By that time, China had already built two other villages within Bhutan’s customary borders. These too were located in remote areas high in the Himalayas or in Himalayan gorges.

There are now 22 such villages and settlements. Judging from satellite imagery, these Chinese villages and settlements consist of some 752 residential blocks divided into an estimated 2,284 residential units, each suitable for one family-sized unit. To fill these units, the Chinese authorities have relocated or are currently relocating approximately 7,000 people to these previously unpopulated areas of Bhutan, together with an unknown number of officials, construction workers, border police and military.

To construct these villages, China has annexed approximately 825 sq kms of land that was formerly within Bhutan, constituting just over 2% of Bhutan’s territory. At least two new sites within Bhutan have been cleared for construction, many of the existing villages are being expanded, bids have been sought by the Chinese government for the construction of at least one other village, and the Chinese authorities have announced that three of the existing villages are going to be upgraded to towns.

This report documents the location, size and purpose of these cross-border villages and settlements. It discusses their continuing construction in territory long understood to be part of Bhutan, the role of land appropriation in the 40-year-long border negotiations between China and Bhutan, and the increasing, and apparently unnecessary, use by China of hard power in its relations with a much smaller neighbour.

China’s cross-border villages are being built in two main areas. Eight of the Chinese villages are in a western area of Bhutan that the historian Tsering Shakya says was ceded to Bhutan in 1913 by the then ruler of Tibet, the 13th Dalai Lama. China has built those eight villages for strategic reasons: it seeks possession of that western area of Bhutan because it includes an 89-sq km plateau called Doklam, control of which would give China major strategic advantage in its ongoing confrontation with India. China also says its aim is to get Bhutan to agree to host a Chinese embassy in the Bhutanese capital, Thimphu.

China’s 14 other cross-border villages and settlements are in areas of north-eastern Bhutan. These areas, known as the Beyul Khenpajong (together with the Pagsamlung and Jakarlung valleys) and Menchuma, have only been claimed by China since the 1980s. Until at least the early 1990s China marked these areas on official maps as parts of Bhutan.

These north-eastern areas of Bhutan have no compelling military or strategic value to China. Its reason for annexing them was to exchange them for the areas that China wants in the western sector of Bhutan. China made this purpose clear in 1990 when it proposed what has become known as the “package deal”. In that deal, China offered to drop its claims for the north-eastern areas of Bhutan and to return those areas to Bhutan if Bhutan would give China the territories it wants in Bhutan’s west, including the Doklam plateau.

Bhutan, however, cannot in practice give the Doklam area to China without Indian consent, because of Indo-Bhutanese treaties which require Bhutan to respect India’s security concerns. As a result, since the mid-1990s, Bhutan has delayed giving its agreement to China’s proposed exchange.

The report describes China’s response to Bhutan’s failure to accept the package deal. That response took the form of a six-stage strategy. In the first stage, in the early 1990s, China sent local herders into disputed areas, where their interactions with Bhutanese pastoralists pushed the latter out of those areas. In the second stage, the Tibetan herders built huts or shelters in the disputed areas. Thirdly, military foot-patrols were sent into those areas, supposedly to support those herders. Fourthly, improvised structures were erected for use as military outposts, which were later upgraded to permanent structures.

In the fifth stage, from around 2004, roads were constructed into the claimed areas, connecting the outposts to towns within Tibet (China). Finally, in 2016, the construction of villages began in the claimed areas.

In March 2023, the Bhutanese government, which appears to have little option but to accept most of China’s negotiating demands, indicated that it was close to concluding a deal with China involving an exchange of territory. But China’s cross-border village construction has not stopped. Instead, it has accelerated: since early 2023, seven more villages or settlements have been constructed in Bhutan’s north-east, more than the tripling the housing stock in that area.

The report’s analysis of China’s 2023-24 construction surge concludes that China is now extremely unlikely to return to Bhutan the areas where it has built villages. Those areas include about 80% of the disputed territory that China has annexed. China seems likely to argue that it is not obligated to return these areas because Bhutan, given India’s security concerns, is unlikely to be able to yield the Doklam area to China. If Bhutan, as expected, gives the non-Doklam areas in its western border area to China, China in return is likely to give up its claims only to areas it has claimed but not annexed (c. 353 sq kms in the Upper Langmarpo, Charitang, and Yak chu areas in the west and c. 78 sq kms in the Chagdzom area in the north-east). It is also likely to return to Bhutan an area of some 147 sq kms that it has occupied but in which it has not built villages or relocated settlers (the Pagsamlung valley).

In summary:

• China now has constructed 22 villages and settlements within Bhutan’s customary borders, of which 19 are villages and three are small settlements.
• Seven of these cross-border villages and settlements have been constructed since early 2023, signalling a marked increase in the speed and extent of construction in the annexed areas.
• Three of the 19 villages are going to be upgraded to towns.
• It looks increasingly certain that China will not fulfil its original offer to give back to Bhutan the land in Bhutan’s north-east where it has built villages.
• Bhutan is likely to get back only those areas which China appears to have claimed or annexed largely as leverage and to give the subsequent appearance of concessions.
• China’s cross-border village strategy sets a problematic precedent for the international community, since there is no obvious counter for a small state acting alone in response to opportunistic territorial claims and subsequent annexation by a major power.

Maps

(click to enlarge)

Timelapse videos – China’s Cross-Border Villages in Bhutan

These timelapse videos show the progress of construction work at each of the main cross-border sites within Bhutan’s customary borders in the years from 2016 to mid- 2024. The earliest of the cross-border villages to be built was Jieluobu, in the north- east of Bhutan, where work began in 2016. Work on the other villages began in late 2019 and continued throughout the following four years. The construction of the village we are calling Semalong 3 began only in March or April 2024.

The videos show monthly low-resolution images of each site from October 2016 to mid-2024, except for months where cloud cover obscured the sites, and except for Semalong 3, where the video shows weekly images from October 2023 to October 2024. The area covered by each video is roughly 1sq km. Each of the sites is within the borders of Bhutan as shown in official Bhutanese maps, apart from Minjiuma and Lower Minjiuma, which were shown as within Bhutan on Bhutanese maps up until the early 2000s. In all cases except for the Demalong outpost, roads were built before village construction or outpost construction began. The roads all connect to the Chinese road network in Tibet (the Tibet Autonomous Region), and none connect with roads in Bhutan, indicating that all these villages and outposts were built by or on instructions from the Chinese authorities.

The videos were produced using the timelapse function in Copernicus Browser , which uses imagery from Sentinel Hub. The source for all videos is Copernicus Sentinel data 2024.

video credits: Copernicus, Sentinel Hub