Referring to an an article titled "India, China spar over legacy of Tibetan medicinal system" by the Press Trust of India (PTI) on November 24, the Global Times said (November 27) an anonymous Indian official said that "India has approached UNESCO, seeking the enlisting of the Sowa Rigpa as its intangible cultural heritage." The official reportedly noted that India was "strongly pushing" the UNESCO application. Hu Zhiyong, a research fellow at the Institute of International Relations of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times (November 26) that "India set the Tibetan medicine institute in Ladakh on purpose, so that India could assimilate the region in order to merge Ladakh into India. India has been hyping its work on Tibetan medicine" because 'India wants to transfer its people's attention away from economic decline by worsening China-India relations'. The Global Times added that "on October 31, the Indian government announced the establishment of the Union Territory of Ladakh, which involves Chinese territory". It quoted China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Geng Shuang as saying at the press conference (November 26) "This is illegal, null and void. It will neither change the fact that the relevant region is under China's actual control nor produce any effect."