Policy | The expansion of China’s Belt and Road Initiative poses new challenges for India

Gulshan Sachdeva

The second Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Forum, which ended recently in Beijing, attracted representatives from large number of countries and international organisations including 37 heads of states or governments. It was also claimed that new deals worth $64 billion were also signed.

Both the final communiqué and the speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping were full of specific key words — green and clean connectivity, transparency, financial sustainability, international norms and standards, respect for laws and regulations of participating countries and commercial and fiscal sustainability of infrastructure projects. This was clearly aimed at projecting the BRI as a responsive and inclusive initiative.

At the end of the summit, it was clear that the scope the BRI is expanding, and China seems to accommodate concerns raised by participating countries as well as independent observers. The initiative is also becoming more and more formalised. The BRI has now listed 35 economic corridors or projects; 14 sectoral initiatives; and 15 initiatives by partners.

For the last few years, the whole BRI was being discussed mainly in the context of six Economic Corridors (EC). These were: (1) New Eurasia Land Bridge EC (2) China-Mongolia-Russia EC (3) China-Central Asia-West Asia EC (4) China-Indochina Peninsula EC (5) China-Pakistan EC (CPEC); and, (6) Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) EC.

New Delhi did not participate in both summit meetings as it had serious objections to the CPEC due to sovereignty-related issues. Along with the CPEC, when the BCIM was also declared as an important part of the BRI, it created further difficulties for Indian policy makers.

Four partner countries in the BCIM were already working for sub-regional cooperation for years. To integrate East and North-Eastern India with South West China along with Bangladesh and Myanmar, a Track II BCIM regional Economic Forum was established in 1999 in Kunming.  In 2013, the concept was officially endorsed through the development of a BCIM-EC.

One of the main objectives of the BCIM was to integrate India’s North-East with neighbouring economies. Since the BCIM was conceived much before the BRI, many in India argued that it should not have been subsumed with the larger BRI. As the BCIM became victim of the BRI geopolitics, no progress was made in recent years.

Now from the new list of 35 corridors, China has removed the BCIM-EC. Instead, China-Myanmar EC and Nepal-China Multi-dimensional Connectivity Network (including railway project) are listed. In the long run, this could be a setback for the North-East as this corridor was an important part of Indian design to link North-East with dynamic Asian economies under its Look-East/Act East policy.

Interestingly, now the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) is part of the new BRI list. Established much before the BRI in 2000, India along with Russia and Iran are founding members of the INSTC. Since then 11 more countries have joined the project, which provides a shorter route for Indian traders to Iran, Russia and countries in Eurasia.

In fact, if there were any alternative Indian plan to the BRI, the Chabahar port linked with the INSTC was going to be the central pillar of that strategy. Now the INSTC itself is listed as a BRI project. This is more serious than the BCIM listing. New Delhi now has to work with Moscow and Tehran to resolve this issue.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, has already declared at the summit that Chinese BRI “rimes with Russia’s idea to establish a Greater Eurasian Partnership, a project designed to ‘integrate integration frameworks’”. Putin wants to align various bilateral and multilateral integration processes in Eurasia. He also clearly asserted that all the five Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) members have supported linkages between the EAEU and the BRI. So Moscow may not have any problem with listing INSTC as a BRI project. In the current geopolitical scenario, Tehran may also follow suit.

So far, New Delhi has neither officially rejected the whole initiative nor endorsed it. Despite negative official narrative, India is now the second largest shareholder and largest recipient of concessional finance from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

Expanding the BRI may create further challenges for India. As most countries in India’s neighbourhood and Eurasia are participating, their connectivity projects will be further linked with the BRI. It will become more and more difficult for India to isolate its own connectivity plans from the BRI-linked projects. The INSTC-BRI linkage could be beginning of this challenge.

Gulshan Sachdeva is Jean Monnet Chair & Coordinator Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence for EU Studies in India, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Views are personal.