XIAOKANG SOCIETY- CHINESE DEFENCE VILLAGES
CONTEXT:
- Recently, it was observed that the Chinese people have started occupying country’s ‘Xiaokang’ border defence villages, along its border with India’s northeastern region.
ORIGIN OF XIAOKANG:
- Since the beginning of China’s reform and opening-up, the Communist Party of China (CPC) began discussing the idea of a “Xiaokang society” about 40 years ago.
- It was in 2002, when 16th CPC National Congress formally proposed “building a Xiaokang society in all respects.”
- In 2012, the 18th CPC National Congress expanded this goal to focus on five aspects: economic, political, cultural, social, and ecological progress.
- China has been building these villages since 2019 along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), which separates India and China, but they were unoccupied until a few months ago.
ABOUT XIAOKANG- BORDER DEFENCE VILLAGES:
- China has been constructing 628 such Xiaokang along India’s borders with the Tibet Autonomous Region since 2019.
- They are also known as “well-off” villages.
- The villages have been constructed all along the LAC, including the Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh borders.
- These structures include double-storey, large and spacious buildings.
- Though the exact purposes of these villages have remained unclear, but they were understood to be dual-use infrastructure.
- Dual-use infrastructure means they can be used both for civil and military purposes and have thus been a concern from a defence perspective.
INDIA’S RESPONSE TO THE CHINESE DEFENCE VILLAGES :
- Countering this development, Indian government also announced the Vibrant Villages Programme in 2022.
- Vibrant Villages Programme aims to develop its border villages into modern villages with all amenities and also as tourist attractions.
- This programme builds on the existing Border Area Development Programme (BADP) under the Union Ministry of Home Affairs.
- India plans to develop 663 border villages into modern villages in the first phase under Vibrant Villages Programme.
- Out of them, at least 17 such border villages along the borders with China in Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh, have been selected for development as a pilot project.
