South Tibet is a claimed area by China with the literal translation of the Chinese term '' (), which may refer to different geographic areas: * The southern part of

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa people, ...

, covering the middle reaches of the

Yarlung Tsangpo River The Yarlung Tsangpo, also called Yarlung Zangbo () is the upper stream of the Brahmaputra River located in the Tibet Autonomous Region, China. It is the longest river of Tibet and the fifth longest in China. The upper section is also called D ...

Valley between Saga County to the west and Mainling County to the east, as well as neighbouring areas located between the

Himalayas The Himalayas, or Himalaya (; ; ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the planet's highest peaks, including the very highest, Mount Everest. Over 10 ...

to the south and the

Transhimalaya The Transhimalaya (also spelled Trans-Himalaya), or "Gangdise – Nyenchen Tanglha range" ( zh, s=冈底斯-念青唐古拉山脉, p=Gāngdǐsī-Niànqīngtánggǔlā Shānmài), is a mountain range in China, India and Nepal, extending in a w ...

s range to the north. The region extends around 1,000 km from west to east and 300 km from north to south. By this definition, South Tibet includes most of modern-day

Shigatse Shigatse, officially known as Xigazê (; Nepali: ''सिगात्से''), is a prefecture-level city of the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. Its area of jurisdiction, with an area of , corresponds to the histo ...

Lhasa Lhasa (; Lhasa dialect: ; bo, text=ལྷ་ས, translation=Place of Gods) is the urban center of the prefecture-level Lhasa City and the administrative capital of Tibet Autonomous Region in Southwest China. The inner urban area of Lhasa ...

, Lhoka (Shannan) Prefecture and Nyingchi Prefecture. * South Tibet may also refer to a shorter section of the Yarlung Tsangpo and tributaries covering most of Lhoka and Nyingchi Prefectures from the confluence with the Lhasa River to the west up to the beginning of the Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon near Mainling County to the east. * When used in relation to 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 first of the territories, Aksai Chin, is adminis ...

, South Tibet is a term mainly used by the

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

to refer to an area south of the

McMahon Line The McMahon Line is the boundary between Tibet and British India as agreed in the maps and notes exchanged by the respective plenipotentiaries on 24–25 March 1914 at Delhi, as part of the 1914 Simla Convention. The line delimited the r ...

currently administered by

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

as parts of the states of

Arunachal Pradesh Arunachal Pradesh (, ) is a state in Northeastern India. It was formed from the erstwhile North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) region, and became a state on 20 February 1987. It borders the states of Assam and Nagaland to the south. It shares ...

. This region was recognised by Tibet as belonging to

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...

under the McMahon Line agreement (part of the 1914 Simla Convention). The PRC does not recognise the McMahon Line and claims that the area is a part of the

Tibet Autonomous Region The Tibet Autonomous Region or Xizang Autonomous Region, often shortened to Tibet or Xizang, is a province-level autonomous region of the People's Republic of China in Southwest China. It was overlayed on the traditional Tibetan regions ...

instead. According to

Hsiao-ting Lin Hsiao-ting Lin (; born 1971) is a Taiwanese research fellow at the Hoover Institution who studies Greater China, including ethnopolitics, the Kuomintang, and Taiwan–United States relations during the Cold War. Lin was born in Taipei in 1971. He ...

, a scholar from Taiwan, and other scholars, both the British and the Chinese claim to sovereignty over the area can be deemed "largely imaginary", reflected only in official maps and political propagandas. : " 'The Times''actually shows the frontier before 1914 down here t the foothills it never was. The Tibetans never penetrated this area, except for one or two monasteries right up in the north of it (Tawang was one of them), where monks levied certain monastic dues. The fact of the matter is that this area was a tribal, sort of semi-autonomous, area on the frontier of Assam..."

References

{{Set index article Geography of Tibet China–India border