NEW DELHI – The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is China’s ambitious projectfor increasing connectivity and economic cooperation within Eurasia. Sinceits announcement in 2013, the BRI has been positively received by manycountries covered within its ambit. However, notwithstanding therecent between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President XiJinping in Wuhan, China, one issue associated with the BRI will likely beconsidered an irritant for China: India’s position on the China-PakistanEconomic Corridor (CPEC).
Last May, New Delhi sent a clear message to Beijing that it doesn’t supportCPEC. India registered its protest by boycotting the high-profile Belt andRoad Forum organised by China.
Its principal objection was that CPEC passed through Azad Kashmir. Earlierthis month, the Ministry of External Affairs made its position clear onthis issue when asked about a possibility of cooperation between India andChina on the BRI.
The Ministry’s statement read: “Our position on OBOR/BRI is clear and thereis no change. The so-called ‘China-Pakistan Economic Corridor’ violatesIndia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. No country can accept aproject that ignores its core concerns on sovereignty and territorialintegrity.”[image: Illustration: Keshav]
India’s position will undoubtedly have a larger impact on China-Indiarelations. Kashmir is considered a contested territory by the internationalcommunity. Nevertheless, for India, Kashmir remains an emotional andsensitive issue. It is little wonder that China’s insistence onestablishing the CPEC project through PoK is seen by India as a deliberatedisregard of its territorial claims.
At a broader level, if China invests heavily in the region, it risksbecoming party to what has been a troubling bilateral dispute betweennuclear-armed rivals. If CPEC gets operationalised and fortifies theemergence of a fully functional China-Pakistan axis, this would hamperIndia’s larger interests in the South Asian region and force a strategicrethink in South Block.
The incentives for this would be even stronger if CPEC’s potential successrenders PoK more industrially developed, thus granting Pakistan greaterlegitimacy over the region. Whether India has any road map to take theconversation on PoK forward is a different debate but no nation can beexpected to wilfully forsake its territorial claims. Had India notregistered its protest, that would have been perceived as a weakness, andwould have been a setback for India’s emerging power status in theinternational system.
CPEC is ultimately a thorn in India-Pakistan relations. The best wayforward would be for India to come up with a concrete plan on PoK.Otherwise, its protests on CPEC may well be ignored by stakeholders in theproject, with little consequence.
*By: Martand Jha, he is a Junior Research Fellow at the School ofInternational Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi*