India's easternmost state doesn't exist on Chinese maps — it's "South Tibet" instead
Arunachal Pradesh has been an Indian state for decades, governed, populated, and administered like any other. China's government maps show it anyway — just not as Indian.
An ordinary state
Indian maps show Arunachal Pradesh exactly like any of its other 27 states — a plain internal boundary, nothing to suggest the territory is contested at all.
"South Tibet"
Chinese government maps show the same area as Chinese territory — "Zangnan," or South Tibet — folded into China with the same solid border as any other province, to comply with domestic mapping law.
Dashed, disputed
Most international maps show the area under Indian administration, but mark the boundary with China as disputed — a dashed line rather than a settled international border.
The boundary in question is the McMahon Line, drawn in 1914 at the Simla Convention between British India and Tibet. China has never accepted it, arguing Tibet had no authority to sign away Chinese territory — and has claimed most of Arunachal Pradesh as South Tibet ever since. The dispute turned into a war in 1962, when Chinese forces briefly occupied much of the state before withdrawing back behind the McMahon Line, where the de facto boundary has remained since.
China's official maps have gone further over time, not just disputing the border but renaming Arunachal Pradesh's towns and geographic features in Chinese, part of a standardization campaign it has repeated periodically since 2017.
Sources: 1914 Simla Convention records; Indian Ministry of External Affairs statements; Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs standardized place-name announcements. Country shapes: Natural Earth. Arunachal Pradesh boundary: dissolved from India state/district boundaries (india-maps-data, GADM-derived), simplified.