China’s clout grows in South Asia, but can India raise its game?


China’s clout grows in South Asia, but can India raise its game?

Harsh V. Pant says the Chinese offers of economic cooperation and infrastructural development in India’s own backyard are reshaping regional relationships, and are a test of India’s own global ambitions

PUBLISHED : Friday, 19 January,



The past year has marked a turning point in Sino-Indian relations in more ways than one. If 2017 began with India taking a strong stance against China’s ambitious “Belt and Road Initiative”, it ended with China’s tightening grip in South Asia. In between was the 73-day long Doklam stand-off between Asia’s two giants. The year’s events underscore the challenges for this bilateral relationship in ways few would have anticipated in the recent past. India and China increasingly jostle with each other for strategic space. And South Asia is fast emerging a theatre of Sino-Indian rivalry.


China made an ambitious move in December by hosting the first trilateral meeting with the foreign ministers of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Afghan Foreign Minister Salahuddin Rabbani and Pakistan Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif joined their Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Beijing, where they reportedly agreed to work together to tackle the threat of terrorism. From China’s perspective, such terrorism is intricately linked to the security of its restive Xinjiang region. Beijing also gave a push to the Afghanistan peace process, in limbo since 2015.


Garnering much attention is the suggestion that China and Pakistan consider extending their US$57 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to Afghanistan. The Chinese foreign minister publicly expressed hope that the economic corridor could benefit the whole region and act as an impetus for development, but China’s moves were aimed at India, which has been steadfast in its refusal to accept the economic corridor.


Over the years, China has managed to tighten its economic bonds with India’s neighbours. The Maldives became the second country in South Asia, after Pakistan, to enter into a free trade agreement with China late last year. After Xi Jinping’s visit to the Maldives in 2014, the first by a Chinese president, the nation officially became part of the “21st century Maritime Silk Road”. China quickly expanded its economic profile in the Maldives by building mega infrastructure projects, including development of Hulhule and a bridge connecting Male to the country’s main international airport.


Pakistan’s former army chief, General Raheel Sharif, addresses the China-Pakistan 

Economic Corridor seminar in Gwadar, Pakistan, in April 2016. China recently 

expressed hope that the economic corridor could benefit the whole region and act 

as an impetus for development. Photo: AP


India’s ties with Nepal have also entered a difficult phase with the decisive victory of the coalition of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre), and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist), led by Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli. Soon after his victory, Oli visited the border with China in Rasuwagadhi and declared that the Rasuwagadhi-Kerung border point, the only transit point between Nepal and China, would be upgraded to international standards. This is an implicit challenge to India, which has been Nepal’s principal link to the world.


Oli blamed the blockade along the Nepal-India border in 2015 by Madhesi groups on India, making his intention of taking his country closer to China clear. In November last year, the government of prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba had cancelled a major US$2.5 billion hydroelectric project awarded to Chinese state company China Gezhouba Group, much to Beijing’s annoyance. The new Communist government in Nepal is likely to reverse that decision.


Beijing is also looking into the possibility of connecting Kathmandu to Tibet’s capital Lhasa via railways, at an estimated cost of US$8 billion, as part of the Belt and Road Initiative.


While China seems to be enjoying an upswing in relations throughout South Asia, not everything is going in its favour. The much-hyped China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project confronts serious problems. Pakistan reportedly rejected China’s offer of assistance for the US$14 billion Diamer-Bhasha Dam, asking Beijing to take the project out of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor so that Pakistan can build the dam on its own. Pakistan realised that the tough conditions imposed by Beijing pertaining to the dam’s ownership, operation and maintenance costs, as well as security, made the project politically and economically untenable. The Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka offers a cautionary example: China lent money and later took over the indebted port. Pakistan therefore gravitated towards self-financing.

http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2129480/chinas-clout-grows-south-asia-can-india-raise-its-game

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