The English edition of Chinese website People’s Daily, which is considered to be the ruling communist party’s mouthpiece, published an article which acknowledged that Arunachal Pradesh is a part of India. This story though was later dropped from the portal, reports Hindustan Times.

As per the report, the article titled, “India’s old age population hits all time high since independence” was written by an Indian journalist named Zeeshan Shaikh who is visiting Beijing as part of a Chinese government fellowship.

In the article, the journalist while comparing India’s state-wise elderly population, wrote that, the state with the lowest number of elderly is Arunachal Pradesh, with just 4.6 per cent of the population, aged above sixty. This was followed by Meghalaya which has 4.7 per cent elderly.

A China-controlled website acknowledging Arunachal as an Indian state, triggered speculation whether it was an “inadvertent error on the part of the website’s editorial team”.

This report was later pulled down from the website, with the current URL giving users a 404 Not Found error. One can still read the article via its google cache.

China always has had a strong outlook towards the state, and as reiterated by its Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson, the country has never acknowledged the existence of “so-called Arunachal Pradesh”. It considers the region to be a part of southern Tibet, a policy to which India takes strong exception.