Chinese Village in Arunachal Pradesh Mentioned in US Defense Report

The annual US Department of Defense report on military developments involving China highlights the US impression of tension along the Line of Actual Control, or LAC, and mentions the establishment of a 100-home Chinese town in Arunachal Pradesh. The report has been sent to the United States Congress.

According to a source close to the Chinese military, roughly 100 dwellings were built on Chinese soil as part of a nationwide poverty alleviation programme.

“Sometime in 2020, the PRC (People’s Republic of China) built a large 100-home civilian village inside disputed territory between the PRC’s Tibet Autonomous Region and India’s Arunachal Pradesh state in the eastern sector of the LAC,” the US Department of Defense writes in a chapter on the China-India border standoff.

“These and other infrastructure development projects along the India-China border have caused anxiety in the Indian administration and media,” the report reads.

The village in question is located on the banks of the Tsari Chu River in Arunachal Pradesh’s Upper Subansiri district, a place where India and Chinese soldiers clashed even before the 1962 conflict.

While China has had a small military outpost in the area for more than a decade, the situation changed dramatically in 2020 when it built a full-fledged village and increased road construction activity within Indian territory in the region.

“Despite ongoing diplomatic and military conversations to ease border tensions, the PRC has continued to take incremental and tactical moves to assert its claims at the LAC,” according to the US Department of Defense assessment.

Last month, Lieutenant General Manoj Pande, the Eastern Army Command Chief, informed reporters in Arunachal Pradesh that China is continuing to build “dual-use” border communities that may also be used to position soldiers.