BEIJING: In a mountain valley in Kashmir, plans are under way for Chinese engineers guarded by Pakistani forces to expand the lofty Karakoram Highway in a project that is stirring diplomatic friction with India.
The work is part of a sprawling Chinese initiative to build a “new Silk Road” of ports, railways and roads to expand trade in a vast arc of countries across Asia, Africa and Europe. The Asian Development Bank says the region, home to 60 percent of the world’s people, needs more than $26 trillion of such investment by 2030 to keep economies growing.
The initiative is in many ways natural for China, the world’s biggest trader. But governments from Washington to Moscow to New Delhi worry Beijing also is trying to build its own political influence and erode theirs.
Others worry China might undermine human rights, environmental and other standards for lending or leave poor countries burdened with debt.
India is unhappy that Chinese state-owned companies are working in the Pakistani-held part of Kashmir, the Himalayan region claimed by both sides. Indian leaders see that as an endorsement of Pakistani control.
“We have some serious reservations about it, because of sovereignty issues,” said India’s finance and defense minister, Arun Jaitley, at an Asian Development Bank meeting this month in Yokohama, Japan. China has tried previously to mollify Indian anxiety by saying in January its highway work “targets no third country.”
China’s new Silk Road initiative is ramping up as President Donald Trump focuses on domestic issues, downplaying foreign affairs.
American officials say Washington wants to work with China on infrastructure. But some diplomats and political analysts say Beijing is trying to create a political and economic network centered on China, push the United States out of the region and rewrite rules on trade and security.
“China is trying to change the way the political structure of the region works,” said William A. Callahan, an international relations specialist at the London School of Economics.
“We will have to see whether it can achieve this.”
Trump’s decision to pull out of the proposed 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership deprives China’s neighbors of a tool they hoped would counter its rising influence, said Max Baucus, the U.S. ambassador to Beijing until January. Baucus called the move a “large geopolitical mistake.”
“Southeast Asian countries would tell me ‘We want you, we want the TPP, then we can balance China with the United States. But when you’re not there, there is a void that China’s going to fill,’” Baucus told The Associated Press.
Dubbed “One Belt, One Road” after ancient trade routes through the Indian Ocean and Central Asia, the initiative is Chinese President Xi Jinping’s signature project.
Details such as financing are vague. But since Xi announced it in 2013, Beijing has launched dozens of projects from railways in Tajikistan, Thailand and Kenya to power plants in Vietnam and Kyrgyzstan, financed mostly by Chinese loans.
Countries including Pakistan and Afghanistan welcome it as a path out of poverty. India, Indonesia and others want investment but are wary of Chinese strategic ambitions, especially after Beijing started building artificial islands to enforce its claim to most of the South China Sea, a busy trade route.
Indonesia’s political elite have a “fear of regional hegemony” by China, said Christine Tjhin, senior researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta.
Moscow worries Beijing is diluting Russian influence in Central Asia by linking Uzbekistan and other countries more closely to China’s more dynamic economy.
Russian President Vladimir Putin responded last June by proposing a “Great Eurasia Project,” with Beijing leading on economics and Moscow on politics and security.
“This vision enables the Kremlin to maintain an appearance that it retains the political initiative in its neighborhood,” Marcin Kaczmarski and Witold Rodkiewicz said in a report for the Center for Eastern Studies, a Warsaw think tank.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Army Chief Gen. Raheel Sharif pray near Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Sun Weidong, after inaugurating a new international trade route at Gwadar port which links to China’s western region. (AP Photo/Muhammad Yousuf)
Perhaps trying to defuse unease, China has invited governments to a two-day forum starting Sunday and led by Xi to “brainstorm on interconnected development.”
Leaders from 28 countries including Putin are due to attend, but none from major Western countries.