Our top story tonight is about China’s silent invasion. Here, we have been telling you all about how China’s creeping invasion of countries at its borders is progressing. Tonight, we have satellite images that will paint the full picture of China’s regional belligerence.
The satellite images analyzed by the New York Times show settlements and villages with a Chinese military presence and all manners of banners and posters that would make you believe they are in China. These are villages with cookie-cutter homes and paved roads—roads that did not exist even a few years ago. These are new developments. Who put them there? What explains the sudden movement of people to these previously uninhabited villages?
If these questions crossed your mind, they are completely valid. Here’s the truth: several of these new villages and settlements are not in China. They are in India, Bhutan, Tajikistan, and Vietnam. In fact, China is building these villages and paying people to live there with the promise of a better life. They are what the Indian army calls dual-use villages, meaning they serve two purposes. First, they help China falsely project power in territories it does not have rights over. Second, they can serve as defense and military bases in case of conflict.
According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), an American think tank based in Washington, China has also established a militarized facility in one such village of Mig Yun, or Zari in Chinese. Satellite images show trucks and tents, as well as what appears to be a shooting range. This is proof of the dual-use nature of these villages. What’s more, China is not done. The Xi Jinping regime is adding more houses to the 100 other villages it has built. The idea is to get more people to shift there and give these villages a kind of permanence. By doing this, China aims to change the status quo and falsely claim control over contested or disputed areas—areas contested by different countries.
It’s clear now that China wants to use these civilian settlements to quietly solidify its control in far-flung frontiers. This is the same thing China is doing with fishing militias and islands in the disputed South China Sea. China claims that the villages are there for security, but strategic affairs experts say that in quietly building militarized villages, China is actually replicating on land an expansionist approach that it has successfully used in the South China Sea. On land, China’s operation has moved faster. It seems that in just eight years, the country has reshaped its frontiers by building these strategic civilian outposts.
Moreover, the inhabitants of these villages serve as the eyes and ears for the Chinese Communist regime. When it comes to India, the images reveal that China has put at least one village near every accessible Himalayan pass bordering India. It has also placed villages along passes bordering Bhutan and Nepal. These villages appear to be for civilians; they have schools, clinics, and houses. However, they also provide China’s military with access—to roads, the internet, and power. If and when the day arrives for conflict, the Chinese army could perhaps use these villages to quickly move troops to the border.
Of the new villages identified in Tibet, 11 settlements are in areas contested by Bhutan. Some of those 11 villages are near the Doklam region, the site of the standoff between Indian and Chinese troops in 2017. Naturally, the Chinese buildup is fueling anxiety in the entire region. These villages are a concern for the Indian army. Are the residents really civilians, or are they military personnel?
Border issues between India and China have still not been resolved since 2020, when deadly clashes broke out between Indian and Chinese troops along the border. Tens of thousands of soldiers from both sides remain on war footing. China talks about peace and says it wants dialogue with India, but it continues to redraw facts on the ground by planting settlers across new stretches of the Himalayas. China is making the people in these villages its first line of defense.
India has responded with what New Delhi calls the Vibrant Villages campaign. It is a campaign that aims to revive—not make—hundreds of villages along the border. The goal is to modernize the border villages of India, improve the quality of life of the people living there, leverage their tourism potential, and promote local cultural and traditional knowledge and heritage through the Vibrant Villages campaign. India is strengthening its security grid on the Line of Actual Control. However, while India is trying to revive the villages that have existed in these areas for thousands of years, China is creating new ones with the intention of invading.
Ultimately, these villages serve as propaganda for China. Every few months, China does this—it builds a new village here, makes a new military base there, and releases fake new maps with new names for places that do not belong to China. In its arrogance, China may pretend to unilaterally change history and the reality of a region, but that does not mean it will change the facts on the ground. China will do well to know that such actions will ultimately fail.
