Let’s be wary of China’s New Silk Road

By G. Parthasarathy

The Hindu: China has got accustomed to violating India’s territorial integrity in Jammu and Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh. It transgresses international norms by supplying Pakistan with knowhow and designs of nuclear weapons and missiles. Its provocative behaviour includes protests over visits by Indian dignitaries to Arunachal.

China, meanwhile welcomes political figures from POK and Gilgit-Baltistan on official visits. Beijing also seeks to undermine India’s relations with South Asian neighbours such as Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Maldives and Bangladesh, backing politicians and political parties known to be less than friendly to India.

Finally, a 

studied reaction

New Delhi is, however, now reacting in a more measured manner to China’s policy of “strategic containment”. Ignoring warnings from China, India reinforced its claims to Arunachal Pradesh by encouraging a high profile visit to the State by the Dalai Lama, who acknowledges it as an integral part of India. The Dalai Lama pointedly visited Tawang, which has special spiritual significance for Tibetans.

But the proverbial last straw on the Indian camel’s back is the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) involving an investment of around $51 billion. The CPEC challenges Indian sovereignty by traversing Gilgit-Baltistan as part of Beijing’s larger Eurasian ‘One Belt One Road’ (OBOR) project. India cannot ignore the security threat that this project poses, as an integral part of a China-Pakistan axis to contain India, across the Indian Ocean region. 

Accompanying this project has been the laying of a fibre-optic cable connecting China’s People’s Liberation Army in Kashgar, Xinjiang province, and the Pakistan army’s GHQ in Rawalpindi. The CPEC enhances communications between the armies of China and Pakistan. It provides Beijing the road link to the port of Gwadar, which has been handed over to it by Pakistan. China has also agreed to provide Pakistan with a large number of frigates and submarines.

Smart routing

Gwadar is significantly located alongside the maritime routes for oil supplies to India from the Persian Gulf. China’s Maritime Silk Route, which complements the OBOR, traverses India’s shores in the Indian Ocean, from the Straits of Malacca to the Gulf of Aden. China is evidently seeking to surround India with a “string of pearls”, comprising base facilities in Kyaukpyu in Myanmar, Hambantota in Sri Lanka, Gwadar in Pakistan, Mombasa in Kenya and Djibouti in the Gulf of Aden.

The Chinese modus operandi is clear from what transpired in Sri Lanka. China undertook financially unviable projects in President Rajapaksa’s constituency and pushed Sri Lanka into a debt trap. Sri Lanka was compelled to hand over both the port and the neighbouring industrial area to China in a debt/equity swap. Despite this having triggered protest riots in Sri Lanka, China sought to berth a submarine in Colombo when Narendra Modi was visiting the island.

After carefully graduating its response to the CPEC, India finally made a statement, objecting to not just the fact that the CPEC violates our territorial integrity, but that it appears to be a project, whose exploitative terms would render the recipients bankrupt. The external affairs ministry’s spokesperson suggested, prior to the OBOR summit in Beijing, that the project was not based on “universally recognised international norms”, adding that it appeared to violate international norms of “openness, transparency and equality”. 

The statement also suggested that the project does not meet the principles of financial responsibility, which require avoidance of creating unsustainable debt in recipient countries. India noted that connectivity projects should involve transfer of skills and technology and respect “sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

Like its decision on taking the Kulbhushan Jadhav case to the International Court of Justice, the Government’s decision not to attend the OBOR summit in Beijing, was predictably criticised by the same critics. Ominous warnings were voiced that India would now find itself “isolated” by taking on an all-powerful China.

What transpired was somewhat different. Only 20 countries, mostly from South and South-East Asia and Africa, attended the summit. Given his dependence on China, President Vladimir Putin was the only major world leader present. This, despite the fact that Russian academics and others had expressed serious reservations on OBOR cutting through the Eurasian belt, major portions of which have historically been regarded by the Russians, as their backyard.

Chinese pettiness and petulance were evident when they expressed their displeasure by not inviting the respected prime minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong, who had the courage to say that territorial disputes in the South China Sea should be settled according to international law. The navies of India and Singapore held joint exercises in the South China Sea shortly thereafter. Moreover, within the OBOR conference, the Europeans and some others were quite vociferous.

The EU has strongly criticised China’s international trade and economic assistance policies. Senior EU leaders have made it clear that they believe that the OBOR project lacks a formal structure and that China has shown a lack of transparency. The EU is sceptical about China’s motives and its terms of trade and economic cooperation. EU functionaries feel Chinese policies are mercantilist.

Financial risks

The UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific has meanwhile warned of high financial risks in several OBOR projects. There are now apprehensions that Pakistan will be forced to go the Sri Lanka way. More importantly, there is growing realisation internationally that China is not a 21st-century Santa Claus and that the OBOR project is predominantly an effort by China to rebalance its economy and provide jobs for its vast labour and construction industry.

It is now time for India to work with Japan, the US and the EU to actively promote alternatives to Chinese economic exploitation in Asia and Africa. Moreover, Russia needs to be co-opted bilaterally and through funding by institutions such as the Brics Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank, to construct transport corridors through Iran to Afghanistan, the Caspian and Central Asia. 

The US has meanwhile renewed its proposal for a ‘New Silk Route’ across Asia, which India had welcomed. Finally, India and Japan should jointly build a transportation and industrial corridor to the shores of East Africa, where Modi’s visits have set the stage for expanding economic, industrial and energy cooperation, across the Indian Ocean.

China will have to learn that true economic development comes from transparent multilateral cooperation and not bilateral economic exploitation.

(The writer is a former High Commissioner to Pakistan.)