Bhutan Has Capitulated To Chinese Salami-Slicing Pressure In Doklam And India Is Immediately Affected

President Xi Jinping led China has made successful inroads into Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and to an extent Bangladesh, using financial inducements, project finance, infrastructure development in the host countries, and even their infamous debt-trap style imperialism.

The latest country in the neighbourhood to succumb to pressure and Chinese financial muscle appears to be Bhutan. There are a growing number of Bhutanese youth in the kingdom keen on better relations between Thimpu and Beijing. The perception is that there is much more to gain by leaning towards China rather than India. This may be short-sighted, but there is certainly a growing opinion divide in Bhutanese society on the matter.

That Bhutan should choose this juncture to make its momentous strategic move is surprising, because China’s standing in the global arena is somewhat diminished post Covid and its ostensible alliance with Russia during the Ukraine War. The West sees China increasingly as a security threat, not only to the maritime trade routes around the Taiwan Straits, the constant threatening the world over Taiwan, the near occupation of the South and East China Seas, using North Korea to not only send arms to Russia and menace Japan and South Korea, plus its difficult relationship with most countries in its littoral.

Most of the countries in India’s vicinity have not had a happy experience by letting in the dragon. Nepal has also lost territory to China without being able to raise a murmur, and has been forced into being hostile towards India albeit in a blow-hot blow-cold manner, depending on whether the pro-China Communists or pro-India Nationalists are in charge.

India, for itself, does have its remedies. These include its membership of QUAD, one-on-one alliances with powers like France, Israel, UAE, and Russia. India is now building a massive tri-services and naval base in its Grand Nicobar Islands just 80 km from the Malacca Straights, through which 80% of Chinese imports pass. Then there is its ramped up Aatmanirbhar defence manufacturing programme. There are other alliances, with AUKUS, and most recently with South Korea and Japan in a troika. It is doing all it can to counter Chinese imperial designs and aggression. Besides it is a nuclear weapons power, the great equaliser.

India’s resistance to the Chinese in Bhutan began in 2017, when China intruded into Bhutan’s Doklam Plateau with an illegal road being built unilaterally through Bhutanese territory. The intent was to drive this road all the way to Mount Gipmochi and the adjoining Jhampheri Ridge on the tip of the plateau overlooking India. This would have given China a clear oversight of India’s narrow, just 23 km wide in parts, Siliguri Corridor. The famous ‘Chicken Neck’, part of the corridor is the only land bridge to all the Indian states in the North East, including Arunachal Pradesh, that China also claims.

  In 2017 Indian troops rushed into Bhutan’s Batang La, to push back. The Doklam Plateau consisting of about 270 sq.km, is only wanted by China to gain an advantage over India, rather than to  just satisfy its urges for territorial gain from Bhutan.

In June 2017, when Bhutan discovered the intrusion, its people began protesting and its government asked for Indian help.

However, after stopping the Chinese in their tracks, and ostensibly sending them back to the Chumbi Valley to the north, into adjoining Chinese territory, India withdrew to its own borders.

The actual two-month long stand-off at the tri-junction between India, Bhutan and China at Batang La, featured much pushing and shoving, in the absence of lethal weapons being used by either side. Unlike in Ladakh and most recently near Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh, a few years later, the Chinese did not bring spiked clubs and other thuggish weaponry with them either.

But China soon came back to Doklam. It increased its presence, built more roads, villages, and a bridge across the fast-flowing Amu Chu river in the area. All this with complete impunity, and no further protest from Bhutan or India.

It is possible, though unconfirmed, that Bhutan may have asked India to keep out of the matter. It is also likely that India has used the interregnum, anticipating the inevitable, to strengthen its military defences in the chicken-neck area and elsewhere along the Siliguri Corridor.

These would need to incorporate nuclear and conventional missile silos, as is the case along the LaC, tunnels, reinforced bunkers, reinforced hangars for aircraft and drones, more air strips, artillery batteries, satellite surveillance, permanent troop placements not only in the corridor, but in Sikkim as well. This defensive work ongoing, along with other vast improvements in connectivity to the North East states, may be the reason that India has not said much as yet. But the pronouncements and apparent policy shift signalled by Bhutanese Prime Minister Lotay Tshering is unmistakeable.

India’s relationship with Bangladesh has been growing well under its Look East Policy.  Both countries are cooperating in the movement of goods, services, cruise tourism by  and through their respective adjacent waterways. India has given a number of billion dollar soft loans to Bangladesh of late, and most recently built a high-speed diesel pipeline jointly, ranging hundreds of kilometres, from Assam into Bangladesh.

Bangladesh may well agree to road and rail connectivity through its territory alongside the Siliguri Corridor, or even a lease of some of its land alongside to India.

This will thwart Chinese designs to a large extent, because it is trying to woo Bangladesh as well into its debt-trap diplomacy. And the chicken neck will not stay a chicken neck if this happens.

India wanted then, in 2017, as it does now, to keep the sensitive tri-junction area at Batang La unchanged. China however claims the whole of the Doklam Plateau is Chinese territory. Boundary talks between China and Bhutan have gone through many rounds, over a dozen, and most recently at Kunming, China, in January 2023.

After this last round, there was a joint statement made that an MoU on a three-step road map for expediting the China-Bhutan boundary negotiations had reached a ‘positive consensus’.

Chinese intrusions and construction also involve territory in the North of Bhutan as well as the North East, in addition to Doklam. These lay Chinese claim to some 500 sq.km. in Bhutan’s Jakarlung and Pasamlung Valleys.

As such, border talks between China and Bhutan have been ongoing since 1984.  But now, Bhutan’s prime minister suddenly claims there are no Chinese intrusions into Bhutanese territory in what appears to be an utter capitulation to Chinese pressure.

As regards the Doklam Plateau, which primarily is of interest and concern for India, Bhutan’s prime minister has just called for a three-way negotiation, including India. This, in an interview recently given to the Belgian Daily La Libre.

‘There are three of us’ said Prime Minister Tshering. ‘There is no big or small country, there are three equal countries, each counting for a third’, he added in a rather hopeful sounding message. Most analysts see by this Bhutan’s willingness to cede its territory to China, under prolonged pressure or financial inducements or indeed both.

Tshering repeatedly said the Chinese have not intruded into Bhutanese territory, nor built its infrastructure on Bhutanese land. The position on Doklam has also changed completely from earlier statements made in in 2019 when Prime Minister Tshering cautioned against any ‘unilateral’ moves.

It appears therefore that Bhutan has been induced into endorsing the Chinese salami-slicing tactics and military pressure. This of course, renders the situation into a fait accompli in favour of China. If Bhutan is willing to give up its territory there is little India can do about it. 

In Doklam, the present tri-junction at Batang La is sought by China to be shifted 7 km south to the Mount Gipmochi peak, just as was the original intent in 2017.

If that were to happen, then all of the Doklam Plateau would become part of China. And from Mount Gipmochi, China would gain a clear physical oversight of India’s Siliguri Corridor.

If India does join the tripartite talks, it can make clear that it does not accept any shift of the tri-junction from Batang La. China has already intruded into PoK over Indian objections for its road from Xinkiang to Gwadar through Pakistan. So, it remains to be seen what effect India’s objection will have.

China does respect force however, and would probably listen if India were to reoccupy PoK and Gilgit Baltistan, with American diplomatic support. Letting China get away with such blatant bullying of a tiny landlocked kingdom at this sensitive time in geopolitics, may not be countenanced by the West, if not purely for Bhutan’s sake, or indeed that of India’s, but for the precedent it sets.  

But will Bhutan see and portray the Chinese intrusions as a concordat instead,  designed for its complete benefit? It should remember the battered, bruised and bankrupt Sri Lanka post the reign of the Rajapakshas. It is India that is helping it to limp back into health with soft-loans and its good offices, and not  a predatory China.

Besides, Bhutan needs to take into account its dependence on Indian ports. The Chinese landmass to the north is the long way around for all its imports and exports. It is a hard reality, in competition with the intangible called ‘happiness’ that expensive-to-visit Bhutan has been projecting to the world.

(1,555 words)

March 30^th, 2023

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee