Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2015-03-01
Chinese president Xi Jinping's "belt and road" initiative to link China with with Europe through Central and Western Asia and to connect with Southeast Asian countries will be met with staunch challenges from India's own competing proposal, reports our Chinese-language sister paper Want Daily.
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| Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi meet in New Delhi on Sept. 18, 2014. (Photo/Xinhua) |
Chinese president Xi Jinping's "belt and road" initiative to link China with with Europe through Central and Western Asia and to connect with Southeast Asian countries will be met with staunch challenges from India's own competing proposal, reports our Chinese-language sister paper Want Daily.
Xi's
ambitious strategic plan, announced last year, comprises the Silk Road Economic
Belt, a land-based belt from China via Central Asia and Russia to Europe, and
the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, a maritime route through the Strait of
Malacca to India, the Middle East and East Africa.
Pang
Zhongying, an international relations professor at the Renmin University of
China in Beijing, says while Xi has personally invited Indian prime minister
Narendra Modi to join the belt and road initiative, New Delhi has never
expressed a clear indication of support.
Instead,
India will soon be launching its own Project Mausam, a transnational initiative
meant to revive its ancient maritime routes and cultural linkages with countries
in the region.
Mausam is a
"threatening and competing" initiative will pose a major challenge
for China's belt and road plans, Pang said, noting that the project intends to
stretch from East Africa, the Arabian peninsula, the Indian subcontinent and
Sri Lanka to the Southeast Asian archipelago — all the regions forming the
extent of India's cultural influence.
As the
primary "organizer" of security and trade in the Indian Ocean, New
Delhi has a central and unique role in the region, Pang said, adding that the
competing initiatives could turn into a major tussle between the world's two
biggest rising powers.
India's
economic influence has also been growing, with reports that its national GDP
for the upcoming financial year will outdo China and soar to a four-year high
of 8.5%.
The
Economist even described the competitive dynamics between China and India as
akin to the tale of the hare and the tortoise, adding that India's economic
prowess could very well eclipse that of China's in the near future.
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