Rajnath Singh matches Xi Jinping, talks up role of border villagers

In 2017, the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced with fanfare, a new border village policy: This involved resettling Tibetan graziers in “model villages” in disputed areas along the Sino-Indian border.

 

 In fact, the Chinese border policy had already been implemented since 1995. In an acclaimed investigative article in May 2021, in Foreign Policy magazine, Tibetologist Robert Barnett recounted how this worked: Since 1995, CCP officials in Tibet had ordered border graziers to not return to their villages in winter. Instead, they were to spend winter driving their yak herds over disputed land and planting Chi-nese

First Published: Jan 21 2024 | 11:40 PM IST