(TibetanReview.net, Nov01’26) – China has taken at least 15-20 years’ lead in developing remote Tibetan border regions with a design to strengthen its claims over Arunachal Pradesh, including especially through border infrastructure and settlement buildings, according to Lt General (Retd) Abhay Krishna, a former Army Commander of South Western, Eastern and Central Army Commands of the Indian Army, writing on Indianarrative.com website Oct 24. He has warned against China trying to make a “demographic invasion” of Arunachal in future.
In this context, he has warned that China was resettling Tibetans close to the Line of Actual Control (LAC) opposite Arunachal Pradesh, with the aim to make the disputed boundary resemble an ordinary Chinese provincial frontier, with a long-term goal of pushing a “demographic invasion” into the Indian state over the coming decades.
He has said India must see from a wider prism that China’s infrastructure development along the LAC is not merely a developmental programme. Rather, it is a deliberate, multi-domain strategy designed to reshape the Himalayan frontier in ways that enhance Beijing’s military reach, consolidate territorial claims, and create long-term leverage over India.
China’s plans against India have been planned and implemented at various layers since over several decades. From Theaterisation of Forces, large scale infrastructure developments to include roads and railways to airfields, dams and “Xiaokang” border villages, he has said. In that way, China has been transforming the Tibetan plateau into a forward operating base capable of sustaining prolonged military presence and rapid escalation.
China is currently rapidly relocating the Tibetan population into frontier settlements under its border-village and poverty-alleviation programmes. He had noted that official figures cited by researchers indicate that 241,835 people were “involved” in the Tibet Autonomous Region border-village programme, while reports also refer to plans to move tens of thousands of border residents into 628 villages.
Approximately 72 per cent of these villages are located near the LAC in India’s North-Eastern sector with 90 per cent of them facing Arunachal Pradesh. Smaller clusters exist in sectors facing Sikkim, Uttarakhand and Ladakh.
In this entire range of activities, China has cleverly and quietly taken a lead of at least 15-20 years, the retired general has said.
He has warned that for India, the danger is not that Tibetan civilians will suddenly “march across” the LAC but it is subtler, that is, a state-sponsored population architecture that entrenches Chinese control opposite Arunachal Pradesh compressing India’s strategic depth and making future incursions look like routine local administration.
He has concluded: “Thus, by resettling the Tibetan population close to the LAC across Arunachal Pradesh, China is attempting to make the LAC look less like a disputed line and more like an ordinary Chinese provincial frontier populated, connected, policed and defensible.
“The hidden long-term agenda of China is to infuse demographic invasion into Arunachal Pradesh over a few decades and gradually influence the hearts and minds of our young, coming-up generation there to begin to feel that they are more Tibetan than Indian.”