The rhetoric follows the line that 'as Tibet has always been part of China' (this despite the historic treaties Tibet and China signed demarcating their shared borders) and Arunachal Pradesh is home to Tibetan culture, therefore it must belong to China.

Much of the area north of the beautiful Tibetan monastery of Tawang is now off limits to both domestic and foreign tourism due to the large Indian military presence there. The Indian Government perceives China's territorial ambition for Arunachal Pradesh as a real threat and the Indian media frequently reports 'Chinese sightings' in eastern Arunachal Pradesh.

While not currently 'expanding its borders', China is continuing its brutal military occupation of Tibet and is also holding on to the region annexed from India's western Himalayas. Sadly, many 'liberal' atlas editors have wiped a unique geological, geographical, cultural and demographic region the size of western Europe off their maps, brazenly replacing 'Tibet' with the word 'China'. One wonders, given China's extraordinary proliferation of 'economic friends', how long it will take for these same atlas editors to start renaming pockets of Africa as provinces of China.

M Ford Weston Super Mare, England