Contested Views of Contested Territories: How Tajik Society Views the Tajik-Chinese Border Settlement

Abstract

This article examines the Tajik-Chinese border settlement and Tajik debates over it, both of which have yet to be extensively examined by either domestic or foreign scholarship. The long-standing territorial dispute between China and Tajikistan in the remote Pamir Mountains finally came to an end in January of 2011 with the ratification of the Tajik-Chinese Border Demarcation Protocol. Although the peaceful border settlement has laid the foundations for friendship between the two neighbours, Tajik attitudes varied significantly among different interest groups, ranging from overt opposition to overt support of the demarcation protocol.