#Report #ChinaDream
China Is Building Entire Villages in Another Country’s Territory

By Robert Barnett

//In October 2015, China announced that a new village, called Gyalaphug in Tibetan or Jieluobu in Chinese, had been established in the south of the #Tibet Autonomous Region (#TAR)...

#Gyalaphug is, however, different: It is in #Bhutan. Wu and a retinue of officials, police, and journalists had crossed an international border. They were in a 232-square-mile area claimed by China since the early 1980s but internationally understood as part of Lhuntse district in northern Bhutan. The Chinese officials were visiting to celebrate their success, unnoticed by the world, in planting settlers, security personnel, and military infrastructure within territory internationally and historically understood to be Bhutanese...

This new construction is part of a major drive by Chinese President #XiJinPing since 2017 to fortify the Tibetan borderlands, a dramatic escalation in China’s long-running efforts to outmaneuver India and its neighbors along their Himalayan frontiers. In this case, China doesn’t need the land it is settling in Bhutan: Its aim is to force the Bhutanese government to cede territory that China wants elsewhere in Bhutan to give Beijing a military advantage in its struggle with New Delhi.

Gyalaphug is now one of three new villages (two already occupied, one under construction), 66 miles of new roads, a small hydropower station, two Communist Party administrative centers, a communications base, a disaster relief warehouse, five military or police outposts, and what are believed to be a major signals tower, a satellite receiving station, a military base, and up to six security sites and outposts that China has constructed in what it says are parts of Lhodrak in the TAR but which in fact are in the far north of Bhutan....

Today all of the Menchuma Valley and most of the Beyul are controlled by China. Both are being settled. Together, they constitute 1 percent of Bhutan’s territory; if it were to lose them, it would be comparable to the United States losing Maine or Kentucky...

In Chinese, the term for so-called salami-slicing tactics—slowly cutting off  piece by piece of other nations’ territory—is can shi, or “nibbling like a silkworm.” It’s serious business: The belief that India was gnawing at fragments of China’s territory drove Mao to launch the 1962 Sino-Indian War. And the converse of the phrase is jing tun, “swallowing like a whale.” The small bites of the silkworm can turn into crushing jaws...//

Read the full reportage:
http://foreignpolicy.com/2021/05/07/china-bhutan-border-villages-security-forces/

Source: Foreigh Policy #May7

#Invasion #Tianxia #AllUnderHeaven #Beijing #Expansion #CCPRules #Bhutan #PeacefulRise #CanShi #Borders