Since 2015, China has built a previously unnoticed road, buildings and military posts deep in a Bhutanese valley.
In October 2015, China announced the creation of a new village in the southern Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), a place called Gyalaphug in Tibetan, according to a May 7 article published in the American Journal of Foreign Policy. In April 2020, TAR Party Secretary Wu Yingjie visited the new village, telling residents that they were all Tibetans who “put down roots like the Gyalaphug in the snow-capped border region” and “hold the bright five-star red flag aloft.” The visit film was shown on local television and plastered on the front page of a Tibetan newspaper, and the village seemed no different from any other newly built village.
But Gyalaphug is different: it’s in Bhutan. Since the early 1980s, it has been in an area that China claims as 232 square miles, but is internationally considered part of the Lhuntse district in northern Bhutan. The visit by Chinese officials to celebrate their settlement in what is internationally and historically understood to be Bhutanese territory, and the construction of military infrastructure, has not gone unnoticed by the world.
This new construction is part of a major effort by Chinese President Xi Jinping to consolidate the Tibetan frontier, and an escalation of China’s long-standing efforts to outpace India. In this case, China wants Beijing to increase its military edge in its fight with New Delhi.
Gyalaphug now has new roads, a small hydroelectric power station, two communist administrative centers, a communications base, a disaster relief depot, five military or police posts, and more.
This is more provocative than anything China has done on the border in the past and is a blatant violation of the terms of the treaty China concluded with Bhutan. China’s actions in the Himalayas reflect the provocative tactics it uses in the South China Sea.
And China’s multi-layered construction activities in Bhutan are almost completely ignored by the outside world.
In the face of China, Bhutan appears to be choosing to maintain the status quo, the article notes. Tenzing Lamsang, a Bhutanese political commentator, says that as a “small country caught between two giants,” Bhutan’s strategy is to “avoid unnecessary confrontation with either side.
In December 1998, China and Bhutan signed a formal agreement, the first and so far only treaty between the two countries. In this document, China recognized Bhutan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and agreed “not to take unilateral actions to change the status quo on the border. The construction of roads, settlements and buildings in the Beyul and Menchuma valleys is a clear violation of this agreement.
In 2012, China sent a team to conduct the first survey of Beyul’s land and resources. In their survey report, the surveyors wrote, “Since time immemorial, no one has known the status of its resources; it is shrouded in a veil of mystery.” A week later, the survey was completed and they declared that Beyul was “no longer a mysterious place. The settlement of Beyul was about to begin.
In October 2015, workers from Tibet and parts of China began building the road, the first into Beyul. The road crosses a 15,700-foot mountain pass called Namgung La and enters Bhutan. The road took two years to complete and cost $98 million.
In October 2018, the village officially opened with the arrival of four new residents, bringing the total to 20. By January 2021, four more blocks were built, each containing five identical homes with 1,200 square feet per family. By 2020, 24 families had moved in.
Since 2015, China has built three villages, seven roads and at least five military or police posts in the Beyul and Menchuma valleys. These are documented in official reports and videos.
The article notes that Gyalaphug is one of the new villages created by China’s accelerated “construction of well-off villages along the Tibetan border,” whose residents are officially asked to “treat each village as a fortress and each family as a watchtower,” and to refer to their inhabitants as They are “non-uniformed soldiers” whose main task is to defend China’s borders. Satellite images and media photos show that Gyalaphug has two administrative buildings, the larger of which is dedicated to Communist Party meetings and village assemblies.
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