The awkward elephant in the room when Xi and Modi meet
- India’s opposition to China’s Belt and Road Initiative is likely to complicate President Xi Jinping’s visit to India next month
- This comes as India grapples with the challenge posed by the initiative in the region
The plan remains a thorny issue in relations. In the past two weeks alone, this has manifested in two ways. First, during Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s September 7 visit to Pakistan, when both countries reiterated their objective of expanding the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a flagship belt and road project.
The expression of support brought a sharp response from India, which said it “reject[s] the reference to Jammu and Kashmir in the joint statement issued by China and Pakistan after the recent visit of the Chinese foreign minister” and “consistently expressed concerns to both China and Pakistan on the projects in [the] so-called China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which is on the territory of India that has been illegally occupied by Pakistan since 1947”.
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Second, India skipped a September 10 meeting of the Eurasian Economic Forum organised by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Xian. India and Pakistan both joined the SCO in 2017.
Officials suggested the reason for India’s absence was the SCO’s backing of the belt and road plan. Indeed, the SCO’s strong support for the initiative has made for awkward semantics at the grouping’s summits, where India has been the only member not to affirm support for it in joint statements issued after the meetings.
India’s main opposition to the belt and road plan lies in the CPEC, which passes through Indian territory. Its concerns have, however, gone beyond the corridor, with Delhi highlighting the debt burdens that some countries have come under on account of Chinese-funded projects.
The larger problem for India – and one it is yet to resolve – is dealing with the broader challenge posed by the belt and road strategy in its neighbourhood.
While projects are running into troubled waters in South and Southeast Asia, many countries are not able to find credible alternatives to Chinese financing, so they continue to seek Chinese investments.
A common perception is that the Indo-Pacific strategy pushed by the Trump administration is focused too much on security, instead of economic issues. While the US, Japan and India closely cooperate on security matters, this needed to be translated into offering a more credible economic counterweight to China. This has made it difficult for criticism of the plan, voiced chiefly by the US and India, to gain traction, even if it does highlight issues such as unsustainable financing and a lack of transparency.
At the same time, China’s insistence on framing the CPEC as a flagship corridor of the belt and road – and routing the corridor through Indian territory – has left little space to bridge the gap between the two countries.
Considering that it is a matter of sovereignty, India has no option but to continue opposing it.
All of which has left the belt and road as an awkward elephant in the room when Xi comes calling next month. India and China, at least, have more than a little experience in dealing with a complicated and intractable dispute that continues to cast a shadow on their relations, however much both sides would like to pretend it is not a hindrance. ■
The writer is AsiaGlobal Fellow at the University of Hong Kong