BEIJING: China on Monday rejected remarks by Indian opposition leader Narendra Modi that it has an “expansionist mindset”, saying it has never grabbed the territory of another nation.

“I believe all of you can see that China has never waged a war of aggression to occupy any inch of land of other countries,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a regular briefing.

Modi, the prime ministerial candidate of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and favourite to win this year's polls, was speaking during an election rally on Saturday.

He warned China to shed its “expansionist mindset” as he toured the remote northeast Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, an eastern stretch of the Himalayas that China claims as its own.

“The world has changed. An expansionist mindset will not be accepted. China will also have to do away with such a mindset,” Modi said.

“Arunachal Pradesh is an integral part of India and will always remain so.

No power can snatch it away from us.”

China and India fought a brief but bloody border war in 1962 over Arunachal Pradesh and now share a de facto frontier known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC), which has never been formally demarcated.

The unresolved border dispute has soured relations which are often prickly and marked by mutual distrust.

Hua said the dispute was one “left over from history”, adding it was “very sensitive and complicated”.

She added that while it cannot be immediately resolved, both countries were committed to doing so peacefully.—AFP