New Delhi (IPA Service): The key to this decades-long border strife between India and China is the strategic plateau of Doklam, located close to where the borders of the three countries—India, Bhutan and China—meet. If Beijing can seize control of the disputed Doklam plateau, it would allow China to mobilize its forces undeterred, besides providing it greater access to routes in case of an armed conflict with India. Chinese intrusion into the Indian borders in the Himalayas has resulted in rival military buildups and occasional clashes that have largely gone unnoticed in the West.
This escalating border dispute has set into motion a long-term one-upmanship that could reshape Asian geopolitics and is now knocking on the doors of India’s long-time friend and ally, Bhutan. That Himalayan nation is currently holding talks with China regarding its border dispute—a dispute that can be traced back to the 19th Century. China has been stepping up pressure on Bhutan to resolve their bilateral border dispute. It has not only made greater territorial claims on Bhutan, but has also resurrected an old land-swap deal which, if actualized, will see Thimphu ceding control over more territory to reach an amicable settlement of its border dispute with China.
Border negotiations between China and Bhutan have been an undergoing process since 1984 and both countries lay claim to the Doklam region, with India backing the latter. Chinese experts say China and Bhutan were close to reaching a final agreement around 1996, but the negotiations failed as India intervened. In May 2023, the 12th Expert Group Meeting (EGM), which supervises the progress of the boundary talks, was held in Bhutan’s capital, Thimphu, a short span of just four months after the 11th EGM talks were held in China’s Kunming. At the conclusion of the Thimphu round of deliberations, both Bhutan and China said they had made progress towards implementing a “three-step roadmap” that would help them resolve their boundary dispute.
It emphasized the “importance of increasing the frequency of the meetings”, but did not announce any breakthrough in setting a date for the next round (the 25th round of boundary talks), which have been hanging fire since 2016, and was suspended after the India-China military standoff at Doklam. There was a long gap of two years between the 10th EGM in April 2021 and the 11th EGM in January 2023. In view of that, it seems significant that the 12th round has followed within only four months indicating a more rapid development in the talks.
The India-China border crisis was exacerbated by a standoff over the tri-junction demarcated by China-occupied Tibet’s Chumbi Valley to the north, India’s Sikkim state to the west and Bhutan’s Haa Valley to the east. India and China have perennially struggled over the issue of where exactly the tri-junction lies.
India and Bhutan had signed a special treaty in 1949 in view of Delhi’s security concerns. A revised draft was signed in 2007 giving Bhutan more leeway in such areas as military purchases—and, on a wider scale, determining its own foreign policy. Hundreds of Indian soldiers have been offering combat training to Bhutanese soldiers. The Indian Military Training Team (IMTRAT) is headquartered only 20 kilometres from Doklam, in the western town of Haa, which is strategically important for India.
The Bhutan-China border question is not delinked from the simmering decades-old India-China border tensions. The two countries share a frontier that has not been totally demarcated, and have overlapping claims to the territory. India says it is 3,488 kilometres long, while China puts it at 2,000 kilometres. The currently agreed upon border starts in the Ladakh region to India’s north and runs all the way to Arunachal Pradesh state—also a bone of contention as the Chinese call it ‘Southern Tibet’—in the east.
China lays claim to about 495 sq.km in north-central Bhutan and 269 sq.km in western Bhutan, according to BBC. As recently as in 2020, it also claimed another 739 sq.km of territory in the Sakteng Wildlife Sanctuary in eastern Bhutan as a part of Mainland China territory. Three major rivers—the Bada Chu, Manas Chu and Dhansiri Chu—have their source in this region. Most of the official Chinese maps have depicted Sakteng as part of Bhutan. Even in the most ambitious—and contentious—2014 map by China, the vast territorial claims that include India’s Arunachal Pradesh, Sakteng Park was shown as part of Bhutan.
The territory claimed in western Bhutan includes the Doklam Plateau, which is of strategic and military significance to India. These claims are proof that China has violated both the Sino-Bhutanese border agreements—the 1988 ‘Guiding Principles on the Boundary Issues’ and the 1998 ‘Treaty to Maintain Peace and Tranquility’ that promised neither party could make unilateral alterations to the status quo.
There are solid compulsions why Delhi is supporting Thimphu’s stand on Doklam. The plateau is of great strategic significance to India since Chinese ascendancy in the region would give Beijing a terrain advantage over Delhi at one of India’s most sensitive geographic points and could spell trouble for India at the Siliguri Corridor, also known as the ‘Chicken’s Neck’, a 22-kilometre, narrow land bridge that connects Mainland India with its ‘Seven Sisters’ states in the North-East.
The 2017 China-India border faceoff, commonly known as the Doklam standoff, was a military showdown between India’s armed forces and the People’s Liberation Army of China. The flashpoint was a Chinese road construction in Doklam. On June 16, 2017, Chinese soldiers—armed with bulldozers, excavators, cranes, dump trucks and forklifts—began work on extending an existing road southwards in Doklam. On June 18, 2017, about 270 armed Indian troops launched ‘Operation Juniper’, crossing the Sikkim border into Doklam with two bulldozers to stop the Chinese troops from building the road. On August 28, both the countries announced all their troops had been withdrawn from the site in question.
However, a significant amount of data, including satellite images, points to the fact that China is engaged in building infrastructure—even small villages—inside sovereign Bhutanese territory. In an interview with Belgian daily La Libre in March 2023, Bhutanese Prime Minister Lotay Tshering is reported to have said “no intrusion as reported in the media” has happened into Bhutanese territory. He hoped that Bhutan and China would be successful in demarcating some of its boundaries in a couple of meetings.
That rang alarm bells in India’s security establishment that the Bhutanese leader was likely bending to China’s pressure and preparing to cede territory to the Asian giant to settle the border issue, although this would weaken India’s security. According to a 2012 agreement between India and China, at points along boundaries shared between China, India and a third country, the border demarcation will be drawn with the consensus of all the countries concerned. So, the border dispute can be resolved only if all the three parties—India, Bhutan and China—reach an amicable consensus. (IPA Service)
By Girish Linganna, The author is a Defence, Aerospace & Political analyst.