PM's Visit to China

Amb Kanwal Sibal, 

Dean, Centre for International Relations and Diplomacy, VIF

The challenge facing India is the degree to which it should separate economic and security issues. China has huge financial resources and sectoral expertise that could be mobilised for India’s development. The CII has identified 18 sectors in which Chinese companies could invest and 5 areas in which we seek more openings for Indian products in the Chinese market. As against this, it should be noted that we have been discussing the opening of these 5 sectors with China for 10 years without success. We will not get a level playing field in China for our companies because of of the role of the State Owned Enterprises (SOEs). China, besides, has appetite for projects, not investments. Most of the so-called investments announced during President Xi’s visit to Pakistan relate to projects ($38 billion). China uses methods for project implementation (Chinese labour etc) that will not work in India. The SEZ model, that has been successful in China, will not work in India either. The proposed Chinese investments in Industrial Parks in India is unlikely to materialise as expected. The Chinese Law Minister has spoken of studying the legal framework in India, no doubt with the SOEs in mind. The Chinese premier, just before PM’s visit to China has spoken of preferential policies and investment facilitation for its businesses, which suggests that he is looking for special and not competitive conditions.

India has to take a position on the One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative of China as this will be raised during PM’s visit. In this context it should be noted that China has announced this initiative unilaterally and talked of partnership later. It has already established oil and gas connectivity with Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Russia, besides the Eurasian transport corridor linking Shanghai with Lisbon. Even the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has been discussed between the two countries before the OBOR was unveiled. The OBOR is a cover of what they have been already doing, the principal objective of which is to use their excess capacity in the infrastructure sectors to generate external demand. The argument that if India did not join OBOR it will be isolated has no merit. Pakistan has not allowed SAARC to develop its true potential and resists connectivity between India and Afghanistan and onto Central Asia India does bot need the OBOR for economic cooperation either with Pakistan, Afghanistan or the Gulf. In any case, the One Belt excludes India and the One Road includes Kolkata only.

The 1993, 1996, 2005, 2011 and 2013 border agreements are in the nature of CBMs and not settlement of the border issue. India has accommodated itself to the Chinese strategy of focusing on border management and not border settlement, As a defensive argument, some in India argue that we may not actually be politically and institutionally ready for a border settlement through a compromise as it will entail some territorial give and take, which will require a constitutional amendment. India also abandoned the LAC clarification process, abruptly ended by China, in favour of the Special Representatives (SR) mechanism, which after 18 rounds has not produced any notable result either. The lack of progress on the border issue is the root cause of the deep distrust of China’s intentions, aggravated by Chinese policies in our neighbourhood, especially Pakistan. China will have no interest in settling the border till the Dalai Lama is alive. We should also address the possibility that during PM’s visit or soon thereafter China could create an incident. China is also fomenting Tibetan sub-nationalism as an instrument for use against India on the border issue.

The Chinese economy is in trouble, with slower growth, excess capacity and huge internal debt, with possible consequences for political stability. China seeks openings in the India which at present is the fastest growing economy. We should not get into a psychological situation where we see Chinese investments in India as a favour. Our approach to China should not be that of a “loser”. We should, where it suits our interest, move forward with economic cooperation, but within strict parameters. For example, in the Railways sector we can cooperate but not in signalling and routing equipment. On the whole, our strategy should be not to strengthen the Chinese economy when it is in trouble. We have also to keep in mind that more market openings for China could destroy parts of our industry, as has already happened. Unlike in the case of China, there are no strategic costs in economic cooperation with Japan, US, Korea or Europe. This is not to say that increased economic cooperation with China should not be pursued as an option. Our approach should be calibrated, win-win, with security considerations in mind, and not pushed by commercial lobbies in india and other interests which have been assiduously cultivated by China, an opportunity that is not available to us in China because of its state-controlled system, linguistic barriers and the opaque nature of power in China. The example of the massive US-China and Japan-China economic ties despite security issues does not apply in the India-China case because the disparity of power that exists in the US-China relationship and Japan’s capacity to defend itself and its alliance relationship with the US, the kind of security nets that do not exist in India’s case where the need for China to be cautious is much less than in the other two cases.

We have to decide the extent to which we should separate security issues from economic ones. We should seek a quid pro quo from China for opening our market to them, but this should not be in the economic domain only. It should be also in the political and security domains. It has to be conveyed to China that border incidents, increasingly assertive claims on Arunachal and stridently worded protests work against a stronger economic relationship. In a democracy, economic issues cannot be delinked from the security atmosphere. Till such time as the border issue is settled, China should refrain from pronouncing aggressively on the border issue and avoid incremental nibbling away in areas where perceptions over the LAC differ.

We should press for the LAC clarification process, as already publicly proposed by PM during President Xi’s visit. We should not be advocating “out of the box solutions”, as such suggestions will be used against us. The Chinese will expect India to think out of the box, while they adhere to their long held “principled” position.

PM could state publicly during his visit to China where we want the India-China relationship to go. On the border issue, he may affirm our position in public. He may express concern that LAC clarification/ border settlement discussions are proceeding too slowly. Because the Chinese leadership in India does not hesitate to talk in public in India about the border issue in dilatory terms, unmindful of Indian concerns, it would be appropriate for PM to express Indian impatience at Chinese procrastination. It would also signal that the expansion of ties in general, including economic, are linked in our mind to a constructive and honest Chinese approach to the border issue and not a bullying one. The occasion to do this might be the public speech planned at Shanghai.

The CPEC has to traverse POK. We should convey our serious concern to China on this. In this connection it may be recalled that both Pakistan and China accepted in their 1963 Sino-Pakistan Agreement that the territory was not legally Pakistan’s. This Agreement throughout refers to China’s Sinkiang and “the contiguous areas the defence of which is under the actual control of Pakistan”. Article 6 of the Agreement states that “The two parties have agreed that after the settlement of the Kashmir dispute between Pakistan and India, the sovereign authority concerned will reopen negotiations with the Government of the People's Republic of China on the boundary as described in Article Two of the present agreement, so as to sign a formal boundary treaty to replace the present agreement, provided that in the event of the sovereign authority being Pakistan, the provisions of the present agreement and of the aforesaid protocol shall be maintained in the formal boundary treaty to be signed between the People’s Republic of China and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan”. China would still go ahead with the project but we would have obtained a pressure point on China which we could use in our border negotiations.

The CPEC gives us good ground to distance ourselves from the OBOR initiative which is a geo-strategic one to extend Chinese power in Asia and the Indian Ocean. China’s strategic goal is to push back US power in the western Pacific and in Central and Southwest Asia. Gwadar will allow extension of China’s economic and political and eventually security influence in Afghanistan, Central Asia and the Gulf at the cost of the US. We can reasonably say that we need more information and more studies on how India fits in. We can take the position that we can effectively deal with connectivity issues bilaterally with countries of interest to us, including with China. We can proceed with the Chabahar link to Afghanistan and Central Asia as well as the North-South corridor through Iran to Russia and Central Asia outside the OBOR. In fact these projects predate the OBOR by many years.

India should not proceed with the BCIM corridor as this will expose our inadequately integrated northeast to greater Chinese influence. Allowing this part of India to enter into the Chinese economic orbit will lead to increased Chinese political influence in the region and will aggravate our problems. We should work on northeast connectivity to Myanmar and Thailand and then on to Southeast Asia. We should favour Japan’s involvement in developing our northeast.

So long as China gives stapled visas to Kashmiris and Arunachalis, we should not extend the e-visa facility to the Chinese. There should be a clear bargain on this point. The arguments being given by our side that e-visas are being offered on a non-reciprocal basis and the aim is to encourage Chinese tourism to India misses the point that we have a serious territorial issue with China that we do not have with other countries and that well over 90% of Chinese tourists, as per Chinese statistics, go to developed countries and not developing countries like India which may have great historical and cultural sites to offer. The other argument that there is no clear cut Chinese policy on stapled visas and that this is done “conveniently”, largely in the case of officials and sportspeople etc, seems an artificial plea in China’s favour in order to justify a controversial step.

We had ceased including statements about the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) being part of the PRC because of China’s aggressive statements on Arunachal Pradesh during the tenure of the previous government. In the joint statement issued during Xi’s visit to India we had thanked the government of TAR of the PRC for permitting an alternative route to Mansarovar, thus reversing our position. This has been followed up by China now asserting aggressively its sovereignty over Arunachal Pradesh on the occasion of PMs recent visit to Arunachal Pradesh. Consequently, we should revert to our earlier position and exclude any mention of TAR in the joint statement.

We should during the visit seek a better understanding on China’s plans for Afghanistan during PM’s visit. China is now pursuing a connected Pakistan-Afghanistan policy, which Afghan President Ghani too seems to favour, and this has implications for our security.

We do not have enough scholarship and understanding of China. We should send more students to China and encourage more Chinese language studies in India.

On the positive side, we would no doubt highlight points of convergence during PM’s visit on BRICS issues, the BRICS Development bank, AIIB, the reform of international financial and political institutions, G20 issues, energy and climate change issues.

---

Published Date: 14^th May 2015, Image Source: http://blogs.wsj.com

Playing hardball with China

Nitin A Gokhale, 

Editor & Senior Fellow, VIF

In the midst of a rather euphoric narrative about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's three-day China visit starting 14 May, two factors must serve as a reality check.

One was the revelation by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) that the Chinese Envoy in New Delhi was summoned and conveyed India's protest against the 46 billion dollar worth China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) running through the Pak-Occupied Kashmir (PoK) and two, a rather abrasive comment by a Chinese scholar in a semi-official newspaper that Prime Minister Modi is "“playing little tricks” over border disputes and security issues, hoping to boost his domestic prestige and increase his leverage in negotiations with China."

Both these developments remind us that no matter how much progress India and China make in economic and cultural fields, the contentious border issue and China's efforts to promote Pakistan as a cat's paw in South Asia, will always cast a large shadow over Sino-India relations. Prime Minister Modi's national security team would be well aware of the Chinese tendency to be two faced in its dealings with neighbours.

Twice in recent past, China has sought to up the ante on the border on eve of two important visits. In April-May 2013, days ahead of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang's visit to Delhi, a platoon of Chinese PLA soldiers walked across the Line of Actual Control (LAC) at Depsang in Ladakh and camped there for three weeks before a diplomatic compromise end the mini-crisis. It was no different when President Xi Jingping came to India last year. In less than six hours after his arrival, 1000 Chinese soldiers tried to repeat Depsang at Chumur, again in Ladakh. However, a robust and swift response in 2014 (India mobilised a brigade plus--3,000 soldiers-- in next to no time) forced the Chinese to back down. Although President Xi tried to play down the incident, it was clear the operation was planned well in advance and with full knowledge of the top leadership.

Given India's decisive response at Chumur and New Delhi's growing bonhomie with US and Japan, a similar border incident again looks unlikely but the pinpricks on the border issue will continue in the form of acerbic comments and belligerent utterances by scholars and analysts working for various think-tanks in China. Thus the commentary in Global Times, the hawkish English newspaper published from Beijing is in keeping with the trend and should not come as a surprise to discerning China watchers. New Delhi on the other hand has used official channels to register its stand vis-a-vis increasing Chinese presence in PoK and the decision on CPEC.

Chinese interlocutors have surely noticed a subtle but firm shift in India's approach to China. When needed, Prime Minister Modi has not hesitated to use strong words to convey India's displeasure on Chinese. India has also been upfront about stitching together informal alliances that are designed to keep China guessing. Two examples will suffice. Speaking to business leaders in Tokyo during his official visit to Japan in September 2014, the Prime Minister said: “The world is divided in two camps. One camp believes in expansionist policies, while the other believes in development. We have to decide whether the world should get caught in the grip of expansionist policies or we should lead it on the path of development and create opportunities that take it to greater heights.” While he did not mention China by name, the signal was loud and clear. Beijing is seen by Asian nations, especially those around the East China Sea and South China Sea as an expansionist power. Then in January his year, India and the US went a step further in specifically commenting on the situation in South China Sea. The Joint India-US Strategic Vision document noted that “regional prosperity depends on security. We affirm the importance of safeguarding maritime security and ensuring freedom of navigation and over flight throughout the region, especially in the South China Sea.” In a clear signal to Beijing, the same statement added that the two countries “call on all parties to avoid the threat or use of force and pursue resolution of territorial and maritime disputes through all peaceful means, in accordance with universally recognized principles of international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.”

The current Chinese leadership is surely aware of India’s recent efforts to re-calibrate its relationship with the United States and Japan. The attempt in Beijing would therefore be to ensure that India does not fully migrate into the anti-China camp. India will be offered lucrative economic investments and will be assured about reducing the burgeoning bilateral trade deficit between the two countries but no major breakthrough is expected on the boundary issue, notwithstanding External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s pronouncement in Beijing in February this year that an “out of the box” solution is still possible. The boundary issue is complex and is rooted in many historical developments. Through the decades, Beijing has played a dexterous game on the border issue, pretending to be friendly and accommodation some time, reiterating its claims by aggressive moves on the other, keeping the pot boiling.

In this context it is instructive to take a peep into what happened in the late 1950s in Ladakh. When India accidentally discovered China’s road building activity in Aksai Chin, it was assured that the road was only meant as a link to Singkiang.

On December 26, 1959 Peking (as Beijing was then known) sent a note to India talking about Aksai Chin. It said: "This area is the only traffic artery linking Singkiang to Western Tibet because to its north-east lies the great Gobi of Sinkiang through which direct traffic with Tibet is practically impossible...the area all along belonged to China." Now, nearly 55 years later when India confronts Beijing on its CPEC passing through PoK (which India claims as its own territory), China is likely take a similar stand—‘it’s just an economic compulsion; ‘not meant as a strategic encirclement of India,’ etc etc.

Clearly, the Chinese tendency of bullying weaker neighbours and its policy to keep redefining 'core' interests according to circumstances continues. Policy making in China is one continuous process. In India on the other hand, it has varied according to personalities and political parties in power.

While the military in India has overcome the trauma of the 1962 defeat, civilian policy makers appear to be still bogged down by the burdens of the past in dealing with China. Of course, these mandarins get their act together only under pressure of a crisis like they did post-1986 Sumdorong Chu face off. The 2009 sanction for additional forces and speeding up of infrastructure development projects also came after increasing reports of Chinese belligerence along the LAC.

It is therefore essential to push for another round of capability-enhancing drive. Simultaneously, India must re-look and re-tweak its China policy. For instance:

• Insist with Beijing the need for exchanging maps for all sectors immediately so that each side knows the other's claimed LAC and border negotiations can resume
• Bring the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) under the operational control of the Army to ensure uniformity in border management
• Ensure timely and effective information sharing mechanism with Indian media and through them the Indian people rather than let different stake holders speak in different and sometimes discordant voices during times of crisis
• Educate and prepare the Indian people on the need for give and take on border negotiations in the future

Policy makers in India must be mindful of the fact that military preparedness and trying to improve diplomatic relations are not necessarily mutually exclusive. By stating India's concern over continuing support to Pakistan in no uncertain terms, Prime Minister Modi has sent a signal that that while his desire to deepen economic ties with Beijing and taking the relationship to the next level is paramount, New Delhi cannot be ignoring the developments in its neighbourhood. Hopefully, as he lands in Beijing in the next 24 hours, Prime Minister Modi's Chinese hosts would have got that message very clearly.

---

Published Date: 13^th May 2015, Image Source: http://www.dnaindia.com

Chinese Chequers in Pakistan: Hyperbole, Hazards and some Heft for The Economy

Sushant Sareen, 

Senior Fellow, VIF

Forty-six billion dollars. A figure like this not only makes for a great headline but also creates a hype which deflects from the fine print and details that lie behind this number. Not surprisingly, the focus of attention – in Pakistan, in India and in other parts of the world, including the US – is the big number and how it will be a ‘game-changer’, how it will change the destiny of Pakistan, how it will change the strategic balance in the region and so on and so forth. But start breaking down the number into its component parts, and the hyperbole surrounding China’s grand plans for Pakistan appear to be somewhat over the top. Equally important, the sort of alarm being sounded by some Indian analysts is also a trifle misplaced. While India must keep a hawk-eye on the China-Pakistan nexus, it surely doesn’t behove India to have a knee-jerk reaction to every Sino-Pak collaboration.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project is going to come up over the next 15 years. This means that the $46 billion is not going to be dumped in Pakistan in the next few months but will be spread over more than a decade. There are a few ‘early harvest’ projects – about $ 28 billion worth – that will come up in the next 3-5 years. Most of these are in the power sector (about $ 22 billion). The rest ($ 6 billion) are infrastructure projects which include building the Gwadar port and expanding the existing road networks. While the Karakorum Highway is to be extended and broadened, there is as yet no firm plan to either build a railway line through the Gilgit-Baltistan area of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) or an oil and gas pipeline linking Gwadar to Kashgar in Xinjiang province of China. These projects may eventually come up but as of now they haven’t moved beyond the drawing board stage. The rest of the $ 17 billion will be spread over another ten years beyond 2020 and will once again include some power projects, roads networks and industrial townships and Special Economic Zones.

The plan to link up the restive provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan with the CPEC is going to happen in the second stage, if at all. There are also plans to extend the CPEC to Afghanistan. But this will depend in large part on how the political and security situation develops in that country. Come to think of it, a lot of the CPEC will also depend on how the security situation develops inside Pakistan, and if things don’t look up, a lot of the investment will simply not come.

To be sure, even if half of the investment and projects that are envisaged under the CPEC come up, it will provide a fillip to the anaemic Pakistan economy. Assets will be created, as will jobs. Business and economic activity will also get a kick-start. So far so good. But this will all come at a cost, which one daresay, may not have been calculated or factored in by the Pakistani side. Whether this is because of their desperation to get things moving any which way, or it is because of their exuberance, excitement and even their servility towards the Chinese, or it is because of the Pakistani inability to think things through before taking the plunge, is a matter of debate. Suffice to say, there are serious economic implications of these projects. It is of course entirely possible that ultimately the Chinese write off their investments in Pakistan as a gift to their ‘Iron Brother’ and instead of the economic dividends that will flow China’s way through its investments in the CPEC, China remains satisfied with the political and strategic dividends that it expects from the project. If this happens, then it would fit into a pattern set by Pakistan's benefactors before China.

For now, however, the Chinese are demanding and getting their pound of flesh.The rate of return on the power projects they are setting up is anything between 24-37 per cent. What is more, the Chinese projects will get their payment before any other power producer gets it. This is because the Chinese are extremely wary of the horrendous ‘circular debt’ crisis that has brought the Pakistan power sector to near financial collapse. Many of the projects that will be set up are coal based projects. These are being shut down in China because of the environmental havoc they have caused. For the Chinese, shifting these power plants to Pakistan is a win-win. They dump their obsolete and polluting technology on Pakistan and make top dollar in the process. Although the Pakistan electricity regulator has declared an upfront tariff for different kinds of power plants, what the final tariff will be remains unknown for now. The apprehension expressed by some Pakistani economic analysts is that the entry of the Chinese might end up worsening the financial crisis of the power sector instead of solving the energy crisis that has crippled industry and homes for many years now. There is also the whole issue of building supply chains for the coal-based power projects and the cost this will entail, not just in terms of infrastructure building but also in terms of imports and how this cost will be factored in the power prices.

What is also causing disquiet in some circles in Pakistan is the fact that the Chinese projects have not come in through any competitive bidding process but as part of what cynics call ‘sweet-heart’ deals. Despite the fact that many Chinese investors are public sector companies, they are not at all squeamish about buying and bribing their way into countries like Pakistan, which for political and strategic reasons find it difficult to say no to the Chinese.

Apart from the Chinese, the Turks and the Qataris have also been taking advantage to seal some sweet-heart deals with Pakistan. In many of these cases – Chinese locomotives, Turkish electricity ships and Qatari LNG and road projects – Pakistan has ended up either with junk or paying a very heavy price (Rs 42 a unit for buying electricity from the Turkish power ship before it was scrapped by the Pakistan Supreme Court). There are fears that something similar may happen with the power and infrastructure projects that will be set up under the aegis of CPEC.

Questions have also been raised over both the funding of the projects (investments and repayments) as well as the Chinese model of investment under which practically everything – labour, machinery, equipment, raw material and what have you – is brought from China and very little is sourced from the local market. This could well mean that there will be little economic spin-off of these projects and Pakistan could end up with white elephants for which its people will be made to pay through their noses for the rest of their and their children’s lives.

While the economics of the projects is quite iffy, the strategic assumptions and dimensions underpinning CPEC are also not as awe-inspiring as is being made out by both the detractors as well as backers of this project. Given the topography of the area through which corridor is going to pass, it is unlikely to become a replacement for the sea traffic going to and from China through the Straits of Malacca. This is so even if a railway line was to be built through the Karakorum range going into Xinjiang. While the Corridor will provide a closer sea access to Western China – Xinjiang and to an extent Tibet – it will be quite a stretch to imagine that it will also provide an alternative route to the Eastern Seaboard of China to access the Arabian sea and beyond. The Corridor also doesn’t need Afghanistan to access Central Asia or even Iran, the former can be accessed through links already established and the latter can be accessed through Pakistan. Afghanistan is important only to the extent that the Chinese can transport raw material out of that country, which is also contingent on whether Afghanistan indeed has the sort of mineral wealth that is often cited and on Afghanistan not descending into chaos and anarchy in the next few months and years. The Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa legs of the Corridor are also not going to come up because once the Sindh-Punjab route is settled, no one will sink money into building another route through these two restive provinces.

In the end, the Corridor is primarily about China getting a solid base in Gwadar and getting a land access to this port from its Western borderlands. All the other projects are just embellishmentsthat ostensibly sweeten the deal for the Pakistanis, partly through creation of assets and partly through under-the-table deals that will further enrich theruling classes of that country. A lot will of course depend on how the security and political situation develops inside Pakistan. But as long as the Chinese have a secured Gwadar, they will have got what they want out of this deal, especially since they will have tied Pakistan into a neo-colonial arrangement in which it will become a virtual colony and a captive market for Chinese goods. Although the Pakistanis are happy being the recipient of Chinese largesse – aptly summed by the acronym of the new China-Pakistan think-tank titled ‘RANDI’ or Research and Development International – because the Chinese have desisted from interfering in Pakistan's political affairs (unlike the overbearing Americans), this too could start changing with the rising Chinese involvement and investment in Pakistan.

Over the last few years, Pakistan has had to initiate major operations against their own jihadist proxies on Chinese demands – first in the Lal Masjid operation and later in Operation Zarb-e-Azb. This could become a precursor of things to come.

From the Chinese point of view, there are two additional factors that they need to take into account. The first is Pakistan's track record of double-dealing with their benefactors, something that the Americans and now the Saudis are finding out to their cost. The second is the civilizational disconnect between China and an increasingly Islamised Pakistan.

Although the Pakistanis have downplayed the heavy-handed crackdown by China against Muslims in Xinjiang, the jihadists in Pakistan as well as the international jihadists narrative has started portraying China as a Dar-ul-Harb, or land of war. This could in future become a major flashpoint between China and Pakistan and could become the trigger for the latter double-dealing the former. An additional factor is also that the Chinese people don’t have a very high opinion about their ‘Iron Brother’. The Pew Survey claims that only 30 per cent of the Chinese have a positive image of Pakistan, equal to the number who have a positive image of India!

As far as India is concerned, the most objectionable part of the CPEC is that it traverses through PoK. The increasing Chinese involvement and presence in that region is going to effect a material change in the status of this part of India which is under Pakistan's illegal occupation. Other than this, there isn’t much reason for India to be overly concerned. The CPEC is not about encircling India, at least that doesn’t appear to be the primary purpose at this point in time. Interestingly, even though the Pakistanis are crowing about CPEC, they are also trying to sell this project to the world by saying that it will bind together 3 billion people of the region. Given that there are 1.4 billion Chinese, .2 billion Pakistanis and throw in the Afghans, Iranians and Central Asians (about another 100-150 million), the figure of 3 billion has to include India. Ironically, while Pakistan implicitly includes India in the CPEC, it explicitly excludes India by denying transit rights and routes and refuses to enter into a normal trading arrangement under WTO rules.

Be that as it may, the CPEC is more about China’s expanding role and influence in the region that it considers its backyard and falling within its sphere of influence. It is also about finding new, practically captive markets for its industry which is already showing signs of slowdown. The way the Chinese see it, by going in for the CPEC, they will help in stabilising Pakistan and thereby limiting the regional destabilisation that a failing Pakistan will cause. At the same time, they will make some money in the process and also increase their strategic footprint. To the extent that China’s expanding footprint spooks, even riles, India, it will be an issue in Sino-Indo relations. But if India plays it well, it can turn this Chinese footprint into an advantage, much like it did with the US. It is another matter that the US hasn’t been very effective as a partner in altering Pakistan's rank bad behaviour. But if the Americans could do anything to Pakistan in their own cause, it is pointless to expect them to deliver anything in India’s cause against Pakistan. This may not be the trajectory if India can get China right. Thus, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi must protest the use of PoK territory for the CPEC, he must have a plan in place to win over China for a mutually beneficial economic and strategic partnership. That will give India another pressure point against Pakistan.

---

Published Date: 27^th April 2015, Image Source: http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk