Team News Riveting
After the setback in Doklam, China is investing in a massive project in northern Bangladesh that could pose a major security threat for India in the long run.
The proposed site is very close to India’s vulnerable Siliguri Corridor.
China made a vain attempt to choke the strategic but vulnerable ‘chicken’s neck’ (also known as the Siliguri Corridor) from the north through Bhutan. Now, it plans to move from the south through Bangladesh.
Chinese had attempted to occupy the strategic Doklam plateau near the tri-junction of India, Bhutan and Chinese-occupied Tibet in 2017. It resulted in the 73-day standoff between Indian and Chinese forces at Doklam.
Had the Chinese succeeded, they would have gained immense strategic advantage from Doklam over the ‘chicken’s neck’ which is barely 50 kilometers away. They would then have been able to choke the vulnerable corridor that connects Northeast India with the rest of the country.
After being forced to retreat from Doklam, China now banks on the “Teesta River Comprehensive Management and Restoration Project” in Northern Bangladesh. It is funding the $983 million mega project involving dredging the Teesta river (which originates in Sikkim and flows through North Bengal into Bangladesh) to increase its depth, building embankments to restrict the width of the river to one kilometer and reclaiming land from its floodplains.
The Teesta, after entering Bangladesh, flows almost parallel to the Indo-Bangla border. The facilities that China would build on the bank would be within a distance of 10 kilometers to 30 kilometers from the international border.
Chinese companies will also build factories, including a large solar power plant, and a satellite city to complement Rangpur (the headquarters of the eponymous administrative division of Bangladesh) that will be just 40-odd kilometers away from the Indo-Bangla border.
At least some of the townships that Beijing plans to build near the factories it will set up on the northern banks of the Teesta will be exclusively Chinese facilities inhabited, maintained and protected by the Chinese.
China has built similar townships in many other countries, and all these townships, like the Shwe Kokko township in Myanmar (read this), are ‘no-go’ zones for even locals.
These townships are often security posts with sophisticated surveillance equipment protected by well-armed Chinese soldiers in the garb of private security guards.
