China’s ‘Silk Road’ stirs unease
Infrastructure projects raise nation’s clout, prestige in Asia
BEIJING — In a mountain valley in Kashmir, plans are underway for Chinese engineers guarded by Pakistani forces to expand the lofty Karakoram Highway in a project that is stirring diplomatic friction with India.
The work is part of a sprawling Chinese initiative to build a “new Silk Road” of ports, railways and roads to expand trade in a vast arc of countries across Asia, Africa and Europe. The Asian Development Bank said the region, home to 60 percent of the world’s people, needs more than $26 trillion of infrastructure investment by 2030 to keep economies growing.
Some governments, including Washington, Moscow and New Delhi worry that China, the world’s biggest trader, also is trying to build its own political influence and erode theirs.
Others have said they fear China might undermine human rights, environmental and other standards or leave poor countries burdened with debt.
India is unhappy that Chinese state-owned companies are working in the Pakistani-held part of Kashmir, the Himalayan region claimed by both sides. Indian leaders see that as an endorsement of Pakistani control.
“We have some serious reservations about it, because of sovereignty issues,” said India’s finance and defense minister, Arun Jaitley, at an Asian Development Bank meeting this month in Yokohama, Japan. China has previously said its highway work “targets no third country.”
China’s initiative is ramping up as President Donald Trump focuses on domestic issues, downplaying foreign affairs.
American officials say
wants to work with China on infrastructure. But some political analysts say China is trying to create a political and economic network centered on China and push the United States out of the region.
Trump’s decision to pull out of the proposed 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership deprives China’s neighbors of a tool they hoped would counter its rising influence, said Max Baucus, the U.S. ambassador to China until January.
“Southeast Asian countries would tell me, ‘We want you, we want the TPP, then we can balance China with the United States,’” Baucus said.
The project is dubbed “One Belt, One Road,” after ancient trade routes through the Indian Ocean and Central Asia.
Details such as financing are vague. But since Xi announced it in 2013, China has started dozens of projects from railways in Tajikistan, Thailand and Kenya to power plants in Vietnam and Kyrgyzstan.
Countries including Pakistan and Afghanistan welcome it as a path out of poverty. India, Indonesia and others want investment but are wary of China’s strategic ambitions.
Indonesia’s political elite have a “fear of regional hegemony” by China, said Christine Tjhin, senior researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta.
Russian officials worry China is diluting Russian influence in Central Asia by linking Uzbekistan and other countries more closely to China’s more dynamic economy.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has responded by proposing a “Great Eurasia Project,” with China leading on economics and Moscow on politics and security.
“This vision enables the Kremlin to maintain an appearance that it retains the political initiative in its neighborhood,” said a report by the Center for Eastern Studies, a think tank based in Warsaw, Poland.