Policy Paper - Geopolitics in the H imalayas:

In this agreement, the P RC promised to respect the ‘independence, s overeignty a nd territorial integrity o f Bhutan’ a nd, together w ith Thimphu, agreed ‘that prior to the ultimate solution of the boundary issues, peace and tranquillity along the border should be m aintained.’ It also promised to uphold ‘the s tatus quo o f the boundary prior t o March 1959’, and ‘not to resort to unilateral ac. [...] 17 For t he full t ext o f t he a greement see the a ppendix of Thierry M athou, ‘Bhutan-China Relations: Toward a New Step in Himalayan Politics’, K arma Ura a nd Sonam K inga (eds.), The Spider and the P iglet ( Proceedings of the First International Seminar on Bhutan S tudies) (Thimphu: T he Centre for B hutan Studies, 2 004), pp. [...] Box 2: Settling Chinese citizens i n Bhutan On 28th October 2017, Xi J inping, General S ecretary of t he CCP, replied to a letter f rom herders in the Tibet Autonomous Region’s (TAR) s outhern Lhunze County in which he u rged them t o ‘set d own r oots in the border area, s afeguard the C hinese t erritory and d evelop t heir hometown.’2 0 The m essage followed t he announcement o f a scheme b y. [...] H owever, f or the sake o f s implicity this report will refer t o the part o f the river in Tibet as the River Yarlung T sangpo a nd t he p art in India as the R iver Brahmaputra. [...] But geopolitical considerations have a lso taken r oot in the minds of British strategists, p articularly when the leading r evisionist i n the Indo-Pacific – the PRC – has acquired t he m aterial p ower and political capacity to d isrupt the wider r egional order and threaten t he m aritime c ommunication lines on which the UK d epends.