China is building new villages on its remote Himalayan border. Some appear to have crossed the line

High in the mist-shrouded Himalayas, a winding mountain road opens to a clearing in the pine forested valley, revealing rows of uniform Tibetan-style houses, each topped with a Chinese flag. Construction is booming in this remote place. Piles of logs and other building materials line the road. On a nearby hillside, cranes tower over rising housing blocks.

“They are building resettlement houses here,” says the Chinese travel vlogger who captured these scenes last year, speaking into his phone on a roadside. “When people live and settle here, it undeniably confirms that this is our country’s territory.”

But the village – known as Demalong and formally founded in March last year with a community of 70 families, according to a government notice seen in the footage – is not only located in territory claimed by the world’s ascendent superpower.

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