Recently, the news that the “Donglang No. 1 Village” was built in Yadong County, Xigaze City, Tibet triggered speculation in the Indian media. This small village named Pangda Village was used by the Indian media. Described as “built two kilometers within Bhutan.”
A Global Times reporter checked the satellite map on the 22nd and found that Pangda Village is undoubtedly within China, about 22 kilometers away from Yadong County in a straight line. Sino-Indian relations and borders Experts in the field said that Indian media reports are untrue.
According to public information, in September 2020, Yadong County finally identified 27 households with 124 farmers and herdsmen to relocate voluntarily from Shangdui Village (4,630 meters above sea level), Duina Township, Yadong County to Pangda Village.
Yadong County is located on the southwestern border of the motherland, at the southern foot of the middle section of the Himalayas. It is adjacent to Bhutan to the east and south, and Sikkim to the west.
The “Donglang Standoff” that once put Sino-Indian relations into tension in 2017 took place. The border area of Yadong County.
According to public reports, Pangda Village is 35 kilometers away from the county seat, and online map distance measurement shows that the straight-line distance between the two places is about 22 kilometers.
However, India’s New Delhi TV station and “The Times of India” reported that “Pangda Village is located within 2 kilometers of Bhutan”. However, the Bhutanese ambassador to India, Vetsop Namgyel, once stated that “there are no Chinese villages in Bhutan.”
“Pangda Village must be in China.” Zhang Yongpan, deputy director of the Tibet Office of the Frontier Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told a reporter from the Global Times on the 22nd that Pangda Village is located on the Yadong River (Kangbuma Song). The west bank, and both banks of this section of the river, southward to the watershed of the Donglang Ridge, are undoubtedly Chinese territory. The map cited by the Indian media is wrong.
The “Collection of Treaties on Border Affairs of the People’s Republic of China-Zhongbujuan” published in 2004 by the Department of Treaties and Laws of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China pointed out that the border between China and Brazil has never been officially delimited by a treaty or agreement, but there is a tradition between the two countries Customary lines, the border areas are basically stable.
The reporter saw from the online map that the straight-line distance between Pangda Village and the southernmost Jiepu Mountain Pass in Yadong County is still 6.6 kilometers.
In August 2017, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued the “Facts of Indian Border Forces Crossing into Chinese Territory and China’s Position in the Sikkim Section of the China-India Boundary”, which clearly pointed out that the Donglang area was based on the 1890 Sino-British Conference Tibet-India Treaty.
It is Chinese territory. Pangda Village is undoubtedly located in the Donglang area in China. This is undoubtedly a fact that no external forces can tamper with.
“In fact, the dispute between China and the border between China was very small, but it was not officially demarcated because of India’s open and secret obstruction.”
Qian Feng, director of the Research Department of the National Institute of Strategic Studies at Tsinghua University, said in an interview with the Global Times on the 22nd.
India, out of the mentality of “South Asian hegemony”, regards Bhutan as its sphere of influence, and every time the border negotiations between China and Bhutan come to a critical point, India will come to intervene. In Qian Feng’s view, the Indian media’s hype of this matter is to create the illusion that “China cannibalize Bhutan’s territory and bully the small with the big” and to provoke the irrelevant.
“However, judging from the official response of Bhutan, no The Dan side has seen through the true intentions of India to sow discord, which also shows that Bhutan values its friendly relations with China.”
In the family portraits of 27 residents in Pangda Village published by the domestic media, the small villages surrounded by mountains and rivers are paved with brand-new asphalt roads, and two-story Tibetan buildings with prefabricated steel structures are staggered.
Coverage, plazas, village committees, clinics, police offices, kindergartens, supermarkets, plastic runways, etc. are all available. A reporter from the “Global Times” once arrived in Bhutan, which is only about 30 kilometers away from the area, in 2017. He can clearly feel that due to the complex terrain, it is very difficult to construct infrastructure in this area.
Zhang Yongpan told the Global Times that the completion of this small village shows that with the substantial improvement of my country’s infrastructure construction capacity in recent years, technical capabilities can fully support the construction of border areas.
Zhang Yongpan also said that the rapid completion of this village has a lot to do with the Tibet Autonomous Region’s plan for the construction of a well-off village in the border areas during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, which has greatly improved the living standards of border residents.
According to public information, the Tibet Autonomous Region issued the “Plan for the Construction of Well-off Villages in the Border Areas of the Tibet Autonomous Region (2017-2020)” in 2017, and decided to review the 628 first- and second-line administrative villages in the region (including 427 first-line villages and 201 second-line villages).
The construction of a well-off village was implemented in the “Water, Electricity, Roads, Education, Science, Culture, and Sanitation” to improve the production and living conditions of border residents, involving 62,000 border residents and 242,000.
Qian Feng said that there are sparsely populated places in the border between China and Africa, but there are many places where Chinese border people live and graze for a long time, and their production and living conditions are relatively difficult. Only people in the border areas can truly safeguard China’s territorial sovereignty.
“Now my country has the ability to provide local natural villages with better infrastructure, attract more people to live, and make the people prosperous. This will prevent sparsely populated border areas from appearing. Happening.”
“Yadong is a very special place in Tibet, the natural environment is very beautiful, and it is also a natural passage in history.” Zhang Yongpan said that Yadong has been an important passage from Tibet, China to India and Bhutan for thousands of years. In the Qing Dynasty, the locals lived on trade with India, Bhutan and Sikkim.
New villages in Yadong County and an increase in the local population will benefit the interconnection between China and the surrounding areas and objectively benefit the entire region. development of.
It is understood that in recent years, the reason for the delay in making progress on the border issue between China and Bhutan is mainly because India is obstructing it and forcing Bhutan to make excessive demands on China.
The Indian media has recently continuously created so-called “controversies” over the border between China and Nepal, and it is nothing more than an attempt to conceal India’s tactics of eroding control over the border issue. Such attempts will not succeed.
China has successfully delimited borders with all its land neighbors except India and Bhutan. India has disputes over territorial sovereignty with most neighboring countries.
In recent years, it has expanded its territorial claims by amending the constitution and unilaterally changing the map. Discord with small and medium-sized countries in South Asia, Hindu extreme nationalism and regional hegemonism may become the biggest threat to peace and stability in South Asia.
