A winding mountain road leads to a clearing in the pine-forested valley high in the mist-shrouded Himalayas, where rows of identical Tibetan-style homes with Chinese flags atop each one are visible. In this isolated location, construction is booming. The road is lined with piles of logs and other construction materials. Cranes loom over developing house blocks on a nearby slope.
Speaking into his phone on the side of the road, the Chinese travel vlogger who recorded these pictures last year explains, “They are building resettlement houses here.” “The fact that people live and settle here unquestionably proves that this is our nation’s territory.” Bhutan and China have been holding yet-unresolved border talks for decades. Looming in the backdrop of those discussions is India, China’s biggest regional rival and Bhutan’s close diplomatic ally.
The nuclear-armed neighbors have previously gone to war and more recently engaged in a series of skirmishes over their disputed 2,100-mile (3,379-kilometer) border, which straddles Bhutan – and, in Beijing’s eyes, makes the small Himalayan nation all the more critical to its national security. The blurry boundaries through the Himalayan peaks and plateaus separating China and its southern neighbors are often relics of imperial era agreements and nomadic routes – now charged with the nationalist rhetoric and military might of New Delhi and Beijing.
Landlocked by both, Bhutan has long navigated carefully between India – its largest development and trading partner, which until 2007 effectively controlled its foreign policy – and China, an economic and military giant with whom it has no formal diplomatic ties.
Bhutan’s place in their dispute was thrown into the spotlight in 2017, when the kingdom accused the Chinese army of building a road “inside Bhutanese territory” in the Doklam area, near a strategic and disputed junction between all three countries along Bhutan’s west. In 2016, China founded Jieluobu, its first official village in the Jakarlung valley. Two years later, Jieluobu was branded a model “border xiaokang village” – one of hundreds of such villages built or upgraded in recent years along China’s western and southern frontiers.
The “xiaokang” – or “moderate prosperity” – villages along China’s borders have been billed as part of Beijing’s scheme to eradicate poverty and improve living conditions in its far-flung frontiers. But experts say these villages are also part of Xi’s vision to use civilian settlements to solidify control of China’s border, amid perceived threats of foreign encroachment and infiltration – and a growing obsession with security.
“Only when there are people can the border remain stable,” the leader is often quoted as saying by officials in frontier regions. By 2022, more than 600 “border xiaokang villages” – including Jieluobu – had been completed in Tibet, boosting its border population by 10.5%, the regional government said in its annual work report. “It is no doubt that the villages are aimed to strengthen China’s territorial claims and control of the border regions, especially the disputed areas,” said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington.
Source: Here
