Bhutan, in the Himalayas, is nestled in a strategically sensitive geographical position between two Asian superpowers, India and China. Over the years, Delhi has been offering Thimphu hundreds of millions of dollars in military and economic aid, not without its own geopolitical compulsions. Both India and Bhutan are yet to resolve their long-standing land border dispute with China, which has been pressuring Bhutan to reach a border deal over territory in the north and in the west in the Himalayas. A likely settlement will also need the implicit approval of Bhutan’s long-time ally, India.
At the end of the 13th Expert Group Meeting (EGM)—which supervises the progress of boundary talks—held between Bhutan and China in Beijing from August 21-24, both countries announced in a joint press release that they had agreed to speed up, and implement, simultaneous steps to put in place a “three-step roadmap” for a resolution of their long-pending boundary dispute. This was the third expert group meeting held in the current year.
The joint communiqué noted that the two sides had had “candid, friendly and constructive discussions” on implementing the roadmap on the basis of the agreement hammered out at the earlier EGMs. “One of the important outcomes of the 13th EGM is the establishment of the Joint Technical Team on the Delimitation of the China-Bhutan boundary which held its first meeting on the sidelines of the EGM,” the statement said.
Boundary talks between China and Bhutan have been an ongoing process since 1984 as both countries stake claim to the Doklam region. India, all along has backed the latter’s stance. Chinese international relations watchers say China and Bhutan came very close to reaching a final agreement around 1996, but the negotiations failed as India upset the apple cart. Since 1984, more than 24 rounds of border talks have taken place between China and Bhutan, besides 12 rounds of expert-level meetings.
In May 2023, the 12th Expert Group Meeting (EGM) was held in the Bhutanese capital, Thimphu, just four months after the 11th EGM talks were held in China’s Kunming, the capital and largest city of Yunnan province. As the Thimphu round of deliberations came to an end, both Bhutan and China said progress had been made towards implementing a “three-step roadmap” which would help resolve their boundary dispute.
The 11th EGM in January 2023 followed the 10th EGM in April 2021 after a long gap of two years. In view of that, it seems significant that, after the 12th round in May 2023, the 13th has followed within only three months—and in the Chinese capital—indicating a more rapid development in the talks.
The dispute has its roots in the acrimonious border negotiations between India and China. The bone of contention in this decades-long border standoff between the two countries is the strategic plateau of Doklam, situated close to the tri-junction of the three countries—India, Bhutan and China. If Beijing manages to seize control of this disputed plateau, it would allow China undeterred force mobilization as it will provide it greater access to land routes in case an armed conflict broke out with India.
Bold and unabashed Chinese intrusion across India’s Himalayan borders has led to rival military buildups and occasional clashes in the region. The 2017 China-India border clash, termed the ‘Doklam standoff’, was a military faceoff between India and China. What ignited the tinderbox was Chinese attempts at building a road in Doklam.
On June 16, 2017, Chinese soldiers with bulldozers, cranes, excavators, forklifts and dump trucks started work on extending a pre-existing road in Doklam to the south. On June 18, 2017, India launched its own response in the form of ‘Operation Juniper’, when about 270 armed Indian troops charged across the Sikkim border into Doklam armed with only two bulldozers to put a halt to the unwarranted Chinese activity. On August 28, however, both countries announced a troop withdrawal.
The India-China border crisis reached a head over the tri-junction demarcated by India’s Sikkim state to the west, China-occupied Tibet’s Chumbi Valley to the north and Bhutan’s Haa Valley to the east. India and China have had a long-standing faceoff over the exact location of this tri-junction.
The Bhutan-China border question has direct links with the festering decades-old India-China border crisis. The two countries share a frontier that has not been adequately demarcated, so both countries’ claims to the territory overlap. India estimates it to be 3,488 kilometres long, while China says it is 2,000 kilometres. The current status quo border lies in the Ladakh region to India’s north and runs all the way to Arunachal Pradesh in the east —which is also disputed since the Chinese call it ‘Southern Tibet’.
China stakes claim to roughly 269 sq.km in western Bhutan and 495 sq.km in north-central Bhutan, says the BBC. In 2020, China’s adventurism extended to 739 sq.km of territory in the Sakteng Wildlife Sanctuary in eastern Bhutan, claiming it to be a part of Mainland China, although most official Chinese maps have shown Sakteng to be a part of Bhutan. Even in China’s most ambitious—and contentious—2014 map claiming vast territories including Arunachal Pradesh, Sakteng Park was depicted to be a part of Bhutan.
Delhi has solid reasons to support Thimphu’s stand on Doklam. If China’s designs are successful, this strategically significant plateau for India would give Beijing a terrain advantage over Delhi at one of the most sensitive geographic points for India—the Siliguri Corridor, also known as the ‘Chicken’s Neck’, a 22-kilometre, narrow land bridge that connects Mainland India with its ‘Seven Sisters’ states in the North-East.
Significant data, including satellite images, indicates that China is engaged in building infrastructure—even small villages—inside sovereign Bhutanese territory. Bhutanese Prime Minister Lotay Tshering is reported to have told Belgian daily La Libre in an interview in March 2023, “no intrusion as reported in the media” has happened into Bhutanese territory. He had expressed the hope that Bhutan and China would find common ground in demarcating some of the boundaries in a couple of meetings.
This was perceived to indicate that Tshering was, possibly, bending to China’s pressure and preparing to cede territory to ‘resolve’ the border issue, a move that rang alarm bells in India’s security establishment. A 2012 India-China agreement says that, at points along boundaries shared between India, China and a third country, the border demarcation will be done upon agreement of all parties concerned. So, the border dispute can be amicably resolved only if all the three countries—India, Bhutan and China—manage to reach a consensual decision. (IPA Service)
(The author is a Defence, Aerospace & Political analyst based in Bengaluru)
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