China’s BRI after five years: Implications for India & US

At a time when there is increasing uneasiness between India and the US due to the Trump administration’s trade policy and America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) and other issues, Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman are holding the inaugural meeting of 2+2 Dialogue with US Foreign Secretary Michael R. Pompeo and Defence Secretary James N. Mattis in Delhi to strengthen their partnership in Indo-Pacific, among others. At the same time, China has described India as a natural partner in its Belt Road Initiative (BRI).

In this context, it may be recalled that since BRI was launched in 2013, it has become the most ambitious project of the Chinese government to reshape the regional and global order. While the BRI is generally viewed in terms of a plan to build infrastructure projects, other elements of BRI are to strengthen regional political cooperation, unimpeded trade, financial integration and people-to-people exchanges. The BRI covering 76 countries from Asia, Africa and Europe, account for half the world’s population and a quarter of global GDP. In fact, the Xi Jinping government has focused on mobilising the country’s political, diplomatic, intellectual, economic and financial resources to make China as the unquestionable regional and global power. While the Belt and Road Initiative is expected to cost more than $11 trillion and so far around $350 billion worth of projects have been financed by Chinese developments banks, according to the Chinese government, Beijing has also signed 270 commitments with countries across the globe.

Surely, South Asia has assumed a special focus of the BRI. This can be easily gauged from the fact that China has signed a $3.1 billion bridge and railway project in Bangladesh, a new city next to Colombo’s port in Sri Lanka that will have a total investment of $13 billion over the next 25 years, and a freight route that now links China’s eastern coast and London. The $60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is, of course, a major aspect of the BRI.

True, while the signatures of the BRI have pledged “to oppose all forms of protectionism, including in the framework of the BRI “promoting a universal, rules-based, open, non-discriminatory and equitable multilateral trading system,” it is also true that sections of experts and scholars see the BRI as China’s debt trap diplomacy, mentioning the cases of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the Hambantota Port and others projects. Fearing China’s possible imperialist motives, the newly elected government under Mahathir Mohammad has recently cancelled a series of large investment projects under the BRI.

At the same time while India has refused to join BRI, New Delhi, along with the US, is also mindful of the possible strategic and security threats emerging from the BRI. India argues that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project violates its sovereignty because it passes through the part of the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir that belongs to India.

It is in this context that New Delhi and Washington have taken several measures to effectively challenge Xi Jinping’s pet project. In doing so, while India has focused on enhancing its engagement with Southeast Asian countries under the Act East Policy, it also sees a point in Trump’s Indo-Pacific strategy to maintain and promote peace and security in the region. US Foreign Secretary Pompeo has announced that “Indo-Pacific Economic Vision” will increase the financial support that the US government provides to countries in the region through a proposed agency, the US International Development Finance Corporation (USIDFC). Needless to add, one of the driving forces behind the Indo-Pacific strategy is aimed at containing China’s assertive posturing in the South China Sea and beyond. The rival of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue between the US, Japan, Australia and India last year is also attributed to the intention of these countries to check China’s rise. At the same time, India is focused on working with Japan in developing an Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC), which will help create a “free and open Indo-Pacific region” by rediscovering ancient sea-routes and creating new sea corridors that will link the African continent with India and countries in South-Asia and South-East Asia. The ongoing visit of Indian President Ram Nath Kovind to Cyprus, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic on September 2-9 is also an attempt to boost India’s ties with the erstwhile communist states of Eastern Europe and with Southern Europe amid inroads by China as part of its mega infrastructure project, Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

It remains to be seen as to what extent the uneasiness between New Delhi and Washington on the issue of India’s continued import of Iran oil, its decision to purchase arms from Russia, the H1B visa issue and others on the one hand and the trade war between China and the US on the other, shape India-China ties and the strategic partnership between the US and India.

The author is Visiting Fellow, National Chengchi University, Taiwan