A recent report uses satellite images to report around twenty new settlements inhabited by around 7 thousand people in territories that belong to Bhutan. For experts, this is a strategy adopted in an anti-Indian vein since the 1990s, and which has recently become more aggressive. In the last year alone, seven new villages were built in regions at almost 4 thousand meters above sea level but strategically important.
Milan (AsiaNews) – It was 2016 when China built a village within the territory of Bhutan for the first time. Only in 2021, however, international observers noticed it. Meanwhile, Beijing had built two other settlements in rugged, remote and previously unpopulated areas of the Himalayas. While today there have become 22 villages of this type, for a total of over 2 thousand housing units and 7 thousand residents, according to estimates made on the basis of satellite images. The complaint comes from Turquoise Roof, a network of analysts and scholars who uses new technologies to monitor territorial appropriations by China.
In their latest relationshippublished 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 north-eastern one, where 14 villages are located in regions known as Beyul Khenpajong and Menchuma, and the Doklam plateau, to the west, which is home to 8 villages and is crucial in the tensions with the India, because it guarantees control of key access points in the event of conflict. This is a territory donated in 1913 by Tibet (at the time independent, governed by the 13th Dalai Lama) to the kingdom of Bhutan, the organization specifies.
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 1990s with the sending of shepherds into the mountains, which was then followed by columns of soldiers on foot, despite the signing of an agreement in 1998 on mutual respect for borders. Initially, small checkpoints are built, which are then transformed into permanent structures.
Citizens who move to these villages – which are located around 4,000 meters above sea level – are offered annual subsidies of 20,000 yuan per year, equal to 2,836 dollars per person, to encourage economic growth. However, the climatic conditions are very harsh: agricultural production and livestock farming are impossible and snow blocks access to the region for several months of the year. As a result, China is attempting to promote “patriotic tourism”: visitors are invited to show their attachment to the nation by traveling to areas “reclaimed” by Bhutan.
For several years, China has also been building roads to connect these villages to Tibet. This is essential infrastructure to consolidate its presence, expand employment and present Bhutan with “faits accompli”. The region is isolated from Bhutan due to lack of connections, and is therefore, de facto, under the control of Beijing. The objective of which, according to the researchers, is to exert greater diplomatic pressure so that Bhutan accepts “an exchange package”: the villages in the north-eastern sector do not have great strategic value, so the intention is to cede them (or rather , return them) in exchange for the Doklam plateau. A territory which, on the contrary, has an important anti-Indian impact. China would also like to convince Bhutan to agree to host a Chinese embassy in the capital, Thimphu.
India (the only country to have denounced Chinese territorial appropriations, according to experts) feels directly threatened: Delhi considers the Doklam plateau fundamental for the defense of its borders, to the point that Bhutan cannot cede it without the consent of its Indian ally: a series of treaties, initially signed in 1949 and revised in 2007, oblige Bhutan to respect Delhi’s security interests. For the same reasons, the capital, Thimphu, does not yet host a Chinese embassy.
But in March 2023, Bhutan had 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. Second 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 forced to open the diplomatic channel with China, an eventuality that some local politicians have already mentioned.
In 2017, Indian military forces directly intervened with 270 troops due to an attempt by Chinese troops to access the southern ridge of the Doklam plateau, resulting in a confrontation that lasted over two months. The continuous construction of villages, in addition to violating Bhutan’s sovereignty, further complicates diplomatic relations between China and India, already in conflict over various territorial disputes, including that over Ladakh, a region near Kashmir (an area also claimed from Pakistan, not surprisingly an ally of China).
Bannett also believes 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.” A false concession in reality, because China has not included the Pagsamlung valley in its maps “for at least 25 years”. But these are still lands that would be returned only in exchange for guarantees on the Western territories, the ones that Beijing is really interested in.
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