China’s quadrilateral dialogue

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) aims to strengthen Beijing’s economic leadership through a vast program of infrastructure building throughout China’s neighbouring regions.

Launched in 2013 by President Xi Jinping, the vast collection of development and investment initiatives would stretch from East Asia to Europe, significantly expanding China’s economic and political influence.
The plan was two-pronged: the overland Silk Road Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road. The two were collectively referred to first as the One Belt, One Road initiative but eventually became the Belt and Road Initiative.
China’s vision included creating a vast network of railways, energy pipelines, highways, and streamlined border crossings, both westward—through the mountainous former Soviet republics—and southward, to Pakistan, India, and the rest of Southeast Asia.

To date, more than sixty countries—accounting for two-thirds of the world’s population—have signed on to projects or indicated an interest in doing so.

The Belt and Road Initiative has also stoked opposition. For some countries that take on large amounts of debt to fund infrastructure upgrades, BRI money is seen as a potential poisoned chalice.
BRI projects are built using low-interest loans as opposed to aid grants. Some BRI investments have involved opaque bidding processes and required the use of Chinese firms. As a result, contractors have inflated costs, leading to cancelled projects and political backlash.
Critics worry China could use “debt-trap diplomacy” to extract strategic concessions – such as over territorial disputes in the South China Sea or silence on human rights violations.

India has tried to convince countries that the BRI is a plan to dominate Asia, warning of what some analysts have called a “String of Pearls” geo-economic strategy whereby China creates unsustainable debt burdens for its Indian Ocean neighbours in order to seize control of regional choke points.
Meanwhile, India has provided its own development assistance to neighbours, most notably Afghanistan, where it has spent $3 billion on infrastructure projects.

China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) refers to a clutch of major infrastructure works currently under way in Pakistan, intended to link Kashgar in China’s Xinjiang province to Gwadar deep sea port close to Pakistan’s border with Iran.
Several other road, rail and power projects are associated with the corridor, and the project seeks to expand and upgrade infrastructure across the length and breadth of Pakistan, and to widen and deepen economic ties with China.
CPEC is part of the larger Belt and Road Initiative.
CPEC was launched in 2015 when Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Pakistan and it now envisages investment of over USD 60 billion in different projects of development in Pakistan.

The goal of CPEC is both to transform Pakistan’s economy—by modernizing its road, rail, air, and energy transportation systems—and to connect the deep-sea Pakistani ports of Gwadar and Karachi to China’s Xinjiang province and beyond by overland routes.
This would reduce the time and cost of transporting goods and energy such as natural gas to China by circumventing the Straits of Malacca and the South China Sea.
The CPEC project is also strategically important for China. Currently, eighty percent of China’s oil has to pass through the Strait of Malacca, a narrow stretch of water between the Indonesian island of Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula. In the event of a conflict, the Malacca Strait could easily be blocked by a rival nation, cutting off China from crucial energy resources. CPEC allows China to circumvent the Strait of Malacca and reduce its dependency on the strait.

India has been opposing the project as it passes through Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), which New Delhi considers its own territory.
India claims that the CPEC project encroaches on sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country.

Recently, China convened a rare quadrilateral dialogue with the Foreign Ministers of Afghanistan, Nepal and Pakistan, pledging to strengthen cooperation among the four nations in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic as well as boosting their economic recoveries, including through regional connectivity projects.
China outlined several proposals at the meet, including for the four countries to cooperate under China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
China also proposed extending the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to Afghanistan, as well as taking forward an economic corridor plan with Nepal, called the Trans-Himalayan Multi-dimensional Connectivity Network.

https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/china-chairs-meet-with-afghan-pak-nepal-foreign-ministers/article32206906.ece

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