BRI and China's Relations with its Neighbors: An European Perspective: Part 2

                                                                                                      

At a regular elevation of 12,000 feet, it has had no structures, roadways, or villages up to this point aside from two little sanctuaries abandoned many years earlier, stone huts for shepherds, and perhaps three fundamental havens or campsites employed by Bhutanese boondocks soldiers. Entering the Beyul from Tibet, now a part of China necessitates a journey via passes taller than Mont Blanc; few people, other than mountain inhabitants, would generally attempt it.

The succeeding region that China is now settling in northern Bhutan is substantially larger: Aside from one canyon, the Menchuma Valley, 1.2 miles east of the Beyul and 19 square miles in extent, is at a height of 14,700 feet at its absolute lowest. It, like the Beyul, is located inside the Kurtoe subdistrict of Lhuntse and has never had communities, streets, or constructions. Bhutan's line watches are placed in the Beyul in the middle of the year, but their main mission is to protect Bhutanese herders in encounters with their Tibetan partners. From the mid-1990s onward, these encounters became increasingly intense: Bhutanese criticize Tibetans for rousing dairy cattle, gathering wood, creating sanctuaries, and pushing massive, united groupings of yaks over customary Bhutanese nibbling sites, and demanding that Bhutanese herders pay them for munching there.

By 2005, this had driven Bhutanese herders to flee to the south of the Beyul, and the Bhutanese troops stationed there, who rely on the herders for sustenance, followed them to the south, where neither they nor the herders would have been aware of the development work in the northern Beyul. Authorities in Thimphu most likely assumed that the confrontations between herders were minor incitements from Beijing. Such incidents had grown commonplace in all of the regions of Bhutan guaranteed by China, and there was little evidence that they could progress to considerable growth, let alone habitation; China could scarcely have made such a step.

China currently controls the whole Menchuma Valley and a large portion of the Beyul. Both are currently being resolved. Together, they constitute 1% of Bhutan's land area; if it were to lose them, it would be comparable to the United States losing Maine or Kentucky. Assuming Bhutanese soldiers attempt to resurface in these areas, they will do so by walking and, given the lack of structure on their side, will be rapidly beyond the range of food or fortifications. The Chinese soldiers would have nearby dormitories, be mechanized, and be only three hours' drive from the nearest town in China.

Both the Beyul and Menchuma Valleys were depicted as sections of Bhutan in authentic Chinese guidebooks until at least the 1980s. They appeared as sections of Bhutan in genuine Chinese tourist guides and gazetteers issued in the late 1990s. Even now, the instructions are given on China's actual public planning site range significantly in terms of which parts of the Beyul are guaranteed by China and which are not. China has not fully started or even mentioned its argument to the Menchuma Valley, while it has talked vociferously about its cause to the Beyul since the 1980s. According to several Chinese journalists and activists, at that time, Chinese officials discovered a judgment by the Jiaqing Emperor (ruled 1796-1820) allowing brushing Herders with a place in the religious community of Lhalung in western Lhodrak, southern Tibet, are granted privileges in the Beyul. This archive does not appear to be available to the public and has not yet been discovered in Tibetan records. It may exist, but before the Chinese conquest and addition of Tibet in the 1950s, equivalent cross-line contact was the norm in the Himalayas and the Beyul.

China has long denied the nineteenth-century claims of Qing rulers—rehashed by Mao Zedong in the 1930s—to power over Bhutan and other Himalayan kingdoms. China-Bhutan relations have been cordial since the mid-1970s when Bhutan supported China's admission to the United Nations. As one Chinese official recently stated, the two countries are "agreeable neighbors linked by mountains and canals." However, like with China's other Himalayan neighbors, the history of expansionism and strife have left uncertain borders.

Since 1984, China and Bhutan have undertaken 24 rounds of talks to resolve their differences over those mountains and waterways, and last April they agreed to convene the 25th round "at an early date." (The 24th round took place in August 2016, just before the principal development activity in the Beyul began.) Bhutan has shown remarkable flexibility in these debates from the start; likely in the 1980s, Thimphu unobtrusively ceded its claims to the 154-square-mile Kula Khari (also spelled Kulha Kangri) territory on its northern border with China, citing "cartographic mix-ups."

China agreed to a conventional agreement with Bhutan in December 1998, the first reasonable settlement between the two nations thus far. In that report, China acknowledged Bhutan's clout and regional legitimacy, agreeing that "no unilateral attempt will change the condition of affairs on the line." The construction of streets, villages, and structures within the Beyul and Menchuma Valleys violates that agreement.

China's interests in the Beyul are not essentially about its relations with Bhutan, which Beijing appears to regard as far as any open doors it may provide China in its primary fight with India. To a limited extent, Beijing requires Bhutan to establish complete diplomatic ties with China, allowing it to maintain a conciliatory presence in Thimphu. This would counteract India's influence in Bhutan, which China has done to a large extent in Nepal. Nonetheless, Bhutan, cognizant of the delicate nature of its landlocked position between Asia's two goliaths, has avoided opening full ties with any important power apart from India, with which it has been unified for quite some time.

However, China's main purpose in the Beyul is clear from its stance in discussions with the Bhutanese government: Since roughly 1990, China has suggested giving up 495 square kilometers (191 square miles) of the Beyul in exchange for Thimphu giving up 269 square kilometers (104 square miles) in western Bhutan. This regions-Doklam, Charithang, Sinchulungpa, Dramana, and Shakhatoe-are near the trijunction with India and are far more vital to China than the Beyul, offering China traction only 62 miles from India's geographical flimsy part, the 14-mile-wide Siliguri Corridor, which connects the Indian central area to its northeastern domains.

On a fundamental level, Bhutan accepted China's request for an agreement over the Beyul. However, interactions lagged over the intricacies of the domain China required in the west, and Chinese stress began to rise. In 2004, the invasions became more frequent: a prominent Bhutanese official said that Chinese officers had arrived at Tshoka La, at the Beyul's southern point. Around the middle of the year, the Chinese began constructing six roadways along Bhutan's western borders, four of which passed into Bhutan. When Bhutan objected, China said that it was "overcompensating," but agreed as a gesture of kindness to halt the roadway construction, which restarted a year later. For a long time, beginning in 2006, there was there were no line negotiations between the two legislatures. During this time, there were around 38 attacks by Chinese militants over Bhutan's western borders, as well as seven real clashes between Thimphu and Beijing.

The Chinese authorities were well aware of the Beyul's unique and profound importance to the Bhutanese. Regardless of China's promises of major financial assistance, Bhutan refused to accept the compromise: it couldn't stand to tilt relations with India. Before beginning development work in the Beyul, China commissioned a survey of the valley by Chinese and Bhutanese professionals who worked closely together in 2013. This did not persuade Thimphu to accept the deal. China escalated tensions in the western region, resulting in the Doklam standoff in 2017. China's plan to trade the Beyul for the western border territories is still in effect today. With little chance of Bhutanese concessions, China's presence in the Beyul might become extraordinarily long-lasting.