India Urges Caution When Traveling in China After Citizen Detained in Shanghai Airport

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Dec 9, 2025 - 11:00 Updated: Dec 9, 2025 - 10:55
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India Urges Caution When Traveling in China After Citizen Detained in Shanghai Airport

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The Indian government said on Dec. 8 that it had told citizens to exercise caution when traveling and transiting through China after an Indian passenger was detained by Chinese border officers at Shanghai airport last month.

“We expect that the Chinese government and officials will provide assurance that Indian citizens transiting through Chinese airports will not be targeted in any manner, nor will they be stopped or harassed arbitrarily,” Randhir Jaiswal, a spokesperson for the Indian foreign ministry, told a regular briefing.

“The Ministry of External Affairs advises Indian nationals to exercise appropriate caution when they are traveling to or transiting through China,” he said, according to a translation provided by the ministry.

Prema Wangjom Thongdok, an Indian citizen residing in the UK, was traveling to Japan for a holiday when she was stopped by a Chinese border officer at a Shanghai airport on Nov. 21, according to Indian media reports and her social media posts.

According to Thongdok, Chinese immigration authorities took issue with her birthplace on the passport, Arunachal Pradesh, an India-administered state that the Chinese communist regime has sought to claim.

“When I tried to question them and ask them what was the issue, they said, ‘Arunachal is not part of India,’” she said in an interview with local media Asian News International (ANI) on Nov. 24.

The Chinese immigration officers then mocked and laughed at Thongdok, saying “things like ‘you should apply for the Chinese passport, you’re Chinese, you’re not Indian,’” she told ANI.

In an X post on Nov. 23, Thongdok said she was held at the airport for more than 18 hours.

When asked about the incident on Nov. 25, Mao Ning, a spokeswoman for the Chinese foreign ministry, said its border inspection authorities “carried out procedures in accordance with laws and regulations.”

“Zangnan is China’s territory,” Mao told reporters, using the Chinese name for the Indian state. She said the regime has “never recognized the so-called Arunachal Pradesh illegally set up by India.”

The Indian Ministry of External Affairs, in a Nov. 26 statement, rejected the Chinese regime’s claim.

“Arunachal Pradesh is an integral and inalienable part of India, and this is a self-evident fact,” Jaiswal said. “No amount of denial by the Chinese side is going to change this indisputable reality.”

Jaiswal said the Indian government had lodged a formal protest with Beijing over the “arbitrary detention” of its national.

“Chinese authorities have still not been able to explain their actions, which are in violation of several conventions governing international air travel,” he added.

India has governed Arunachal Pradesh since 1954, when the area was established as the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) under the British Raj. After the Sino–Indian war of 1962, relations between the two countries deteriorated, and border disputes emerged.

In 1972, India renamed NEFA as Arunachal Pradesh, a federally administered territory, and in 1987, it was granted statehood under the Indian Constitution.

However, since 2006, China has extended its territorial claims to the entire state, and its Ministry of Civil Affairs has begun assigning formal Chinese names to residential areas, mountain peaks, and rivers in the state, drawing protests from New Delhi.

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Demonstrators protest China's claim of six districts of Arunachal Pradesh state in New Delhi on April 25, 2017. Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images
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Tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors dramatically escalated in 2020 after a border clash in the Galwan region of the Himalayas claimed the lives of at least 20 Indian soldiers and an unknown number of Chinese soldiers.
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After nearly two dozen rounds of military commander talks and other high-level engagements aimed at easing tensions, the two countries reached a border patrol agreement in October 2024.
In August, Chinese leader Xi Jinping urged Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to set aside the two countries’ decades-long border disputes and enhance cooperation during a meeting in the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin.
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Venus Upadhayaya contributed to this report. 
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