(TibetanReview.net, Oct19’24) –Nepal may shy away from admitting it, but China has been pushing its occupied-Tibet border into the country by laying fences in its territory, according to an Oct 12 nytimes.com report, titled ‘China’s ‘New Great Wall’. And it is not just a creeping territorial aggression but also exercising coercive influence across the border, including imposing its anti-Dalai Lama policy on the country’s ethnic Tibetan citizens there.
The report highlights the alarming case of Humla, a frontier village in Nepal’s Karnali province, now confronted with Chinese barbed wire fences and ongoing encroachment. This encroachment, primarily involving the construction of border villages overnight, reflects China’s unprecedented strategy under President Xi Jinping’s leadership. The country has intensified efforts to “assert its territorial claims in disputed areas along its periphery,” the report said.
In addition to its territorial claims, the report adds, China’s security forces are pressuring ethnic Tibetan Nepalis in the Humla district “not to display images of the Dalai Lama.”
The higher and northern parts of Humla are mostly inhabited by culturally Tibetan communities.
China views the cultural and religious ties between Tibet and Nepal as a threat to stability in the region. It has been trying to weaken the Dalai Lama’s significant influence in Nepal and sway over local communities by promoting Chinese Buddhism, the report noted.
China has been pushing Nepal to sign an “extradition treaty” with it since the Oct 2019 visit of President Xi Jinping. The communist-led government under Prime Minister KP Oli reportedly introduced the treaty for consideration, but withdrew it at the last moment following objections from civil society and international human rights organisations.
Critics argued that the treaty could jeopardise the future of thousands of Tibetan refugees who arrived in Nepal after 1990 and had not been issued refugee cards, the report noted. However, in the joint statement, China “expressed hope for an early conclusion of the Treaty on Extradition.”
A treaty of this kind would help China legally pressure Nepal to curtail the activities of Tibetan refugees, who have often been active in advocating for a “free Tibet,” the report said
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However, China’s claims on Nepalese territory should not be seen as a standalone event; in just the last five years, Beijing has aggressively and systematically laid claim to Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, and Arunachal Pradesh, the report noted.
In Bhutan—the only country in South Asia bordering China that does not have any diplomatic ties with Beijing—China has laid claim to the Buddhist cultural area of Beyul Khenpajong in the north.
The two sides have been negotiating a border resolution since 1984, when the two neighbours formally discussed their border issues for the first time. The last, or 25th, round of the boundary talks took place in October 2023 when Bhutan’s then-foreign minister, Tandi Dorji, travelled with a delegation to Beijing. The sides agreed to a “Three-Step Roadmap,” but did not reveal the details of it.
Meanwhile, China has built 22 villages and settlements within Bhutan’s traditional borders, including 19 villages and three small settlements. Three of the villages are set to be upgraded to towns. Notably, seven of these cross-border constructions have emerged since early 2023, indicating a significant acceleration in development in the annexed areas, said a recent research by Turquoise Roof, a network of Tibetan analysts.
Approximately 7,000 people, along with an unknown number of officials, construction workers, border police, and military, are being relocated to these previously unpopulated areas.
A significant aspect of these constructions is stated to be their connectivity; that all are linked by roads to Chinese towns yet remain isolated from Bhutanese urban centres.