Piqued by the profound economic potential of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CEPC) that could cause an adverse impact on its geo-economic and geostrategic aspirations in the region, India has a legitimate reason to eye the project with a lot of suspicions. Some of these suspicions emanate from the genuine mistrust that exists between New Delhi and Islamabad as well as between Beijing and New Delhi.
That India is nursing ambitions to become regional hegemon is a fact. It is, therefore, compelled to see China as an insurmountable hurdle in the way. And perhaps it also feels that the two of its unfriendly neighbours - China and Pakistan - were trying to gang up against it through the CPEC. In this backdrop, one cannot but expect India to try its level best to ensure that the project never takes off or at least is turned into a truncated venture.
It is, therefore, necessary that both China and Pakistan take a closer look at all of India's concerns with regard to the CPEC and try to resolve those that they can without compromising the potential of the CPEC and take steps at the same time to neutralise India's anticipated actions 'in self-preservation' that could be potentially damaging to the mega project.
India's foremost concern emanates from the fact that the corridor passes through Gilgit-Baltistan which, according to New Delhi, is part of the Kashmir dispute. But this concern has already been taken care of by Article 6 of the Sino-Pakistan Agreement signed in 1963 as it makes it clear that after the settlement of the Kashmir dispute between Pakistan and India, the sovereign authority concerned will reopen negotiations with China on the boundary to replace the present agreement.
According to a recent article (What the Marshall Plan Can Teach India about the China Pakistan Economic Corridor) by Arun Mohan Sukumar contributed to New Delhi's Observer Research Foundation, the CPEC may be a bilateral endeavour, but "New Delhi cannot ignore its spillover effects on regional governance. The inequities in the China-Pakistan relationship and the nature of proposed Chinese investment in the CPEC merit a comparison with the Marshall Plan, the most successful foreign assistance project of the 20th century."
The Marshall Plan - known formally as the European Recovery Plan - involved the US extending lines of credit and assistance for Western European economies ravaged by the Second World War. In 1947, the US needed to finance and create captive markets that would continue buying American goods while offering their own services (cheap labour, highly skilled professionals) to the US in return.
China today, according to Sukumar, is looking to move its assembly lines outside the country, "create cheaper supply chains and limit its economic externalities (such as environmental pollution) at home. Then, as is the case today with the 2008 recession, the global economy had slowed down after two devastating wars. The US, like China, was facing an export glut."
A couple of Chinese entrepreneurs have already snapped up two major deals - the Karachi Electricity Supply Corporation and 40 per cent of Pakistan Stock Exchange. Quoting some executives of Pakistan's biggest firms a foreign news agency has reported that Chinese companies were looking mainly at the cement, steel, energy and textile sectors, the four which make up the backbone of Pakistan's $270bn economy.
Meanwhile, China's steel giant Baosteel Group is in talks over a 30-year lease for state-run Pakistan Steel Mills. Chinese companies have also shown interest in investing in telecom and auto sectors. Pakistani companies are advisedly betting that Beijing's splurge on road, rail and energy infrastructure under the CPEC will boost the domestic economy.
More welcome is the fact that the Chinese interest in buying into Pakistani businesses has emerged at a time when the interest of Western investors in Pakistan is on a steep decline. And it is time as well for Pakistani hosts to be asking themselves, how best and quickly they can learn from the Chinese business practices, their work ethics and the high rates of productivity that the Chinese workers have achieved.
Over the past several years, the assistance that we have received from the US and Western capitalist-cum-imperialist countries has come with only negligible transfer of technology and insignificant diffusion of modern industrial and business methods but increasing on the other hand our dependence on dole of which almost 99 per cent has been going back on various excuses concealed in the fine-print of the assistance agreements. And most of this dole has come with political strings attached that constantly eat into our sovereignty.
However, Sukumar's main concern is not the Marshall Plan like economic strategy that China is trying to implement through its One Belt, One Road project but he seems extremely worried about what had followed the Marshall Plan:
"Two years after the Economic Recovery Plan was formally announced the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) came into effect. The plan freed up European coffers for rearmament and militarization, acting as an "indirect economic subsidy".
"If China begins to guarantee the security of major projects along the corridor, would that free up Pakistan's budget and resources to target defence spending elsewhere? Support from Iran and Afghanistan would be indispensable to the CPEC's stability - will Beijing create an informal, four-way grouping aimed at securing CPEC currently, but aimed at adopting a bigger role in the years to come?
"India and the US should begin serious conversations on the CPEC and its role as a force multiplier for China's strategic footprint in South Asia. Pakistan is unlikely to play the US off against China - its relations with both countries have evolved somewhat independently after US President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to Beijing - but the Trump administration may yet be convinced of stronger ties with Islamabad to ward off pervasive Chinese influence.
"And finally, India should observe the potential impact that the CPEC may have on regime creation in Asia. If China is unencumbered by financial viability - at least in the short and medium term - many countries will perceive Beijing to be more interested in strategic ties than purely economic arrangements.
"India, therefore, cannot sustain its single-minded strategy of isolating Pakistan when it has clearly not had the desired effect on China and other regional players. For now, the CPEC seems to be on course for completing some of its milestones, and India would be ill-advised to rely on the false comfort that profits alone will drive China's business with Pakistan. Understanding the CPEC's regional impact and mitigating its negative effects will require a comprehensive strategy from New Delhi that goes beyond the India-Pakistan narrative.
"To reassure India on this aspect Pakistan has already invited New Delhi to join the CPEC. The invitation extended to India early last month, seemingly out of the blue, by Commander of Southern Command, Lieutenant General Aamir Riaz to join the CPEC was after all, not an unintended off -the- cuff offer."
Meanwhile, the 'Chief Minister' of Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK), Mehbooba Mufti, has sent an important message to the official managers of foreign policy in India and Pakistan suggesting the two to try to resolve their bilateral dispute, for a change, using geo-economics rather than geo-politics. She has rightly called for creating a trade corridor between South Asia and Central Asia involving both IOK and Azad Kashmir as its "nucleus".
Indeed, the subcontinent was historically linked to Central Asia through Kashmir and taking advantage of its geographical location, IOK could become a nucleus towards forging a new economic alliance in the region. This will create favourable conditions for IOK to play its natural role of connecting the two zones. Such an arrangement would surely supplement the CPEC through the IOK.
The current reopening of traditional trans-IOK and trans-Azad Kashmir routes transforms geo-economic and geo-political scenarios at the regional and global levels. Not only the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad and Poonch-Rawalakot Roads that have already been opened for movement of people and goods, all the traditional road links including Suchetgarh-Sialkot road, Kargil-Skardu road, Bandipora-Gurez-Gilgit road and Nowshera-Mirpur road can be and should be opened for free movement of people and goods in the region.
So, let pragmatism as well as geo-economics dictate our Kashmir policy from now onwards and not let it remain a hostage to the willingness or otherwise of India giving up its bloody-hold on IOK. Similarly, it is only logical for Pakistan to look at Afghanistan from the geo-economic perspective now that CPEC has already been launched. But no headway can be made on this front until and unless we agree to let Afghanistan and India trade with each other overland through Pakistan. Perhaps India and Afghanistan both would be willing to concede to Islamabad the price that it would like to quote for the trade- off for the trade route via Pakistani land along with full assurance from the two that they would not use the route to undermine Pakistan's political and geographical sovereignty.
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