President Xi Jinping is the most absolute Chinese ruler since Chairman Mao Zedong. His superficially posited economic reforms notwithstanding, he presides over a totalitarian state that is going through unprecedented recentralisation of authority and ‘clean-up’. Such Stalinist-Maoist impulses lead to regime insecurities that explain the tools from the 1950s and 60s like propaganda, censorship, extreme controls, purges, suppression, mass mobilisation etc. being deployed, all conflated towards imposing a powerful brand of nationalism that underpins the much-vaunted, ‘Chinese Century’.

The relative diminishment of the West and the parallel rise of ‘Sinosphere’ is doubly leveraged to legitimise, galvanise and paint a favourable narrative, one that justifies the radical steps and essentially allays the dictator’s natural insecurities.

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Given China’s largely (not completely) monolithic status with a predominant Han majority accounting for over 91 per cent of the population, the forced acculturation or cultural-imperialism of the uneasy minorities within, like the Tibetans, Uyghurs, Zhuang, Hui, Miao etc., living typically on the borders of the country, is subject to the historical project of Sinicization.

The primary driver for Sinicization is the perennial fear of territorial disintegration, even as it harbours further ambitions of expansionism.

To retain its iron grip over restive areas, the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) regime is answerable to none except its own leadership, and can go to any extent, including ‘demographic genocide’.

Xinjiang Province has a well-documented infamy for draconian measures such as concentration camps (officially called Vocational Education and Training Centres), forced birth control, religious persecution etc., all masked under what Xi Jinping calls, “struggle against terrorism, infiltration and terrorism”.

Similarly, planned demographic changes in Tibet with the resettlement of the majority Han populace in Tibetan enclaves has led to much disquiet and disillusionment – but the officialdom in Beijing remains beyond any reproach or questioning. The forced indoctrination of minorities and the selective propping and ‘pushing-up’ of those who agree to sink personal identities towards Sinicization objectives, are primitively used as propaganda trophies.

The appointment of a loyal Tibetan as the 11th incarnation of the Panchen Lama, whilst compromising on religious preconditions or local considerations towards the same, is one such example.

The Chinese are adept at giving hollow nomenclatures to hide their malicious intent, like calling forward regions like Xinjiang and Tibet ‘autonomous regions’ and appointing pliant members from local communities to fill positions and roles framed by the actual string-pullers in Beijing.

This results in dubious ‘affirmative action’ schemes, construction projects, infrastructural development initiatives etc., that essentially aim to strengthen the vice like grip of the CCP, through its PLA (People’s Liberation Army).

One such initiative out of the Chinese playbook of devious control is the development of ‘Border Defence Villages’ that aim to enhance strategic connectivity for potential militaristic deployment, secure preferential demographic changes, quash local disaffection and posture ‘civic normalcy’ to falsely claim sovereignty over ‘disputed areas’. Of specific concern to India is the ‘Plan for the Construction of Well-Off Villages in the Border Areas of the Tibet Autonomous Region (2017-2020)’ that had envisaged over 600 such Border Defence Villages.

Besides hosting strategic reserves and security encampments, these surreal villages are expected to house the CCP overseers and successfully indoctrinated local populace who could also be a part of the larger Sinicization project, by resettling the Han majority. Systematically mapped and layered into ‘first line’ and ‘second line’ along the contentious borders or even in ‘disputed areas’, these projects aim to develop into ‘party building positions and indestructible battle fortress’– seamlessly coalescing the various military-political-civil imperatives into a singular infrastructure. These ‘resettled’ villages are an unmistakable and frequent component of creeping land-grab and encroachment that was seen earlier in the Yadong county of Tibet that was worryingly close to the tense Doklam plateau, which had flared up in 2017.

In typical Chinese style the authorities then dismissed reports of provocative territorial assertion, by suggesting that it was only to, “relocate 3,222 people of 960 families to the weakly controlled areas on the border on a voluntary basis!”

Recently the reports of a similar 101 hutment ‘village’/military base in Tsari Chu valley in the ‘disputed area’ with India, are reflective of the continuing Chinese machinations. From virtually no substantial construction on site as per satellite images from 26 August 2019, to a decidedly more robust ‘village’ as per pictures from 1 November 2020, is a typical Chinese story.

While New Delhi acknowledged, ‘recent reports on China undertaking construction work along the border areas with India’, the essential narrative in India soon regressed into partisan debate about ‘previous government’ etc., a wasted consideration of political one-upmanship that a CCP does not need to account for in its unitary dictatorship.

The Chinese government’s unofficial mouthpiece, Global Times, completely overturned Indian concerns in its counter article, ‘Indian media hype of village construction in South Tibet shows intent to covet LAC area’, incredulously implying hostile intent by India, instead. India now must frame its arguments on the vileness of such ‘resettlements’ in the context of Chinese ‘expansionism’ and ‘demographic changes’ that are both well understood globally, and definitely so, by almost all its consequential neighbours.

In recent times, the brutal and proven mishandling of the Uyghurs and Donald Trump’s parting shot of calling for a US consulate in Tibet (through the Tibetan Policy and Support Act of 2020) has brought simmering heat on China, to call its bluff and sophistry.

The new Biden administration had also put considerable pressure on the European Union to slow down its push for a major investment deal with China, owing to concerns of ‘forced labour in Xinjiang’.

Already the waters of the South China Sea remain choppy with China-wary neighbours; Hongkong and Taiwan are facing direct wrath; the likes of Australia have been unusually vocal and others like the once-falling-into-the-trap Nepal are facing ideological implosion. India needs to stitch its own border concerns to the larger, palpable and intractable portents of Chinese expansionism and Sinicization that resonates globally.

The post-Covid China will also be morally suspect, distrusted and enfeebled with its proven downplaying of the pandemic that the rest of the globe had to suffer.

The writer is Lt Gen PVSM, AVSM (Retd) and former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry.