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P anic has gripped the remote frontier villages of India ’s border with China, where tribal communities say they are being pushed back from their ancestral yak-grazing and hunting landsdue to a rapidly growing threat – the advancing Chinese Army. Satellite images accessed by The Independent show a rapid expansion of infrastructure at multiple sites along and near the disputed India-China frontier in Arunachal Pradesh , including new buildings, roads, as well as helipads. The imagery offers a rare visual record of the changing landscape along one of the most inaccessible sections of the frontier in the Himalayas , where competing territorial claims and the difficulty of maintaining a permanent Indian presence have left communities living close to the border increasingly anxious.
Takok Mra spoke to The Independent on the phone from his remote village around 20km from the border in India’s Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims in its entirety and calls Zangnan or Southern Tibet. He said he was willing to fight the Chinese army – if it comes to that. "The Chinese are currently encroaching on our ancestral land.
We eat, survive and run our livelihoods from here, and it is our land. They have already entered very far inside Indian territory," Mra says . "I cannot say exactly how many kilometres they have taken, but they have taken a lot.” With China’s Xi Jinping travelling to India to meet with his counterpart Narendra Modi this weekend, part of the largest Chinese delegation to travel to India in years, both countries’ governments have sought to play down any tensions at the border, denying there is an active standoff akin to the skirmishes that cost at least 20 Indian soldiers’ lives back in 2020 .
But the satellite images and testimony from border villages paint a different picture, one of sustained Chinese advances and infrastructure development in contested territory that remains part of talks between the two countries’ diplomatic and military officials. In the satellite images provided by Vantor, analysts note recent construction and infrastructure changes at multiple sites in the Upper Subansiri Valley, where Mra’s village of Gelemo is located. Two sites near Zhari town in the north of Lhunze County in Tibet, on the Chinese-held side of the frontier, show the clearest activity, according to Janes, a global open-source intelligence company.
“The satellite imagery confirms there is recent construction in the areas of interest,” say analysts at Janes, adding that when the satellite imagery is overlaid with both India's and China's competing interpretations of the border, the imagery shows that some of this infrastructure sits within territory claimed by both countries, placing it squarely inside the disputed zone. Satellite image shows Zhari town and a large village to its north in Lhunze County, Tibet, on 22 October 2022 (Satellite image ©2026 Vantor) Satellite image shows Zhari town and a large village to its north in Lhunze County, Tibet, on 4 March 2026. The images show the expansion of Zhari town and surrounding infrastructure, with new buildings, roads and cleared areas visible across the valley (Satellite image ©2026 Vantor) At one location south of the town, construction that began in early 2019 – with the first visible structures appearing by August that year – is still ongoing.
The site shows flattened land, construction while engineering vehicles are present, and a cement plant being installed. The possibility of it being for military use cannot be ruled out, analysts told The Independent . A separate construction site inside the town itself has, in the analysts' assessment, "roughly an even chance" of being a military facility.
Nearby, a stretch of road has been widened and its grade reduced – improvements that make it easier to move heavy equipment and are often a precursor to paving the road for year-round use. Satellite imagery shows a small village in southern Zhari town, Lhunze, Tibet, on 22 October 2022 (Satellite image ©2026 Vantor) Satellite imagery shows a small village in southern Zhari town, Lhunze, Tibet, on 4 March 2026 (Satellite image ©2026 Vantor) South of Luhnze, the imagery shows a new helipad built to replace two smaller ones, along with another new helipad further south. The latest Vantor image from August 2026 shows at least one structure now has a roof, indicating construction is still underway.
Analysts assess the site is likely military in nature, citing the layout, the presence of vehicles matching military patterns, and an adjoining training area. A new road connecting to the town was also built between February and May 2026. A comparison of satellite imagery shows changes and new development in Raorang in Tibet between 2 November 2022 and January 2026.
Pictures show some construction at several further sites with possible military characteristics, including one additional training area (Satellite image ©2026 Vantor) A road near the town was also constructed between February and May 2026. The allegations surface at a delicate moment in Sino-India relations. Xi’s visit to Delhi for the Brics summit is his first trip to India since the 2020 border skirmish in the Galwan Valley that saw relations between the two nuclear-powered nations plummet to their worst level in decades.
Xi is expected to travel with a delegation of around 400 officials. Amid growing clamour among locals over Chinese activity, two independent fact-finding groups travelled to Gelemo and Taksing – remote, high-altitude villages roughly 15-20km from the Sino-India border in the eastern Himalayas – to assess the situation on the ground. Tadak Pakba, president of the All Tagin Students' Union (ATSU), led a group of eight people to Gelemo and Taksing, gathering reports directly from local residents, tribal communities and military porters.
ATSU represents the Tagin Indigenous community of Arunachal Pradesh. Chinese vehicles carring traders enter Indian territory after crossing the China-India border at the 15 000-feet (4545-metre) Nathu La Pass, in India's northeastern state of Sikkim on May 19 ,2008 (AFP/Getty) Pakba says the way the alleged Chinese incursion is happening there now “has not been seen before”. “There is not only panic in border villages, but this is the fact of reality on the ground.
The Indian Army is going back and the Chinese army is coming forward,” he says. Between 11 and 13 August, local leader Pakba and his team conducted a three-day field investigation and reported Chinese encroachment at several positions normally patrolled by the Indian Army. These include remote hunting and yak-grazing grounds that for years have been accessible to Indian villagers.
"Villagers are currently forbidden from accessing these areas... this has caused panic among locals, leading some to move away from the border areas," Pakba says. “This is all very recent – happening since June this year,” he adds. An overview of Gelemo, a remote border village located in the Upper Subansiri district of Arunachal Pradesh, India (Supplied) The fact-finding report, submitted to the deputy commissioner of Upper Subansiri and the chief minister's office and seen by The Independent , demands "immediate intervention" into "reported presence and activities of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA)" in the Taksing-Gelemo frontier region.
It should be treated as a matter of "grave strategic and national importance," not an "ordinary developmental issue", the report says. The issue was first raised by the Nah Welfare Society (NWS), a local tribal body representing the Nah Indigenous community that migrated from Tibet and settled in Upper Subansiri district generations ago. It submitted a memorandum to the deputy commissioner of Upper Subansiri, claiming that the PLA has established roads, bridges and military camps in several locations traditionally used by local communities for grazing, hunting and the collection of forest produce.
"The intention and speed of the present activities of the Chinese PLA at Taksing are very alarming. We are losing our land inch by inch day by day," it added. For Mra, the alleged loss of access to traditional land along India's frontier with China is not an abstract territorial dispute – it is a personal loss.
His family has held this ancestral land since the 1962 India-China war. Takok Mra, a resident of Gelemo in Arunachal Pradesh, where concerns of Chinese incursion have been emerging (Supplied) "I am a true patriot. Give us weapons to save our country and our land," says the 38-year-old.
Tribal communities who hunt and graze in the Himalayan forests are more than just passive bystanders in the border conflict, and will pass information to the Indian Army about troop movements in the disputed regions. Mra says that as early as June, they informed the army about the presence of Chinese troops – after which the army became more active in the area. Expressing frustration over the lack of basic amenities such as electricity, roads, healthcare and schools in his village, Mra contrasts this with the aggressive Chinese infrastructure development near the border.
"When we reach our village Gelemo, we feel completely cut off from the world. Due to lack of basic facilities, our local people move to the district to earn a living, and that is why the border is slowly becoming empty," he says, suggesting that this movement of people from remote areas is in part allowing the Chinese army to advance. A second fact-finding mission was led by the People's Party of Arunachal Pradesh (PPA) – part of a regional bloc allied with India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – which sent a four-member team to the border areas.
Kapa Bengia, chief advisor to PPA and a former minister in the state, was part of the group which visited Taksing, Galemo, and Maza, one of the villages closest to the border. Bengia says: “They (Chinese Army) are already advancing, and our patrolling group is not allowed to move towards our own land.” The Nanga Pahar, a strategic border area in the remote Taksing circle used by the Nah and other tribal communities, have been declared a strictly prohibited zone for local residents, the report said. The Indian Army has broadly dismissed reports of a Chinese incursion into disputed territory as "incorrect and without any basis." However, India's foreign ministry was less direct in its response, describing border issues as a "more serious" part of maintaining peaceful relations between the two countries.
Indian government spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said: “We have also stated that the state of border affairs will reflect on the state of our larger bilateral ties.” China also issued a statement, though it neither confirmed nor denied fresh border tensions. "The China-India border situation is generally stable at the moment," said Guo Jiakun, a foreign ministry spokesperson in Beijing. The closest the Indian side has come to confirming any concerns came in Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Pema Kandhu's account of a meeting with defence minister Rajnath Singh.
Singh, he said, was "very concerned and proactive about this issue" and will "certainly provide the necessary infrastructural support" in the coming days. A 2023 shows a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Dirang in India's Arunachal Pradesh state (AFP/Getty) Ajay Murtem, a local public leader in Arunachal Pradesh and a native of Upper Subansiri district, says: "New battle lines between China and India will be drawn in Upper Subansiri district if the Indian government does not stop China's expansion into Taksing, Maja, Gelemo and the Shreechu valley." Murtem says the Tagin tribe – one of Arunachal Pradesh's major Indigenous communities – and its subclan Nah community hold ceremonial rituals at Potrang Lake, just an hour from Taksing. In recent days, however, tribal people have been stopped by the Chinese army from visiting the traditionally sacred Buddhist worship site.
“We are all patriots. The people living along the international frontier are not merely inhabitants of remote villages. They are also the eyes and ears of the nation along the border.” What is happening in Arunachal Pradesh is part of China's "salami slicing" strategy, says Srikanth Kondapalli, a professor of China studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, referring to a process in which small, incremental moves are made and consolidated over time rather than through one major incursion.
"First, the Chinese release some yaks and wait for the Indian army's response. If it's absent for months, they install a small shed, then convert it into a permanent structure – and when they face no resistance, they build a small army company," he explains, calling it a "grey zone" where the McMahon Line – the de facto boundary between India's Arunachal Pradesh state and Tibet – is not legally defined. File: Chinese President Xi Jinping and India Prime Minister Narendra Modi meet on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia October 23, 2024 (Reuters) The Indian government has made some efforts to launch its own version of Beijing’s frontier villages, which China has succeeded in populating and refers to has Xiaokang o r “well-off societies”, thereby bolstering its territorial claims.
India’s version – the Vibrant Village Programme – “has not been successful”, says Kondapalli, because “it needs a lot of ecosystem [building]”. “While China has constructed roughly 100 model villages in Longju, and from there they began expanding into Indian-claimed areas in Arunachal.” India's inability to regularly reach the de facto border or “line of actual control”, he says, gives China an opening to pursue its salami-slicing strategy. India and China border in Sikkim (AFP/Getty) "Until you prepare your infrastructure and consolidate your position on the line of actual control, there is simply no way that you can have any leverage.
The Chinese can come up to the line of actual control within 24 hours. They began road construction in the 1980s. We just woke up." The border issue is a major talking point in India, and domestic audiences will be watching closely for any developments during the summit this weekend.
But with any direct press interactions by Xi and Modi highly unlikely, Kondapalli says there is a relatively low chance of the matter being raised by either side. With China due to take over as Brics host next year, both countries are heavily invested in presenting this year’s talks as a success.
Source: The Independent
