China’s increasingly assertive approach to international diplomacy has been widely discussed with regard to strategic stress points such as the South China Sea or the Taiwan Strait. But tensions have also been increasing between India and China along their 2,100-mile border in the Himalayas, including a 10-week face-off between the two countries’ troops in 2017 and fatal hand-to-hand fighting in 2020.

Yet China’s latest move in the Himalayas is unusually provocative: It is carrying out full-scale settlement in another country’s territory.

Robert Barnett is a professorial research associate at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and an affiliate lecturer at the Lau China Institute at King’s College London.

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