How tiny Bhutan plays a leading role in the battle between India and China

• Aletta André

  South Asia correspondent

Nothing in the valley of Haa suggests a power struggle between two giants. It is quiet on the streets and there are no soldiers in sight. Yet the valley, in the kingdom of Bhutan, is less than 40 kilometers from the mountain plain where the Indian and Chinese armies face each other.

Small Bhutan, with less than 800,000 inhabitants, is wedged between the two countries in the Himalayan mountains and plays an important diplomatic buffer role.

“Smaller states play an important role in ensuring that big powers do not play with fire,” said former Bhutan MP Passang Dorji, who obtained his PhD on international relations between Bhutan, China and India. “That also applies to Bhutan.”

At first glance, India is much closer than China in Haa. The Indian army has a large base there, which is a testament to the historic ‘special relationship’ between the two countries. Bhutan became a ‘protected state’ of British India in 1910 and remained so under independent India after 1947. Until 2007, India was formally involved in Bhutan’s foreign policy.

On the other hand, there are no diplomatic relations with China and the border was never formally established.

For generations, trading took place in the border area, but that has changed in recent years. “Previously, this entire market was full of Chinese goods,” says Wangchuk, 57, who owns a shop on the main street of the border town of Haa.

As a child he worked with his father as a yak herder. This is how he got to know the border area like the back of his hand. This came in handy later when he started trading goods with the Chinese shepherds. “I traded small goods like butter and cheese for thermoses and blankets,” he says.

This was never legal. Wangchuk once even ended up in prison for five months. Border trade was the practice in Haa until the corona pandemic. “Since then there has been no more trade. They won’t even let us near the border.”

The pandemic prompted the border to be closed on both sides. But there is more to this area. About 10 kilometers from Haa begins an area that is indicated on maps with a dotted line. It is one of the areas that, according to Indian and Bhutanese maps, belongs to Bhutan, but is also claimed by China.

Since 1984, Bhutan and China have held several rounds of talks. India always had a big finger in the pie. In the late 1990s, China offered to give up an area in the north in exchange for the area near Haa. Bhutan refused, reportedly under pressure from India.

India fears that if China gets this area, the border between India and China would shift a bit to the south, and China would gain a very strategic vantage point on a vulnerable part of India: the so-called chicken neck, a narrow strip of land that covers most of India connects to the northeast of the country, which lies east of Bangladesh.

In the meantime, China is increasing the pressure. In the Doklam Valley, within Bhutan and close to the western tripoint, China built a road a few meters from the Indian border. This almost led to war between the two nuclear powers in 2017.

A few years later, in 2021, the American magazine Foreign Policy reported that in the few years before, China had built dozens of kilometers of roads, a small hydroelectric power station and several military bases in northern Bhutan.

Wangchuk has noticed something similar in the mountains northwest of Haa. “On the land we used during our parents’ time, they have built roads and are entering Bhutan,” he says. “They are coming close to our grazing land. There are Chinese military camps.”

According to former MP Dorji, this pressure is leading to a change in Bhutan’s foreign perspective. “China has become a geopolitical reality and an established power in South Asia. So it is in Bhutan’s long-term interest to resolve the border issues.”

Last year, after eight years, another round of talks took place, after which the then Prime Minister of Bhutan, in conversation with journalists in India and elsewhere, indicated that a final border agreement with China would not be long in coming. The outcome is awaited with some apprehension in India.

Unnecessary, according to Dorji. “Bhutan’s foreign policy is neutral. We balance in the sense that we will never do anything with one party that is not in the interest of the other party. After all, it is not in Bhutan’s interest to end up in the line of fire of two superpowers.”

He sees demarcated borders and more formal relations with China as inevitable in the current era. “There is an impression in India and the West that whatever Bhutan does with China is always bad for India. That is not true. If we do not have a border conflict with China, it will stabilize the entire region. This will also contribute to better relations between India and China.”