Nearly 30,000 world maps which showed Arunachal Pradesh as a part of India and Taiwan as a separate country were destroyed by customs authorities in China last week.

According to The Hindustan Times, customs officials raided an office in Shandong and seized more than 800 boxes containing around 30,000 world maps. 

The maps were taken to a secret location and shredded. It was the largest such exercise in recent years and was carried out to protect China’s ‘territorial integrity.’ 

Ironically, the maps were in English and manufactured by a company in Anhui, China.

An official from department of International Law of China Foreign Affairs University, Liu Wenzong told the Global Times,

What China did in the map market was absolutely legitimate and necessary, because sovereignty and territorial integrity are the most important things to a country. Both Taiwan and south Tibet are parts of China’s territory which is sacred and inviolable based on the international law. If the wrong maps were circulated inside the country and abroad, it would have caused great harm to China’s territorial integrity in the long run.

In April last year, China renamed six places in Arunachal Pradesh in an apparent retaliation against the Dalai Lama’s visit to India’s easternmost state.

Experts had speculated that the move is aimed at reaffirming Beijing’s territorial sovereignty on the region.

China has been going strong on its claim over Arunachal Pradesh.