The Macartney–MacDonald Line was a boundary proposal by the

British Raj The British Raj ( ; from Hindustani language, Hindustani , 'reign', 'rule' or 'government') was the colonial rule of the British The Crown, Crown on the Indian subcontinent, * * lasting from 1858 to 1947. * * It is also called Crown rule ...

for the border between the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir and the Chinese territories of

Xinjiang Xinjiang,; , SASM/GNC romanization, SASM/GNC: Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Sinkiang, officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of the China, People' ...

and

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ), or Greater Tibet, is a region in the western part of East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are other ethnic groups s ...

. Broadly, it represented the watershed between the

Indus River The Indus ( ) is a transboundary river of Asia and a trans-Himalayas, Himalayan river of South Asia, South and Central Asia. The river rises in mountain springs northeast of Mount Kailash in the Western Tibet region of China, flows northw ...

system and the rivers draining into the

Tarim basin The Tarim Basin is an endorheic basin in Xinjiang, Northwestern China occupying an area of about and one of the largest basins in Northwest China.Chen, Yaning, et al. "Regional climate change and its effects on river runoff in the Tarim Basin, Ch ...

(the

Yarkand Yarkant County,, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, United States National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency also Shache County,, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, United States National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency also SASM/GNC ro ...

and Karakash rivers). The line was proposed by British Indian Government to China in 1899 via its envoy in China, Sir Claude MacDonald. The Chinese Government never gave any response to the proposal. The Indian Government believed that, subsequently British India reverted to its traditional boundary, the Johnson–Ardagh Line. Independent scholars have not confirmed the claim. It remains relevant today as a possible resolution for the

Sino-Indian border dispute The Sino–Indian border dispute is an ongoing territorial dispute over the sovereignty of two relatively large, and several smaller, separated pieces of territory between China and India. The territorial disputes between the two countries st ...

in the region of

Aksai Chin Aksai Chin is a region administered by China partly in Hotan County, Hotan Prefecture, Xinjiang, and partly in Rutog County, Ngari Prefecture, Tibet Autonomous Region, Tibet, and constituting the easternmost portion of the larger Kashmir regio ...

History

The

Survey of India The Survey of India is India's central engineering agency in charge of mapping and surveying.William Johnson, who was asked to survey the Kashmir area up to the "Chinese boundary", drew a border line that later came to be called the " Johnson Line". This line put the

region in Kashmir. The border was accepted by China for several decades. In 1893, Hung Ta-chen, the Chinese envoy at

St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601, ...

, gave maps of the region to George Macartney, the British consul at Kashgar, which coincided with it in broad details. However, by 1896, China showed interest in Aksai Chin, reportedly with Russian instigation. As part of

The Great Game The Great Game was a rivalry between the 19th-century British and Russian empires over influence in Central Asia, primarily in Afghanistan, Persia, and Tibet. The two colonial empires used military interventions and diplomatic negotiations t ...

between Britain and Russia, Britain favoured a revision of the prevailing boundary, ceding underpopulated border territory to be "filled out" by China. It was initially suggested by Macartney in Kashgar and developed by the Governor General of India Lord Elgin. The new boundary placed the Lingzi Tang plains, which are south of the Laktsang range, in India, and Aksai Chin proper, which is north of the Laktsang range, in China. The British presented this line, currently called the Macartney–MacDonald line, to the Chinese in a note by Sir Claude MacDonald, the British envoy in Peking. The Qing government did not respond to the note. Scholars Fisher, Rose and Huttenback comment: The Macartney–MacDonald Line is a partial basis of the

Sino-Pakistan Agreement The Sino-Pakistan Agreement is a 1963 document between the governments of Pakistan and People's Republic of China, China establishing the border between those countries in the disputed Kashmir region. It resulted in both countries ceding over ...

. It has been suggested that a solution to the

could also be based on the Macartney–MacDonald Line."China was the Aggrieved; India, Aggressor in '62", Kai Friese interview Neville Maxwell
Outlook, 22 October 2012.

History

Description

Notes

References

Bibliography

Further reading