India makes its displeasure clear on China’s grand road project

“CONNECTIVITY projects must be pursued in a manner that respects sovereignty and territorial integrity”, responded India angrily when it turned down China’s invite to attend its much-publicised Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Forum meeting in Beijing last week.

India’s ire towards China stems from its anxieties related to the $52 billion (R670bn) 3 200km China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which runs through the disputed part of Kashmir, that India claims as its own.

CPEC showcases China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which was meant to help transport petroleum goods from Pakistan’s Gwadar port by road to Kashgar in Xinjiang province. Besides side-stepping choke points on the sea routes that are used to ferry fuel to China, the economic corridor also endeavoured to shift the pole of Pakistan’s development closer towards that of China. A recent exposé by a Pakistan daily, The Dawn, lends credence to this view as it shows that China is not just building a road between the two countries, but it will also take care of everything: its agriculture, industry and even protecting it from terror attacks.

China believes that BRI will rebuild the world economy when it revives the maritime and more famously the old silk route that meandered from the cities of the Levant through Central Asia to culminate near Kunming in China. The project is truly breathtaking in its implications, and seeks to reorder the world economy in a manner that has not been attempted before.

India, though, is unimpressed. The sharp statement by its foreign office suggests that New Delhi believes the countries that participate in the BRI will be burdened by a huge debt and would suffer from severe environmental degradation.

India’s misgivings about Chinese debt are inspired by the grief that has visited Sri Lanka after it failed to repay an $8bn loan. Sri Lanka is expected to hand over Hambantota harbour to the Chinese for settling its debt. The harsh terms of debt settlement rankles Colombo, and it supports India on how the BRI could hurt national sovereignty.

The Chinese, on the other hand, are keen to enlarge their influence in strategically located Sri Lanka, and are even offering $28bn from their BRI corpus.

From the look of it, Sri Lanka will be circumspect before it commits itself to more investment from China or anywhere.

In India, though, the jury is still out whether it did the right thing of stepping away from such an important forum on the issue of “sovereignty” when so many other countries were participating.

The trade between the two countries is about $100bn and expected to rise further if the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi does not take its opposition to BRI seriously and replicates it at a policy level. What commentators are asking is why the government has taken a decision that isolates it in the Asian region as well as elsewhere.

Though an obvious foreign policy misstep, admirers of Modi see in this decision a move at nation building; an act of defiance against a country that was perceived to be deliberately suppressing India’s endeavour at greatness by stalling its attempts at entering the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).

What also rankles India is the manner in which Beijing is building its hostile neighbour,

Admirers of Modi see this as a move at nation building

Pakistan’s economy. India’s security establishment perceives China’s acts as a strategic threat.

A campaign spearheaded by the ideological mother ship of the ruling BJP – Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) – has been initiated against Chinese investments in the country.

The campaign involves collecting signatures from all the districts of the country that will be submitted to the head of RSS. Last year, too, these organisations had given a call to boycott Chinese crackers and other products during the festival season.

The Chinese ambassador to India had made light of this call, but the public rejection of its goods had caused a small setback in its trade with India. Quite evidently, India wants to make Chinese engagement with Pakistan expensive and is conveying this message that it is high time Beijing decided whom it wanted as a friend: India or Pakistan.

A similarly aggressive strategy is being played out with Russia. The Indian government is believed to have told Moscow it would have to put on hold nuclear plants that it proposes to build with Russia if it fails to convince its ally China from lifting roadblocks on the NSG membership.

This new aggression in India’s foreign policy may not yield the desired result if the US’S new flirtation with China aggravates India’s isolation. The face-off may turn ugly if both Pakistan and China think that the safety of their expensive CPEC is being threatened by India. Chinese President Xi Jinping could use this manifest Indian hostility to prove a point both within as well as in the region.