On 16 June 2017 Chinese troops with construction vehicles and road-building equipment began extending an existing road southward in Doklam, a territory that is claimed by both China and India's ally Bhutan.

[4][13][14] China's claim on Doklam is based on the 1890 Convention of Calcutta between China and Britain, which states in Article I:[15] The boundary of Sikkim and Tibet shall be the crest of the mountain range separating the waters flowing into the Sikkim Teesta and its affluents from the waters flowing into the Tibetan Mochu and northwards into other Rivers of Tibet.

[21] Localized tensions arose in the 1960s but in the 1970s negotiations between China and Bhutan, with India sometimes playing a supporting role, failed to create a consensus on the status of the Doklam plateau.

Bhutan and China have held 24 rounds of boundary talks since they began in 1984, with notable agreements reached in 1988 and 1998, the latter also prohibiting the use of force and encouraging both parties to strictly adhere to peaceful means.

[4] On 16 June 2017, Chinese troops with construction vehicles and road-building equipment began extending an existing road southward on the Doklam plateau.

[26] On 30 June, Ministry of External Affairs of India released the statement entitled Recent Developments in Doklam Area stating its official position.

[27] It charges China of changing status quo in violation of a 2012 understanding between the two governments regarding finalizing the tri-junction boundary points and causing security concerns, widely understood as at its strategic Siliguri Corridor.

[28] It says that "Indian personnel" at Doka La coordinated with Bhutan and "approached the Chinese construction party and urged them to desist from changing the status quo.

On 3 July 2017, China Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Geng Shuang stated that former Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru accepted the 1890 Britain–China treaty:[30]On September 26 of the same year, when writing back to Premier Zhou Enlai, Prime Minister Nehru unequivocally stated "the boundary between Sikkim and Xi Zang, China was defined by the 1890 Convention.

On 5 July 2017, the Chinese government said that it had for the past 24 months a basic consensus with Bhutan that Doklam belongs to China, and there was no dispute between the two countries.

[42] On 16 August 2017, the Chinese state-run Xinhua News Agency released a segment of its show "The Spark" on Twitter racially attacking India.

[43] On 9 October 2017 China announced that it was ready to maintain peace at frontiers with India reacting to Indian Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's visit to Nathu La.

[47][48] The Times of India, citing a source, reported: "Our soldiers sit on the top, hold the ridge and can swiftly intervene, as they pro-actively did in mid-June, if the People's Liberation Army once again tries to unilaterally change the status quo by constructing a road near the Sikkim-Bhutan-Tibet tri-junction.

The Indian news channel NDTV reported that, by the end of the day, Chinese road-building equipment was removed from the face-off site.

[45][46] The Washington Post commented that it was not clear if China had offered any concessions in return for the Indian withdrawal, such as agreeing to halt road construction.

[52] On 5 September, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping held hour-long discussions on the sidelines of the BRICS summit.

[53] On 7 September, some media reports claimed that both nations' troops still were patrolling the area at the face-off site, simply having moved 150 metres back from their previous position.

"[57] However, ENODO Global, a risk management firm, having done a study of social media interactions in Bhutan, recommended that the government should "proactively engage" with citizens and avoid a disconnect between leaders and populations.

[55] Scholar Rudra Chaudhuri, having toured the country, noted that Doklam is not as important an issue for the Bhutanese as it might have been ten years ago.

During the standoff — which coincided with the peak flood season — China refused to transmit this data to India, saying that the measuring stations had been washed away.