A recent report uses satellite images to report about 20 new settlements inhabited by about 7,000 people in territories that belong to Bhutan. Experts consider that it is part of an anti-India strategy adopted since the ’90s and that has recently become more aggressive. In the last year alone, seven new villages were built in regions located almost 4,000 meters above sea level, but of strategic importance.
Milan () – It was 2016 when China built a village for the first time in the territory of Bhutan. However, international observers only realized this in 2021. Meanwhile, Beijing had built two other settlements in inaccessible, remote and previously unpopulated areas of the Himalayas. There are currently 22 such villages, with a total of more than 2,000 homes and 7,000 inhabitants, according to estimates based on satellite images. The complaint was made by Turquoise Roof, a network of analysts and scholars that uses new technologies to monitor territorial appropriations by China.
In your latest reportpublished on October 15, point out that in recent years Beijing has annexed around 825 km², almost 2% of Bhutanese territory. The settlements are located in two main areas, the northeast, where 14 villages are located in regions known as Beyul Khenpajong and Menchuma, and the Doklam plateau, to the west, where 8 villages are located and is crucial in the tensions with the India, because it guarantees control of key access points in case of conflict. This is a territory donated in 1913 by Tibet (then independent, governed by the 13th Dalai Lama) to the kingdom of Bhutan, explains the organization.
But in the meantime, Beijing has announced that at least three villages will be transformed into cities. This is the culmination of a strategy that began in the ’90s, when shepherds were sent to the mountains and later columns of foot soldiers, despite the fact that an agreement on mutual respect for borders had been signed in 1998. Small checkpoints are built first, which are then transformed into permanent structures.
Citizens who move to these towns, located about 4,000 meters above sea level, are offered annual subsidies of 20,000 yuan, equivalent to $2,836 per person, to encourage economic growth. However, the climatic conditions are very harsh: agricultural and livestock production is impossible and snow blocks access to the region for several months a year. Consequently, China is attempting to promote “patriotic tourism” and visitors are encouraged to show their support for the country by traveling to “recovered” areas of Bhutan.
For several years now, China has also been building roads to connect these towns with Tibet. They are essential infrastructures to consolidate one’s presence, increase employment and present Bhutan with “faits accompli”. The region is isolated from Bhutan due to a lack of connections and is therefore de facto under Beijing’s control. The goal, according to researchers, is to exert greater diplomatic pressure on Bhutan to accept “an exchange package.” The villages in the northeastern sector do not have great strategic value, and the intention is to give them up (or rather, return them) in exchange for the Doklam plateau. That territory, on the contrary, has significant anti-Indian weight. China would also like to convince Bhutan to accept a Chinese embassy in the capital, Thimphu.
India (the only country that has denounced Chinese territorial appropriations, according to experts) she feels directly threatened. Delhi considers the Doklam plateau to be essential for the defense of its borders, to the point that Bhutan cannot give it up without the consent of its ally, India. A series of treaties, initially signed in 1949 and revised in 2007, bind Bhutan to respect Delhi’s security interests. For the same reasons the capital, Thimphu, does not have a Chinese embassy.
But in March 2023 Bhutan announced that it was close to signing the agreement with China. Since then, Beijing has accelerated the construction of new villages, building seven in the last year alone. According to Robert Bannettprofessor at SOAS and King’s College London, Beijing has understood that all the costs would fall on Bhutan, which, in the long run, will feel obliged to open the diplomatic channel with China, an eventuality that some local politicians have already mentioned.
In 2017, Indian military forces intervened directly with 270 troops in an attempt by Chinese troops to access the southern ridge of the Doklam Plateau, leading to a standoff that lasted more than two months. The continued construction of villages, in addition to violating Bhutan’s sovereignty, further complicates diplomatic relations between China and India, which are already in conflict over several territorial disputes, including that of Ladakh, a region close to Kashmir (another area that is also claimed by Pakistan, which is not coincidentally an ally of China).
Bannett also believes that China could return “the Pagsamlung Valley, an area of religious and historical importance to Bhutan that China annexed by building roads and outposts and stationing troops, but where it has not built villages.” Actually a false concession, because China has not included the Pagsamlung Valley on its maps “for at least 25 years.” But in any case, they are lands that would only be returned in exchange for guarantees on the western territories, those that really interest Beijing.
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