OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

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kit
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by kit »

chetak wrote:
yensoy wrote:

The hans are backed by economic and military muscle. They may not be crass enough to show it publicly. They have enough weight in the UN to enmesh some piddly country in some human rights BS, whatever and drag that country through the mud. No one would interfere.

why should we get our knickers in a twist for some losers who went and willfully committed suicide??

If it were so easy as you think, someone would already have done it by now.
the small guys are there everywhere in political and bureaucracy everywhere ready to sell out ... doesnt some people in India come to mind ? ..these are the obvious targets to make sure the obore goes to sea literally . Small compensations and vacations for them go a long way to ensure this. China does this with quite a few in Indian bureaucratic circles ..
Peregrine
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OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by Peregrine »

Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat & Analyzing CPEC Threads

China will not push India on BRI: Vice foreign minister

WUHAN: China on Saturday said there is no fundamental difference with India on the issue of "inter-connectivity" and Beijing will "not be too hard" with New Delhi on the issue of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The BRI, a multi-billion-dollar initiative launched by President Xi Jinping when he came to power in 2013, has become a major sticking point in the bilateral ties. The BRI also includes the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) which India opposes as it goes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

At the end of the two-day informal summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi in the central Chinese city, Chinese vice foreign minister Kong Xuanyou said, "We feel that there is no fundamental difference between China and India on the issue of supporting inter-connectivity."

"The Indian side does not exclude this cooperation. It is also continuing to advance on interconnection. India is also a founding member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). It is the second largest shareholder of our region," Kong said.

"As for whether India accepts the expression Belt and Road, I think it is not important and China will not be too hard on it," he said.

India had boycotted last year's Belt and Road Forum organised by China.

The BRI, a pet initiative of President Xi, is aimed at promoting network of roads, ports and rail networks all over the world to spread China's influence.

Kong said both China and India seek a fair settlement of their border dispute.

The two countries will also enhance military and security communication mechanisms, Kong said, referring to the India-China boundary issue.

Leaders of the two countries believe that China and India are friends and the development of China-India relations is trend of the times, he said.

Regarding the bilateral cooperation, the two sides agreed to sort out the existing mechanisms between the two countries to make communication between the them more effective, start bilateral negotiations as soon as possible, further expand bilateral trade, promote cultural cooperation and exchanges between the two countries as a whole, seeking fair and reasonable solution of border issues, he added.

To a question on Tibet, Kong said "the position of the Indian government is that Tibet is an inalienable part of China. This has not changed. In the process of promoting mutual political development, it is also an important political consensus reached by both sides."

He said there was no disagreement between the two leaders at the meeting. "The two sides can handle these issues on the consensus reached," he said.

China and India are both major global powers in this region. In the process of contact between the leaders of the two countries, it is inevitable to talk about the relationship between the two countries, and it is also a question that will inevitably be touched upon, Kong said.

To another question, he said both China and India pursue the idea of sharing and building a global governance.

"China-India relations are not targeted at third parties. They will never engage in obsolete and out-of-date zero-sum games. They will not engage in closed and exclusive circles," he said.

"Sino-Indian relations will not be affected by other factors, either China or India. Both are major powers with great influence. Positive communication among great powers has injected positive factors into regional and world peace and stability," he said.

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anupmisra
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by anupmisra »

Interesting maritime tracking website to watch. You can zoom in and out. Note the live traffic monitoring of tankers and other maritime vessels along India's western coastline as compared to k'rachi. Note total absence of traffic (source or destination) at g'wadar.

No wonder the chinis are deeply interested in India becoming part of OBOR. If India accedes, it is "goodbye" pakhanistan.

https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/ho ... 0.6/zoom:6
pankajs
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by pankajs »

Theresa Fallon @TheresaAFallon

#DebtTrapDiplomacy: Top eight countries most vulnerable to #BRI #OBOR #BeltandRoad debt distress.
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Austin
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by Austin »

They can refuse to pay the Chinese :lol:
nits
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by nits »

anupmisra wrote:Interesting maritime tracking website to watch. You can zoom in and out. Note the live traffic monitoring of tankers and other maritime vessels along India's western coastline as compared to k'rachi. Note total absence of traffic (source or destination) at g'wadar.

No wonder the chinis are deeply interested in India becoming part of OBOR. If India accedes, it is "goodbye" pakhanistan.

https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/ho ... 0.6/zoom:6
Interesting website; you can also search for port and it will provide ships at port; how many arrived / left in last 24 hours and so on... Its 0 for Gwadar in last 24 hours
abhik
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by abhik »

The chinese debt to GDP ratio for pwakies is the least, I smell an opportunity.
chetak
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by chetak »

EU ambassadors band together against Silk Road

EU ambassadors band together against Silk Road

EU ambassadors to Beijing warn that China’s Silk Road project flouts international transparency norms and is aimed at furthering Chinese interests. The paper reflects Beijing’s strategy to divide the bloc.

By
Dana HeideDana Heide Till HoppeTill Hoppe Stephan ScheuerStephan Scheuer Klaus StratmannKlaus Stratmann

Published on April 17, 2018


Twenty-seven of the 28 national EU ambassadors to Beijing have compiled a report that sharply criticizes China’s “Silk Road” project, denouncing it as designed to hamper free trade and put Chinese companies at an advantage.

The report, seen by Handelsblatt, said the plan, unveiled in 2013, “runs counter to the EU agenda for liberalizing trade and pushes the balance of power in favor of subsidized Chinese companies.”

The unusually biting contents, which only Hungary’s ambassador refused to sign, are part of the EU’s preparations for an EU-China summit in July. The EU Commission is working on a strategy paper to forge a common EU stance on China’s prestige project to build roads, ports and gas pipelines to connect China by land and sea to Southeast Asia, Pakistan and Central Asia, and beyond to the Middle East, Europe and Africa. The new Silk Road will run through some 65 countries in six economic corridors.

“We shouldn’t refuse to cooperate but we should politely yet firmly state our terms,” said one high-ranking EU diplomat, adding that Chinese firms must not receive preferential treatment in the awarding of public contracts.

One German economics ministry official said the Silk Road initiative “must take account of the interests of all participants” and was still a long way off.

Chinese politicians have been banging the drum for the vast project, officially called “One Belt, One Road”. They’re mobilizing around $1 trillion in what would be the biggest international development program since the US launched the Marshall Plan after World War Two.

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“China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ will be the new World Trade Organization – whether we like it or not,” CEO of German industrial giant Siemens, Joe Kaeser, told the World Economic Forum in January.

In their report, the ambassadors wrote that China wanted to shape globalization to suit its own interests. “At the same time the initiative is pursuing domestic political goals like the reduction of surplus capacity, the creation of new export markets and safeguarding access to raw materials,” it read.

They warned that European companies could fail to clinch good contracts if China isn’t pushed into adhering to the European principles of transparency in public procurement, as well as environmental and social standards.

EU officials said China was trying to divide Europe to strengthen its hand in relations with individual member states. Countries such as Hungary and Greece, which both rely on Chinese investment, have in the past shown they’re susceptible to pressure from China.

Whenever European politicians travel to China nowadays they’re put under pressure by their hosts to sign agreements for the joint expansion of the Silk Road. “This bilateral structure leads to an unequal distribution of power which China exploits,” their report said.

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The Silk Road isn’t the only issue between the EU and China right now. Like US President Donald Trump, the EU is also fed up with the obstacles China has put up for foreign investors, including the forced transfer of know-how to Chinese partners.

But the bloc isn’t resorting to one-sided tariffs to push China to open its markets. Instead, it’s working in an investment agreement with China. Progress has been painfully slow, but the EU hopes the looming global trade war may speed up the talks. Negotiators from the two sides plan to meet this week.

One EU diplomat said China was very good at exploiting grey areas in WTO law on the protection of intellectual property, for example, and didn’t shy away from breaking rules. “When we point that out to our Chinese negotiating partners they always show a lot of understanding but in reality hardly anything changes,” the diplomat said.

In a speech last week, President Xi Jinping said the Silk Road project “isn’t a Chinese conspiracy as some people abroad claim.” China, he insisted, has no intention of playing “self-serving geopolitical games.”

However, China has yet to provide exact information on which foreign firms have so far directly benefited from the Chinese development program. The $40 billion Silk Road Fund was set up in 2014 to invest in countries along the road but it’s unclear who is eligible for investment, and on what terms.

A German study released in February by the government’s GTAI foreign trade and investment marketing agency and the Association of German Chambers of Commerce and Industry concluded that the Silk Road project was often focused on politically unstable countries with uncertain legal frameworks. GTAI’s managing director said that around 80 percent of projects funded by Chinese state banks had gone to Chinese companies in the past.

German government papers seen by Handelsblatt indicate that China isn’t interested in transparency when it comes to procurement. Last May, when former Economics Minister Brigitte Zypries traveled to Beijing for the grand launch of the Silk Road initiative, she and other EU officials were meant to sign a joint declaration with the Chinese government. It didn’t happen.

The Europeans wanted to change much of the agreement’s wording, saying it should guarantee “equal opportunities for all investors in transport infrastructure” as well as international standards of transparency.

The Chinese refused to incorporate any amendments.

Dana Heide is a political correspondent for Handelsblatt in Berlin. Till Hoppe is Handelsblatt’s Brussels correspondent. Stephan Scheuer is the head of Handelsblatt’s features desk. Klaus Stratmann covers energy policy and politics for Handelsblatt in Berlin. To contact the authors:heide@handelsblatt.com, hoppe@handelsblatt.com, scheuer@handelsblatt.com and stratmann@handelsblatt.com
yensoy
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by yensoy »

^^^^ So there is a freight train between Kolkata and Teheran, passing through Pakistan now? Looks like some graphic artist took a map and connected dots without giving much thought to geopolitics.

Now China already has multiple train lines to Europe and evidently these are being used; they also have the traditional sea route and exploring the Arctic passage. So what more infrastructure is needed now?
Peregrine
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OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by Peregrine »

X Posted on the Analyzing CPEC & Terroristani Threads

Lengthy Article from FP in full for Non-Subscribers

On China’s New Silk Road, Democracy Pays A Toll

China's vast foreign investment program comes at a sharp cost to human rights and good governance

Great power competition is back. And China is now combining its vast economic resources with a muscular presence on the global stage. One of Beijing’s key efforts is the Belt and Road Initiative, a trillion-dollar endeavor to link together Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe through a web of mostly Chinese-funded physical and digital infrastructure.

Much of Washington has fretted over China’s mercantilist approach to economics in general and views the Belt and Road Initiative largely through this lens. Yet the concerns over Beijing’s current approach should go beyond dollars and yuan. By fueling debt dependency, advancing a “China First” development model, and undermining good governance and human rights, the initiative offers a deeply illiberal approach to regions that contain about 65 percent of the world’s population and one-third of its economic output.

The hype surrounding the Belt and Road Initiative — Chinese President Xi Jinping’s signature initiative on the world stage — has recently shifted into overdrive. In China’s domestic politics, support for the project has come to signify loyalty to the country’s president-for-life. At the same time, the Belt and Road serves as an overarching narrative into which Beijing can fit its foreign economic policy in regions as disparate as the Arctic and Latin America. Yet the initiative’s rhetoric and branding should not obscure its core aim: to access markets and project influence and power throughout Eurasia and the Indian Ocean rim. And China has already dedicated significant resources to the effort: Estimates put total Belt and Road-related construction and investment at more than $340 billion from 2014 to 2017.

The United States cannot ignore the Belt and Road Initiative. The offer of financing and other assistance addresses a very real need in many countries for roads, ports, railways, telecommunications networks, and other infrastructure. And given that many see no credible alternative on offer, straight-out American opposition is bound to fail.

Instead, the Trump administration should try to shape the project, where possible, through a combination of engagement and pressure. At the same time, it is imperative to counter the initiative’s most illiberal elements. This means advancing a free, open, and sustainable model of development, fostering political resiliency in select countries, launching a new digital development fund, and more. Undertaken in concert with U.S. allies and partners, these kinds of moves will not demand massive new resources. But absent steps like them, Belt and Road-fueled illiberalism will spread across the globe unchecked.

To understand how the Belt and Road Initiative can threaten human rights and good governance, consider first how its projects are financed.To understand how the Belt and Road Initiative can threaten human rights and good governance, consider first how its projects are financed. Thus far, China has largely favored loans over grants. It is not a member of the Paris Club of major creditor nations, and it has shown little inclination to adhere to internationally recognized norms of debt sustainability, such as the sovereign lending principles issued by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. At the same time, many of the recipient countries participating in the project lack the capability to assess the long-term financial consequences of China’s loans — or they may simply accept them, assuming the bills will come due on a future government’s watch.

Ballooning, unsustainable debt is the predictable result. Sri Lanka, where in 2017 some 95 percent of government revenue went to debt repayment, represents the best-known example of Belt and Road’s negative impact on a country’s balance sheet. But Sri Lanka is only the most prominent case; a recent study by the Center for Global Development identified eight countries — Djibouti, the Maldives, Laos, Montenegro, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Pakistan — that are at particular risk of debt distress due to future Belt and Road-related financing.

Naturally, large government-backed loans to foreign countries come with political strings attached. The potentially destructive international economic consequences of failing to make repayments breeds long-term dependence on China and expands Beijing’s influence. As a result, recipient countries will find their foreign-policy choices constrained — even if future governments seek to exit Beijing’s orbit.

Sri Lanka is again a case in point. There, the government of Maithripala Sirisena inherited a mountain of Belt and Road-related debt from its pro-Chinese predecessor and, despite a clear desire to move closer to India and the United States, had no recourse but to engage in a debt-for-equity swap with China. The deal left Beijing with a 99-year lease on the strategically located port at Hambantota.

The Belt and Road Initiative provides a vector through which China can exert influence well beyond countries’ foreign-policy choices. The geographic expanse covered by the initiative includes many nations with high levels of corruption, and with domestic institutions that range from fragile democracies to full-blown autocracies. With Chinese companies being generally less transparent than their international peers, and with Beijing’s zeal to curb bribery and corporate malfeasance limited to its domestic economy, a massive influx of Chinese funds into countries with weak governance is likely to exacerbate ongoing corruption problems. And given that some projects are clearly linked to geopolitical objectives — like gaining control over commercial assets with potential military uses — Beijing may well employ graft to ensure that foreign political elites look favorably on its offers.

China’s planned development of a “new digital Silk Road” has received comparatively less attention than other elements of the initiative but is equally troubling. China’s digital blueprint seeks to promote information technology connectivity across the Indian Ocean rim and Eurasia through new fiber optic lines, undersea cables, cloud computing capacity, and even artificial intelligence research centers. If realized, this ambitious vision will serve to export elements of Beijing’s surveillance regime. Indeed, Chinese technology companies already have a track record of aiding repressive governments. In Ethiopia, likely prior to the advent of Belt and Road, the Washington Post reports that China’s ZTE Corporation “sold technology and provided training to monitor mobile phones and Internet activity.” Today, Chinese tech giant Huawei is partnering with the government of Kenya to construct “safe cities” that leverage thousands of surveillance cameras feeding data into a public security cloud “to keep an eye on what is going on generally” according to the company’s promotional materials. Not all elements of China’s domestic surveillance regime are exportable, but as the “New Digital Silk Road” takes shape, the public and online spaces of countries along it will become less free.

Beyond fueling corruption and enhancing surveillance, the initiative will stifle free speech, at a minimum by strengthening Beijing’s ability to silence criticism. States financially beholden to China will become less willing to call out Beijing’s domestic human rights abuses, for instance, and less eager to object to its foreign-policy practices. This dynamic is already playing out within the European Union. In mid-2017, for the first time, the EU failed to issue a joint condemnation of China at the U.N. Human Rights Council. Greece, which had recently received a massive influx of Chinese investment into its Port of Piraeus, scuttled the EU statement.

Other cash-strapped democratic governments, when confronting the choice between Belt and Road’s immediate – even if one-sided – economic benefits and the need to defend human rights globally, may well follow Greece’s example. Similarly, companies dependent on the Chinese market are already acquiescing to Beijing’s demands – such as by firing an American employee who “liked” a pro-Tibetan independence tweet – and by self-censoring, as in the efforts by some Hollywood producers to ensure that films contain no lines (supportive of Tibet, say, or critical of Xi Jinping) that might arouse anger within the Chinese Communist Party. As the initiative extends its reach, it is easy to imagine government officials feeling similarly compelled.

China’s Belt and Road-related activism leaves the United States in a bind.China’s Belt and Road-related activism leaves the United States in a bind. Lacking additional billions of dollars in government-directed funds, a raft of state-owned enterprises, or well-capitalized banks linked to the government, Washington cannot simply outbid Beijing. Nor should it try to do so. Virtually no country would sign on to an “us or them” approach to the Belt and Road Initiative even if the United States were to offer such a stark alternative, and inducing infrastructure-strapped countries to “just say no” to Chinese funds is a tough sell. The best course for Washington is to offer a positive vision of physical and digital connectivity while taking concrete steps to limit the initiative’s most illiberal effects.

The Trump administration is off to a rhetorical start with its invocation of a “free and open Indo-Pacific,” to which it should couple a “free, open, and sustainable” model of development in that region and beyond. Drawing an implicit distinction with Belt and Road’s debt-fueled focus on hard infrastructure generally constructed with Chinese workers, the United States, together with other democracies such as Japan, European nations, and India, should advance an alternative approach. It should emphasize local capacity-building, the transfer of skills, responsible financing, quality, and innovation. These elements should become the watchword of the free, open, and sustainable model.

Although some governments willingly take on unsustainable debt to finance Belt and Road projects and channel contracts to Chinese companies behind closed doors, others simply lack the technical capacity to assess debt repayment and the long-term costs associated with specific infrastructure projects. The United States, working with its allies and partners, can play a critical role in helping to develop the human capital necessary to adequately determine whether a country should take on a Belt and Road project. This would include such mundane but important efforts as building technical financial assessment capacity, training procurement officials, and enhancing the project management skills of government officials.

The United States should also double down on its international support for democracy, civil society, and rule of law. Transparency, domestic checks and balances, and a free press can function as powerful impediments to the sort of corrupt backroom deals that leave China with enduring financial leverage and receiving governments with a long-term debt hangover. Even modest efforts in nondemocratic countries — to train investigative journalists, for example, or to strengthen the capacity of civil society organizations — may constrain China from pursuing the most one-sided Belt and Road deals.

Information technology connectivity is the one area in which the United States should most actively compete with China. Working with Europe and Japan, Washington could establish a dedicated development fund under the umbrella of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that would finance digital development projects. Such a fund should only support companies that are committed to globally recognized rights of freedom of expression and privacy and that agree to an independent third-party audit of its software and hardware exports.

In March 2000, then-U.S. President Bill Clinton channeled the prevailing wisdom about China in pressing for approval of permanent normal trade relations with Beijing and its admission to the World Trade Organization. “Bringing China into the WTO,” Clinton said, “doesn’t guarantee that it will choose political reform.” Nevertheless, Clinton argued, “the process of economic change will force China to confront that choice sooner, and it will make the imperative for the right choice stronger.” The notion that borders open to trade and investment were bound to allow in liberal ideas struck many policymakers as entirely logical.

But that was an illusion. A richer and more globally connected China has not become a more democratic one — instead, Beijing’s economic strength now allows it to spread its own illiberal values to other countries. Nearly two decades after China’s entrance into the world economy, it is up to U.S. President Donald Trump to ensure that the illiberal values China is exporting under the guise of the Belt and Road Initiative do not take root across the globe.

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Peregrine
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OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by Peregrine »

X Posted on the Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat and Terroristaan Thread

Malaysia renegotiating terms of major Belt-and-Road rail project: PM Mahathir

Malaysia is haggling over the terms of a $14 billion rail deal with its Chinese partners and can reduce its ballooning national debts by $50 billion by doing away with megaprojects, its prime minister said in an interview published on Saturday.

Mahathir Mohamad, the 92-year-old who triumphed over scandal-plagued Najib Razak in elections earlier this month, has made it a priority to cut the national debt and pledged to review major projects agreed by the previous government.

Work on the 55 billion ringgit ($13.82 billion) East Coast Rail Link - the largest such project in the country and a major part of Beijing's Belt and Road infrastructure push - started last year.

The project was planned to stretch 688 kilometres (430 miles) connecting the South China Sea at the Thai border in the east with the strategic shipping routes of the Straits of Malacca in the west.

"We are renegotiating the terms," Mahathir told the financial newspaper The Edge. "The terms are very damaging to our economy."

The project is being built by China Communications Construction Co Ltd, and is being mainly financed by a loan from China Exim Bank.

Mahathir also questioned the need for the project in the first place.

"He (Najib) knew very well that the ECRL, for example, is not something we could afford. It is not going to serve any purpose, it is not going to give us any returns," said Mahathir.

Addressing the need to reduce the national debt and liabilities - which the government puts at around one trillion ringgit ($251.32 billion) or 80 percent of its GDP - Mahathir said "at one go we can reduce it by 200 billion ringgit ($50.26 billion) by doing away with all these huge projects".

Mahathir said Malaysia is also going to look into how it can reduce the cost of any potential exit from a deal with Singapore for a high-speed rail (HSR) to link its capital Kuala Lumpur with the city-state, said Mahathir.

The project, valued by analysts at about $17 billion, is currently out for tender and is scheduled to be completed by 2026.

"The terms of the agreement (for the HSR) are such that if we decide to drop the project, it will cost us a lot of money," said Mahathir.

"So we are going to find out how we can reduce the amount of money we have to pay for breaking the agreement."

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chetak
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by chetak »

^^^^^^^

The very first visibly seen cracks in the han's much touted BRI and the OBOR programs. Other countries may have grumbled privately but this guy has publicly come out with the correct reason, causing loss of the all important face, as far as the hans are considered.

After such a shock, the hans will surely try and manage the future local country elections where ever it may so affect them. New govts, taking over after elections and reviewing old and already settled OBOR/BRI arrangements and contracts is certainly not acceptable to the hans.

The Modi govt's "obstructionist" policies toward the OBOR/BRI/CPEC initiatives may quietly trigger just such an attempt by the hans in India.

They are more than chummy with the opposition lunkheads as seen by the strenuous efforts of han ambassador to India and his chinese food festival diplomacy and also their fondness for the commies in kerala.

Are the hans lining up their ducks before the 2019 run by the BJP??

Mahathir Mohamad has just struck at the very core, the deepest root of the han strategy of "binding" OBOR/BRI countries close to them by foisting a very heavy debt burden on them so that the noose remains tight and even as it slowly strangles the host country in a python like grip, a fatal embrace, as it were, in the case of the SLs which is to last a century at least.

Personally, I don't think that the hans will EVER return hambantota back to the SLs again.
Last edited by chetak on 27 May 2018 17:45, edited 1 time in total.
shashankk
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by shashankk »

Pakistan catches Chinese firm evading Rs1.12b in taxes

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s customs authorities have caught a Chinese company that supplies coal to the 1,320-megawatt Sahiwal Power Plant evading Rs1.12 billion in taxes on its imports, but the tax machinery is reluctant to file a criminal case due to sensitivities attached with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

Despite the fact that the company has admitted its fault and deposited Rs1.2 billion in the exchequer last month, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is reluctant to register a criminal case against Huaneng Fuyun Shipping Company owing to ‘national interests’.

The case highlights the magnitude of challenges authorities are facing in dealing with Chinese firms.

The first investigation report has not been registered against Huaneng Fuyun Shipping in ‘national interest’

https://tribune.com.pk/story/1710155/2- ... 12b-taxes/
Peregrine
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OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by Peregrine »

chetak Ji :

Your Post 27 May 2018 17:33

There is a great amount of land being “Leased or Purchased or Taken Over to end Land Disputes” by various countries as per the following Article :

Why Wall Street investors and Chinese firms are buying farmland all over the world

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Hambantota : I would agree with you and add that the next is the Port of Colombo.

India : Such is the nature of certain individuals-groups of Indian Origin who will sell their Souls to any external force for personal benefit. Many Moons ago whilst in Kolkata I have personally heard the CPIM Leader – the late Jyoti Basu – proclaiming at various Political meetings in the Parks-Gardens- Green Areas near Victoria Memorial “China Chairman Mousy Dung is Our Chairman!”

So your statement “The hans lining up their ducks before the 2019 run by the BJP” deserve merit – No Ifs No Buts. IOW the Hans will most definitely – possibly with Terroristan in tow – as well as the efforts by Uncle Sam and the Brits – do their utmost to possibly oust Mody Ji and BJP from Power and help the Congress or other lackeys.

Hambantota : Agreed. I believe the Han is lining up Colombo too.

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chetak
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by chetak »

Peregrine wrote:chetak Ji :

Your Post 27 May 2018 17:33

There is a great amount of land being “Leased or Purchased or Taken Over to end Land Disputes” by various countries as per the following Article :

Why Wall Street investors and Chinese firms are buying farmland all over the world

Image

Hambantota : I would agree with you and add that the next is the Port of Colombo.

India : Such is the nature of certain individuals-groups of Indian Origin who will sell their Souls to any external force for personal benefit. Many Moons ago whilst in Kolkata I have personally heard the CPIM Leader – the late Jyoti Basu – proclaiming at various Political meetings in the Parks-Gardens- Green Areas near Victoria Memorial “China Chairman Mousy Dung is Our Chairman!”

So your statement “The hans lining up their ducks before the 2019 run by the BJP” deserve merit – No Ifs No Buts. IOW the Hans will most definitely – possibly with Terroristan in tow – as well as the efforts by Uncle Sam and the Brits – do their utmost to possibly oust Mody Ji and BJP from Power and help the Congress or other lackeys.

Hambantota : Agreed. I believe the Han is lining up Colombo too.

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Sirji,

You may well be right because the hans already have a considerable investment in the colombo port. The SLs would be very foolish to let that investment increase and it would be better for the SLs to look for alternate sources to counter the han stake, merely as a defensive measure. Maybe, stakes held by non SL entities would also prevent some future greedy presidents from doing the dirty.

uncle sam may find it difficult to deal with messy coalitions, especially if it included the commies, so they wouldn't mind a strong single leader at the helm but the UK and the rest of the slippery bunch would very much prefer a coalition that included the commies so that they could undermine the Indian system from within.

Russia has already, in the past, shown how this game is played but only now, the stakes are truly strategic and also very much bigger. Our old friends are themselves currently not in such a good place and so their ability or even the will to protect us may be considerably diminished.

we have to carefully watch both the US lot and the UK continent lot for very different reasons but in the end both lots have the not so benign intentions to subvert, undermine, and sink us to further their own ends.

To this end, countries like philippines and east timor come to mind.

FCRA has particularly choked the very life blood of inimical offshore interests and decimated a carefully and meticulously nurtured system that they never thought could ever be blocked.

They thought that it would be ridiculously easy pickings just like nepal. Just see the havoc that the commies have wreaked there just by the introduction of the word "secular" into the system by outside interests.

I only wish that other pending reforms in India would have been carried out with the same speed and ruthlessness.

Another good Modi term would raise the barriers much higher for these guys, maybe even unacceptably so. Our increasing economic heft would act virtually like a poison pill in case anyone thought of disturbing such a large economy and the natural flow of the path that we are already on.

Hence the introduction of new weaponized campaigning processes using methodologies developed by entities like cambridge analytica and others similar, deployed quietly by both offshore governmental and foreign funded NGO like organizations.
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by Neshant »

China is definitely inflating the cost of the roads, ports and power stations it is building for those countries.
The cost of building that infrastructure is nowhere near the bill they are presenting those countries.
More so when it simply represents dumping of surplus capacity from China's over-building bubble onto the rest of the world.
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by chetak »

Neshant wrote:China is definitely inflating the cost of the roads, ports and power stations it is building for those countries.
The cost of building that infrastructure is nowhere near the bill they are presenting those countries.
More so when it simply represents dumping of surplus capacity from China's over-building bubble onto the rest of the world.
They are simply accelerating and maximizing the return on their "investment" by padding the bills.

It was probably a risk reduction mechanism when first conceived but now it may have degenerated to just open greed and the siphoning off of cream right off the top.

Corruption is endemic in china.
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by Singha »

IBNLIVE - couple of resounding slaps given

NEW DELHI: Nepal has decided to build a 750 megawatt hydel project on its own after scrapping an agreement with a Chinese infrastructure firm, the Himalayan nation's finance minister Yubaraj Khatiwada has said.

The reservoir type project in western Nepal couldn't be completed as the company, China Three Gorges Corporation or CTGC, demanded a hike in the power purchase rate, the price at which Nepal would be buying electricity.

The Nepal finance minister made the announcement to scrap the agreement while releasing the first federal budget for fiscal 2019.

Nepal's rivers, cascading from the snow-capped Himalayas, have vast, untapped potential for hydropower generation, but lack of funds and technology have made Nepal lean on India to meet annual demand of 1,400 megawatts (MW).

The power project has been stuck since 2012. The Nepal government said it made the decision to terminate the deal with the Chinese after a committee looked into the deal and gave its suggestion.

A year ago, the Chinese firm had given Nepal an option to reduce the production capacity to 600 MW, in case Nepal was not agreeable to paying a higher power purchase cost.

The agreement signed between the two nations state that the Chinese firm CTGC will have a 75 per cent stake in the project and the rest will be held by the Nepal Electricity Authority.

The project with the reservoir covers Baitadi, Bajhang and Dadeldhura. It was expected to produce 1.8 billion units of electricity a year.

The project with the 207-metre-tall dam was estimated to cost $1.8 billion, including the interest charges, or $1.4 Billion excluding interest charges.

In November last year, Nepal had also scrapped a $2.5 billion deal with China Gezhouba Group Corporation to build the country's biggest hydropower plant, citing lapses in the award process, the energy minister had said.

COMMENTSIn June last year, a Maoist-dominated coalition government had awarded a contract to China Gezhouba Group Corporation to build a 1,200 MW plant on the Budhi Gandaki River, 50 kilometres west of Kathmandu, to address acute power shortages.

Critics had said the $2.5 billion project was handed to the Chinese company without any competitive bidding, which is required by law, and a parliamentary panel asked the government that succeeded the Maoist-led coalition to scrap the deal.
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by Neshant »

Singha wrote: In November last year, Nepal had also scrapped a $2.5 billion deal with China Gezhouba Group Corporation to build the country's biggest hydropower plant, citing lapses in the award process, the energy minister had said.
The only reason they scrapped it is because India clearly indicated it would not buy any power coming from that project or any project built by China. Why would we give our market access away to a strategic competitor trying to hem us in.

It cost way too much to send that power thousands of kilometers into China - not that even China wants that power given they already have overbuilt power plants in China and can produce it for far less.

Surely Nepal's govt already knew this so I don't understand why they kept plugging away at it only now to abandon it.

The only thing it has resulted in is mistrust.
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by Kashi »

Suppose Nepal does go ahead with the power plant and then signs an agreement with India to purchase the generated power and supposing later, the plant is 'sold' to a 'Chinese consortium' on one pretext on the other, we would end up purchasing the power from Chinese anyway.

I hope we have given no commitment to Nepal that we will purchase the power from the plant regardless.
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by Singha »

Malaysia pm says his decision to cancel hsr to singapore is final and he will cancel the obor scam asset grab trap projects after a talk to dragon lords

At 90 yo he has nothing to prove and seems like a patriot
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by Singha »

Even africans have become very wary of obor debt trap now

India is doing its bit in collusion with western powers and japan to tar and feather it
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OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by Peregrine »

X Posted on the Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat Thread

Jibe at OBOR? PM Modi says need bridges of trust, not just infrastructure

NEW DELHI: PM Narendra Modi laid out the fundamentals of India’s role in the Indo-Pacific, saying on Friday that his government stood for a free, open and inclusive region with Asean at its centre.

Delivering the keynote speech at the Shangri La Dialogue, the prestigious inter-governmental security forum, Modi called for a common rules-based order which, he said, must believe in sovereignty and territorial integrity, as well as equality of all nations, irrespective of size and strength.

While Modi didn’t sound confrontational, he sent out subtle messages to Beijing as he said that these rules and norms should be based on the consent of all, not on the power of the few. Modi sought closer ties with China, saying stable relations between the two countries were an important factor in global peace and progress. However, he also warned that while India understood the benefits of connectivity, it was also important to build bridges of trust, and not just infrastructure, in pursuing such initiatives.

And for that, he said, these initiatives must be based on respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, consultation, good governance, transparency, viability and sustainability. “They must empower nations, not place them under impossible debt burden. They must promote trade, not strategic competition. On these principles, we are prepared to work with everyone,” said Modi.

Despite pressure from Beijing, India is yet to show any interest in joining China’s flagship One Belt, One Road (OBOR) connectivity project. “No other relationship of India has as many layers as our relations with China... and, we have displayed maturity and wisdom in managing issues and ensuring a peaceful border,” said Modi. The PM said the world will have a better future when India and China work together in trust and confidence, sensitive to each other’s interests.

At a time when several Asean nations are feeling insecure over Chinese muscle-flexing in South China Sea, Modi said when nations make international commitments, they must uphold them.

Addressing the international audience, the PM also spoke out strongly against protectionism.
“What we seek is a level playing field for all. India stands for an open and stable international trade regime,” Modi said.

Cheers Image
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by Neshant »

Kashi wrote:Suppose Nepal does go ahead with the power plant and then signs an agreement with India to purchase the generated power and supposing later, the plant is 'sold' to a 'Chinese consortium' on one pretext on the other, we would end up purchasing the power from Chinese anyway.

I hope we have given no commitment to Nepal that we will purchase the power from the plant regardless.
Good point.

Nepal is now claiming it will build a 750 MW hydro electric power station on its own.

But where is the money and the personnel & equipment to build it coming from?

If this is a back door loan or project from China, no way should India buy this power.

We rather spend our money developing hydroelectric potential of North East India.
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by Philip »

OBOR.....Not PM Modi's cup of chai! Well put Modiji!
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by Vasu »

some more commentary on the Malaysia's escape from OBOR.

Malaysia gives a big jolt to China's One Belt, One Road projects
Kuala Lumpur's previous regime, led by scandal-mired Najib Razak, had warm ties with China and signed a string of deals for Beijing-funded projects, including a major rail link and a deep-sea port.

Critics say many agreements lacked transparency, fuelling suspicions they were struck in exchange for help in paying off debts from a financial scandal which ultimately helped bring down Najib's regime.

Malaysia, along with Beijing ally Cambodia, were seen as bright spots in Southeast Asia, with projects in other countries often facing problems, from land acquisition to drawn-out negotiations with governments.

Chinese foreign direct investment into Malaysia stood at just 0.8 percent of total net FDI inflows in 2008, but that figure had risen to 14.4 percent by 2016, according to a study from Singapore's ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.

However, Hiebert said it was "widely assumed" that Malaysia was striking quick deals with China in the hope of getting help to cover debts from sovereign wealth fund 1MDB.

Najib and his cronies were accused of stealing huge sums of public money from the investment vehicle in a massive fraud. Public disgust at the allegations -- denied by Najib and 1MDB -- helped topple his government.

New prime minister Mahathir has announced a planned high-speed rail link between Kuala Lumpur and neighbouring Singapore will not go ahead as he seeks to reduce the country's huge national debt.

Work has already started in Malaysia on another line seen as part of that route, and which had received Chinese funding -- the $14-billion East Coast Rail Link, running from close to the Thai border to a port near Kuala Lumpur.

Mahathir has said that agreement is now being renegotiated.

But a recent commentary in China's Global Times, a nationalist state-run tabloid, warned Mahathir if he damaged the interests of Chinese companies, they had the right to seek compensation.

Adding to China's woes, Mahathir has a clear preference for Beijing's rival Japan, and last week went to Tokyo for his first foreign trip since taking office.
So many things happening in Malaysia.
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by SSridhar »

X-post from China thread

At the heart of the Silk Road - Suhasini Haidar, The Hindu
As the horses stomp their hooves, the flames on stage rise up. This is a spectacle like no other, an opera that celebrates all the differences of the the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.

Xinjiang, formerly known as Sinkiang, is home to 47 ethnic groups, every major religion of the world, and the descendants of four ancient civilisations: Greek, Chinese, Indian and Mesopotamian. Hundreds of artistes bearing Russian, Caucasian, Indian, Central Asian, Tibetan, Han Chinese, and local Uighur features perform together on stage, along with the horses, eagles and even some Bactrian camels, as screens with colourful animations keep shifting.

The opera, called 'Revisiting the Western Regions', recreates the region’s glorious past as a crucial link of the old Silk Route under the Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE).

It was through the three branches that go around the Tarim basin that goods were traded with China on the Silk Route, explains our tour guide and interpreter. The branches around the basin gave it the look of an eye, with the forbidding Taklamakan desert at the centre.

Xinjiang means “an old frontier which returned”. The opera is a subtle celebration of China’s Qing dynasty reclaiming control of the western regions in 1884, and of post-Revolution in 1949 when the Communist People’s Republic of China incorporated Xinjiang, with a 90% ethnic Muslim population, into China. Since then, as the Chinese majority Han population has grown from 6% to 41% (2010 Census), Uighur Muslims' has dropped to 45%.

Much of the diversity resplendent on stage at the Changji Opera is not as prominent outside. Thirty kilometres away, in the Xinjiang capital city of Ürümqi, we are taken to a school that is a showpiece, given its grand classrooms, libraries and impressive facilities. One by one, the students stand up to speak about their school, where they spend all but two months of the year. What they say sounds rehearsed and explains the changes in Xinjiang quite vividly.

“My country is my family,” says 12-year-old Kawsar. “My teachers are my parents, and I live here at school where all students are my brothers and sisters.”

Firdaus, 11, says: “I want to say thank you to my government and my country because they allowed me to come here.”

Anya adds: “My parents live in a village and are poor. I think I am lucky to come here to school and it is all thanks to my country that I am here.”

Nearly all the students at Ürümqi’s No. 66 school belong to poor families who live hundreds of km away in the rural and underdeveloped parts of southern Xinjiang, closer to Kashgar. Ninety per cent of them belong to the ethnic ‘minorities’, as the Uighur Muslims and other ethnicities are termed. They have been brought here for an education, but more importantly, a “mainstream” Chinese education, in which religion, culture and ethnicities don’t find much of a place.

No overt religiosity

“According to the Constitution, we have freedom of religion,” says Qu Mingcai, principal of the school. “But until they are adults, religious activities are forbidden. When they grow up, they can choose what faith to follow.”

As a result, when asked, students at the school know little about the upcoming Eid festival or the month of Ramzan, and most say they don’t know how to pray. While they say they speak their native Uighur language at home, they focus on Mandarin and English in school.

Mr. Qu estimates that 90% of his students will move east to “mainland” China to continue their education and work, and hopes that this too will help in fostering a more homogenised culture. “They are all one ethnic group called Chinese,” he says, and mastering Mandarin is an “obligation” for every Chinese citizen.

China’s form of a “secular and nationalistic” education for the people of Xinjiang, where until some decades ago most people followed the Islamic faith, has long been a contentious issue, written about by human rights agencies and criticised by many governments as an attempt to change the demography of the region.

The U.S. State Department’s country report issued in April 2018 calls the repression of local culture and religion an effort to “Sinicize” the entire population. In a recent survey, Human Rights Watch stated that apart from what is taught at schools, as many as 800,000 Uighurs have been taken forcibly to “reeducation” camps where they are questioned about possibly extremist thoughts and indoctrinated on the perils of the “three evils” of “ethnic separatism, religious extremism, and violent terrorism”. Not all of them have returned, but some of those who have speak of harsh treatment and even violent punishments for those who didn’t learn their lessons well.

Other restrictions on faith are plain to the eye. In Ürümqi, Changji and Korla in central and north Xinjiang, it is difficult to see any men with beards, women with headscarves (veils are banned), mosque minarets, or many people praying at mosques. According to human rights agency reports, any overt form of religiosity could bring you under the scanner of the state’s well-spread surveillance system, and qualify you for a stint at the “reeducation” centre.

Fear of extremism

At Ürümqi’s Islamic Institute, a stone’s throw from No. 66, local officials attempt to explain what they call a “crackdown” on the “anti-human, anti-society” spread of extremism in Xinjiang. “Freedom of religion cannot overrule social order and education,” says Mahmood Usman, an official of the Religious Bureau of Xinjiang.

The Islamic Institute, among the 10 such institutes in the region that educate men to become imams, was established in 1982 with a grant of 250 million yuan. Deputy president of the institute Abdur Rahim takes us through its classrooms in a seven-storey-high building. Except for the colourful caps they wear, the students in class who are chanting and memorising verses from the Koran could as well be at a management school. Not one of them sports facial hair. All of them wear shirts, jackets and shoes as they sit on chairs and tables learning their lessons. Above, cheerful red banners in Mandarin proclaim the importance of nation over faith and family.

Abdur Rahim, who does have a small, well-kempt beard, dismisses all questions about restrictions as “western propaganda”. When pressed by journalists from our group, he points to how the institute itself has been allowed to grow from 100 students four decades ago to about 1,200 students now, as proof that the government encourages religious freedom. “But no society will tolerate religious extremism,” he says.

The fear of extremism is evident everywhere in the province, and the link between excess religiosity and terrorism is accepted as a fact by the officials here. By the standards of any of the countries bordering Xinjiang, including Afghanistan, Pakistan and even India, Xinjiang has seen a small number of attacks. The worst violence was in Ürümqi in 2009, when 197 people died in Han-Uighur riots, followed by an attack in Kunming railway station in 2014, when knife-wielding terrorists killed more than 30 people. Even so, security personnel are present in much larger numbers than in most terror-hit countries, and there is a police station situated every 100 metres. Fuel stations are surrounded by barbed wire. Passengers must dismount outside the station; only the driver is allowed inside after strict ID and security checks.

At high-security places, which include tourist sites, police personnel move in a rather striking triangular formation to avoid being attacked from any side. Surfing online for religious sites or information on terror groups can be hazardous as there is strong surveillance of the Internet, and any purchase, especially of things that can be used as weapons, is heavily scrutinised. One tourist who tried to buy a knife uploaded a video on how the knife was registered to the buyer’s ID, the ID number was then laser-emblazoned onto the blade, and his face recognition recorded.

Needless to say, all foreigners are watched and followed very closely and treated much like the “pandas” that author Vikram Seth likened them to during his own travels through Sinkiang in the early 1980s. “Officialdom treats the foreigner as one would a valuable panda given to fits of mischief,” he wrote in his travelogue From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet. “On no account must harm come to the animal. On the other hand, it must be closely watched at all times so that it doesn’t see too much, do too much on its own, or influence the behaviour of the local inhabitants.”

With the BRI, a sense of urgency

However close our treatment is to those distant days, China’s security crackdown and Sinicization programmes have a new urgency to them because of President Xi Jinping’s ambitious plans for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which runs right out of Xinjiang.

At the Ürümqi International Land Port zone, among the 18 “A class” land ports in the region, it is clear that the land route of the BRI will be driven by the railroads that run through Xinjiang. Even a few years before the BRI was announced in 2013, it would have been impossible to consider its scope. Today, a freight train goes from the Chinese city of Yiwu all the way to London, a distance that is second only to the Yiwu-Madrid freight route that traverses 12,874 km.

This year, officials estimate that about 800 trains will run between 35 Chinese cities and 34 European cities. New ones are being inaugurated every day. On the day we visit the port, a freight train dressed with a big red bow is preparing to undertake its first journey from Ürümqi to Naples in Italy. It’s a cargo train, carrying hundreds of thousands of bottles of tomato ketchup. The BRI is not just China’s outreach to the world for connectivity or influence. As China’s economic growth slows, down to an estimated 6.5% from 6.9% last year, these railway routes will also supply new markets for China’s flagging manufacturing industry.

At the heart of the Silk Road

In order to attract manufacturers to Xinjiang, the Chinese government has designated the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region as the ‘Core Zone of the Silk Road Economic Belt’. Incentives have been given to both industries and real estate developers. The grand lotus bud-shaped opera house of Changji, for instance, is only the first part of a grand project called the Silkroad Incity, which will house thousands in a township whose model displayed at the opera house for prospective buyers resembles a resort in Dubai or Abu Dhabi, and will include schools, colleges, hospitals and a football stadium.

Two hundred and fifty km south of Ürümqi, Korla is being marketed as the ‘Eye of the New Vitality of the Silk Road’. This dusty town on the edge of the desert has been transformed with a grant of $50 billion. Its population has doubled to 800,000 in a decade. The city centre today could be any bustling Western capital, with skyscrapers, malls and a huge central plaza with 69,000 sq m of office space. The aim is to make Korla a futuristic hub for applications development and cloud computing.

On the outskirts of Korla, the desert climate is also spawning new opportunities for China’s BRI. The dry air and soil have always been known for growing the juiciest pears and grapes, but Beijing’s push for business is attracting others.

In 2015, the Litai textile company of China’s Jinsheng group, which has business in 35 countries, decided to invest in a “million spindle” silk yarn factory. Its website says that its Korla plant was an “an important strategic initiative” to “[seize] the ‘Belt and Road’ development opportunity and [promote] strategic transformation of Litai, and will make a positive contribution to the regional stability and economic development in Xinjiang.”

Today, the mostly mechanised factory is up and running, with each unit producing about 75 tonnes of yarn a day. Jinsheng’s future plans involve harnessing the railway routes to Europe to send its products, a modern day reprisal of the ancient Silk Route where merchants carried tea and spices from the East and returned with western commodities.

Italian explorer Marco Polo is said to have discovered the Chinese ‘Baiju’ rice wine during his travels along the old Silk Route in the 13th century. Today, dozens of vineyards in Yanqi County, not far from Korla, are hoping to rev up production to the point where they can repeat along the new Silk Road Marco Polo’s wine exports.

“China has had 5,000 years of wine drinking, but regular grape wine is only just catching people’s attention,” says Zou Jiyun, the third-generation owner of the Xiangdu Winery that produces about 10 million bottles of Chan D’or wine a year. “As a wine culture grows and more wine is imported from Europe, it is necessary that we keep up with the competition.” The understanding is that the BRI will work “both ways” — the roads and railways could eventually bring in Western products to compete with Chinese goods.

Bumps on the Silk Road

However, not every investment is paying off. Sensing opportunity in Xinjiang, and facing labour problems in Kolenchery, Kerala, where it is headquartered, India’s spice essence manufacturer Synthite decided to set up a manufacturing plant in 2015 for export of Paprika oleoresins from Korla. The group, which had a turnover of ₹1,200 crore last year, controls about 45% of the world market in spice oleoresins, and is the world largest supplier of spice enhancers.

The Synthite China Country Head and General Manager-Operations, Sreekumar Methil, says their original plan for the Xinjiang plant was to double capacity quickly and ship out spices over the rail route, but they have held off expansion plans for the moment. “Despite the government’s push, the business atmosphere is still not easy in Xinjiang. The biggest problem is the security environment,” he says. He lists issues: security checks, difficult access to export facilities, and problems with the labour force, given the Han-Uighur tensions over the past few years.

“Working in China and working in Xinjiang are two very different things,” he says, indicating that Synthite facilities in other parts of China haven’t faced similar issues. In addition, relations between India and China, currently improving but frequently tense, also impact the working climate for Indian companies in Xinjiang, he notes.

Synthite’s problems point to the larger bumps on China’s new Silk Road, which could derail many of its ambitious plans. As a result, officials have been trying to reduce ethnic tensions in Xinjiang.

In Korla, city planners are working on massive housing projects to bring the two major communities to live together, unlike in Ürümqi, which was polarised and ghettoised before the 2009 riots. About 5,000 sq km have been acquired in Korla. Officials say all farmers and peasants are being given housing and compensation commensurate with the homes they gave up. We are welcomed into the home of one Uighur family which extols the virtues of modern living, with air-conditioning, heating and piped gas. Thousands of them will also have to be given vocational training over the years, as the state consciously attempts to move them away from farming to other professions.

When asked about the loss of traditional culture as a result of such urbanisation, officials take us to a quaint museum where they ‘showcase’ an old farm, with an old round-dial phone, a 1980s television, and basket-weaving women, to contrast this with the comforts of modern life and thus highlight their efforts in preserving traditional ways.

With its geographical position and climate benefits, Xinjiang has the most to offer the grand $1 trillion BRI. Yet, with its relatively poorer economic position, deep ethnic tensions and security situation, it could also contribute the most number of problems to the initiative. As one visiting journalist put it, the “core” of the Silk Road, as Xinjiang is called, is both at the heart of China’s biggest worries and is one of its greatest hopes.


The writer travelled to Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region as a part of a delegation of international journalists from 20 countries hosted by the State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by Philip »

Our MEA, aka " Ministry of Eunuch Affairs", have for the last 25 years slept on vital issues in our neighbourhood obsessed with the North Indian obsession with Pakistan.I'm sorry to open a "north- south" divide issue here but Lutyens' Delhi durbar has always looked at the South of India with a policy of suppressing Tamil separatism, which if you scratch the surface of the state lies just below the soil.

While keeping a careful watch on that aspect of curbing separatist tendencies, it has clouded our vision and accurate forecasting of political events and extra-regional machinations in the island in particular.Over 25 years ago
I kept warning our jokers about the Chinese ambitions but the answer from our diplodocus tribe was that " Delhi doesn't listen to us." Those BRF oldies may remember my warnings in posts in the last century! Even a decade ago to forestall the Chins who were unveiling their long- planned gambit in the IOR and ramping up their Lankan ops, I advocated pro-active Indian investment from both public and pvt. entities strategically located as a fraction of money would be needed to assist the Lankan govt. to avoid borrowing heavily from China, than what it will now take to counter them both economically as well as militarily.Talk about communicating to deaf and dumb mutes also blind!

We're going to have to spend a colossal amt. of money to beef up our naval and air capabilities to counter China in the IOR.Hambantota port development was repeatedly offered yo us but the MEA eunuchs gifted it to China.All that was required was a modest port development for the South of the island.The Chins sold a massive unviable port project to the Lankans , with a corrupt Rajapakse regime enriched by the Chins, and the rest as they say is history.Even now our MEA is on the back foot after the Modi regime is in charge and needs to be very pro-active in the island.

The Europeans dominated Asia for 500+ years when their navies ruled the IOR and the key to that was control of Ceylon.The Portuguese, Dutch and British in almost equal term ruled the island.From that springboard they penetrated into India safe from eviction by local Indian states and their rulers like Shivaji, etc.The GOI must realise that the massive concentration and focus of China on its navy ,the greatest naval expansion planned in recent history to directly challenge the USN for naval supremacy by 2050 if not earlier, has to be countered by India with not just beefing up our naval strength to match the PLAN where we can militarily deal with it in the IOR for a start, but also aggressive and innovative diplomacy that ensures that the island can NEVER be used by China for any military purpose or else.... We have to show the Lankans both the stick and carrot and reminding them that it's a long, long, long way to Beijing or any Chin naval base in the Indo-China Sea , while Colombo and the island are just minutes away from Indian military intervention.

Here again our eunuchs lost the plot in the Maldives! Is there any hope at all even in the days of a far more pro-active regime of the NDA-2?
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by dinesha »

‘How empires begin.’ China has made its global move. This is Australia’s response
https:
//www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/how-emp ... 4zmpo.html
China's rise in the Pacific threatens to erode Australian influence. But it also offers us a chance to be part of the biggest infrastructure project in the world
Unsure Australia, Greedy Australia.. pussyfooting and too scared to stand up to China.
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by pankajs »

Philip wrote:Our MEA, aka " Ministry of Eunuch Affairs", have for the last 25 years slept on vital issues in our neighbourhood obsessed with the North Indian obsession with Pakistan.I'm sorry to open a "north- south" divide issue here but Lutyens' Delhi durbar has always looked at the South of India with a policy of suppressing Tamil separatism, which if you scratch the surface of the state lies just below the soil.

While keeping a careful watch on that aspect of curbing separatist tendencies, it has clouded our vision and accurate forecasting of political events and extra-regional machinations in the island in particular.Over 25 years ago
I kept warning our jokers about the Chinese ambitions but the answer from our diplodocus tribe was that " Delhi doesn't listen to us." Those BRF oldies may remember my warnings in posts in the last century! Even a decade ago to forestall the Chins who were unveiling their long- planned gambit in the IOR and ramping up their Lankan ops, I advocated pro-active Indian investment from both public and pvt. entities strategically located as a fraction of money would be needed to assist the Lankan govt. to avoid borrowing heavily from China, than what it will now take to counter them both economically as well as militarily.Talk about communicating to deaf and dumb mutes also blind!

We're going to have to spend a colossal amt. of money to beef up our naval and air capabilities to counter China in the IOR.Hambantota port development was repeatedly offered yo us but the MEA eunuchs gifted it to China.All that was required was a modest port development for the South of the island.The Chins sold a massive unviable port project to the Lankans , with a corrupt Rajapakse regime enriched by the Chins, and the rest as they say is history.Even now our MEA is on the back foot after the Modi regime is in charge and needs to be very pro-active in the island.

The Europeans dominated Asia for 500+ years when their navies ruled the IOR and the key to that was control of Ceylon.The Portuguese, Dutch and British in almost equal term ruled the island.From that springboard they penetrated into India safe from eviction by local Indian states and their rulers like Shivaji, etc.The GOI must realise that the massive concentration and focus of China on its navy ,the greatest naval expansion planned in recent history to directly challenge the USN for naval supremacy by 2050 if not earlier, has to be countered by India with not just beefing up our naval strength to match the PLAN where we can militarily deal with it in the IOR for a start, but also aggressive and innovative diplomacy that ensures that the island can NEVER be used by China for any military purpose or else.... We have to show the Lankans both the stick and carrot and reminding them that it's a long, long, long way to Beijing or any Chin naval base in the Indo-China Sea , while Colombo and the island are just minutes away from Indian military intervention.

Here again our eunuchs lost the plot in the Maldives! Is there any hope at all even in the days of a far more pro-active regime of the NDA-2?
There are many strange and contradictory arguments being thrown around. Sample the two highlighted above.

If India anyways has to "spend a colossal amt. of money to beef up our naval and air capabilities to counter China in the IOR" then why the heck does it need to spend "extra* bucks to counter China @Hambantota. Wouldn't our umbrella across the IOR cover Hambantota?

Now lets examine the colored part and for easy reference I quote
Hambantota port development was repeatedly offered yo us but the MEA eunuchs gifted it to China.All that was required was a modest port development for the South of the island.The Chins sold a massive unviable port project to the Lankans , with a corrupt Rajapakse regime enriched by the Chins, and the rest as they say is history.
Notice the words "modest" mixed with "massive". Why was a "massive" project built when a "modest" development was all that Rajapakse was seeking?

OTOH, If Rajapakse was seeking a "massive" project and China was offering to build THE "massive" project vs an Indian offer of A "modest" project, why would Rajapakse not go with his hearts desire?

Also notice the word "corrupt" used for Rajapakse. Does anyone notice the conflict between the words "corrupt" and "modest"? My understanding is that "corrupt" seek "massive" development rather than "modest" development. Why? In my rather simplistic way of thinking "massive" project yield "massive" loot for the "corrupt" as compared to "modest" projects.

1. With sugar daddy China standing by, why would a "corrupt" Rajapakse agree to a "modest" project when he could have his "massive" project and "massive" loot?
2. If China's intention from the start was anything but commercial, why would China not outbid India on Hambantota at every roll of the dice?

Similar point was made in another thread and I asked similar question(s) in response. No reply was received then and after sometime on this thread the same points are being repeated again.

PS: Multiple edits for clarity
kit
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by kit »

dinesha wrote:‘How empires begin.’ China has made its global move. This is Australia’s response
https:
//www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/how-emp ... 4zmpo.html
China's rise in the Pacific threatens to erode Australian influence. But it also offers us a chance to be part of the biggest infrastructure project in the world
Unsure Australia, Greedy Australia.. pussyfooting and too scared to stand up to China.
American poodle salivating at the Chinese hot dog stand :mrgreen:
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by pankajs »

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/worl ... -port.html
How China Got Sri Lanka to Cough Up a Port
HAMBANTOTA, Sri Lanka — Every time Sri Lanka’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, turned to his Chinese allies for loans and assistance with an ambitious port project, the answer was yes. {When sugar daddy was every willing no "modest" project would have beaten the "massive" project/loot lust.}

Yes, though feasibility studies said the port wouldn’t work. Yes, though other frequent lenders like India had refused. Yes, though Sri Lanka’s debt was ballooning rapidly under Mr. Rajapaksa.

<snip>

Months of interviews with Sri Lankan, Indian, Chinese and Western officials and analysis of documents and agreements stemming from the port project present a stark illustration of how China and the companies under its control ensured their interests in a small country hungry for financing.

During the 2015 Sri Lankan elections, large payments from the Chinese port construction fund flowed directly to campaign aides and activities for Mr. Rajapaksa, who had agreed to Chinese terms at every turn and was seen as an important ally in China’s efforts to tilt influence away from India in South Asia. The payments were confirmed by documents and cash checks detailed in a government investigation seen by The New York Times.

• Though Chinese officials and analysts have insisted that China’s interest in the Hambantota port is purely commercial, Sri Lankan officials said that from the start, the intelligence and strategic possibilities of the port’s location were part of the negotiations.

• Initially moderate terms for lending on the port project became more onerous as Sri Lankan officials asked to renegotiate the timeline and add more financing. And as Sri Lankan officials became desperate to get the debt off their books in recent years, the Chinese demands centered on handing over equity in the port rather than allowing any easing of terms.

• Though the deal erased roughly $1 billion in debt for the port project, Sri Lanka is now in more debt to China than ever, as other loans have continued and rates remain much higher than from other international lenders.

<snip>
Estimates by the Sri Lankan Finance Ministry paint a bleak picture: This year, the government is expected to generate $14.8 billion in revenue, but its scheduled debt repayments, to an array of lenders around the world, come to $12.3 billion.

<snip>
The only way to justify the investment in Hambantota is from a national security standpoint — that they will bring the People’s Liberation Army in,” said Shivshankar Menon, who served as India’s foreign secretary and then its national security adviser as the Hambantota port was being built.
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by dinesha »

Andrew Small is a senior transatlantic fellow with (and founder of) the German Marshall Fund’s Asia Program. A renowned China expert, Small studies China’s relationships with the US, Europe, South Asia as well as its economic and foreign policies. Previously, he worked as the director of the Foreign Policy Centre’s Beijing office, as a visiting fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and an ESU scholar in the office of Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

Small has previously testified before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission and both the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Development Committee of the European Parliament. He is frequently published in renowned journals, magazines and newspapers. He was educated at Balliol College, University of Oxford.

BR Research recently interviewed Small on China’s evolving relationship with Pakistan in the regional context. Small expects the Chinese investments in Pakistan to be more resilient to security concerns now than in the past; he opines that the Hambantota case is a data point rather than a trend while maintaining that the perception that China plans to build military bases through debt-diplomacy is inaccurate. Selected excerpts are produced below:
https://www.brecorder.com/2018/06/11/42 ... be-enough/
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by titash »

Did this get posted? Looks like we've embargoed food to the Maldives??

http://defencebuzz.org/2018/06/india-ac ... 416f7.html

India Acts Tough - Curtails Supply Of Essential Food Items To Maldives
India has turned heat on Maldives, a country shifting its alignment at a fast pace with China. With uncertainty growing in Maldives and President Yameen Abdul Gayoom openly taking anti-India stance, New Delhi has decided to curtail the supply of vegetables - potatoes, onions -- and other essential articles -- rice, flour, eggs, pulses and sugar - to the island nation in the Indian Ocean...
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by chaitanya »

NYT Article with lots of information on how China got Hambantota:

How China Got Sri Lanka to Cough Up a Port
With 10 days to go before polls opened, around $3.7 million was distributed in checks: $678,000 to print campaign T-shirts and other promotional material and $297,000 to buy supporters gifts, including women’s saris. Another $38,000 was paid to a popular Buddhist monk who was supporting Mr. Rajapaksa’s electoral bid, while two checks totaling $1.7 million were delivered by volunteers to Temple Trees, his official residence.
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by rsingh »

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/wor ... 804588.cms

looks like China and sucker countries are having second thoughts,
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by pankajs »

Too early to say but our preparation should proceed with the assumption that the China will ultimately take the OBOR gambit to its logical conclusion.
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by arun »

X Posted from the Analyzing CPEC thread.

A Blast from the past.

Old-time BRF favourite, retired Uniformed Jihadi of the Punjabi Dominated Military of the Mohammadden Terrorism Fomenting Islamic Republic of Pakistan, “Pagal Sehgal” aka Ikram Sehgal, pops up after a long hiatus, at least to my knowledge as I have not seen any literary output from him for a few years.

So here Pagal Sehgal touting CPEC :

Misconceptions about CPEC
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by chetak »

The hans see India as a passive vassal state which should play only the role assigned to it by them and not aspire for anything greater, and in their minds, India is merely there to serve their market penetration and provide for export earnings and ensure jobs in china as well as safeguard their national security.

They do not acknowledge their own historic and hostile stance vis-a-vis India, their aggressive hegemony, strategic encirclement and bombastic territorial claims based on some imagined "tributes" paid to their emperor in the days of yore nor the huge balance of payments issue.

The US too is unfairly trying to leverage India-US relations and bring in their own version of the BRI by trying to dictate both economic and strategic terms to India, via its sanctions regime and weapon systems sales, an insistence that India abandon its traditional allies and coercing India to enter into a series of "agreements" like COMCASA, CAATSA and the other alphabet soup travesties all designed to brand India and forcibly and insidiously bind her into a US ally avatar that fully requires India to fund her own entrapment to the US system.

Is it mere happenstance that both the chinese initiatives like the BRI/OBOR/CPEC and the ameriki initiatives are poisonous, subversive and require India to pay for the funding of these initiatives in one form or the other?? One payment being "upfront" and exorbitant, with almost infinite add-ons, leveraged in terms of spares, support and upgrades and the other a delayed unconscionable plunder designed to hobble, subdue and exploit, both initiatives are stealthily, treacherously disguised and packaged as being essential to India's rise and the legitimate quest for her place in the comity of nations.

The road to hell is always paved with "good" intentions.

This iran sanctions dramatics is a litmus test to see how far and how fast India and especially her Navy can be suborned to the US cause without any cost to them.

The US deep state is no less dangerous to us than the hans open hostility and the pakis are also pitching in via the cashmere route. This concerted action cannot be a mere coincidence.

China hardens stance against India over Indo-Pacific strategy, warns New Delhi may lose opportunities by following US

China hardens stance against India over Indo-Pacific strategy, warns New Delhi may lose opportunities by following US

India Akshita Jain, Jul 03, 2018


Since US president Donald Trump adopted the term 'Indo-Pacific', China has time and again expressed its disapproval and even issued demarches to countries participating in the quad. It has always been wary of the "free and open Indo-Pacific" strategy that Trump has been attempting to push. Beijing has also warned that US' efforts to contain China's rise would be viewed with scorn.

The US envisages a greater role for India in its Indo-Pacific strategy. The US National Security Strategy (2017) and the US National Defense Strategy (2018) give more weightage to India's role in the region.


Nadia Schadlow, Deputy Assistant to the US President for National Security Strategy, said at the Raisina Dialogue 2018 that the document recognises the centrality of India-US partnership. "India is a pillar of our common vision for free and open Indo-Pacific." The NSS states that the US will support India’s growing relationships throughout the region.

Beijing has been mindful of New Delhi taking centre stage in the Indo-Pacific strategy. An op-ed in the state-run Global Times warned that any benefits from the Indo-Pacific strategy may be "greatly outweighed by the costs to India." It warned India that the US' strategy is hampering, not aiding New Delhi's interests.

It also suggested that it would be better for India "to look to China for ways of self-development". The piece warned that New Delhi would lose future opportunities to cooperate with Beijing and many other neighbouring countries if it continues to follow the US strategy.

While China has always been critical of the Indo-Pacific strategy and called it an "attention-grabbing idea" that will "dissipate like ocean foam", it has continuously called on India to look to China instead for development. In the op-ed published on 1 June in Global Times, it was suggested that Beijing can provide more support and knowledge to New Delhi than the US.

While China has echoed the same views before by calling out the US and terming Indo-Pacific a "trap" set by Washington, the tone seems to have hardened over recent months. Another op-ed published in Global Times in May this year said that there is little possibility of New Delhi falling into this trap. However, now Beijing expects New Delhi to "understand the situation" or lose opportunities to cooperate with China.

'Concept coming into operation'

In recent months, Beijing seems to have realised that the "Indo-Pacific strategy has become more than a concept, and is gradually coming into operation." While Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during his visit to Singapore, called Indo-Pacific a "natural region" and assured that India does not consider itself as directed against any country, Global Times stated that China still needs to carefully watch New Delhi's diplomatic moves in the Indo-Pacific region.

At the Shangri-La Dialogue, Modi said that India does not see the Indo-Pacific as a strategy or as a club of limited members, nor as a grouping that seeks to dominate. Despite Modi's assurances that New Delhi's vision for Indo-Pacific is a positive one, the Global Times op-ed was wary of this "softer" stance by the prime minister. It questioned if India's current China policy and the adjustment of the Indo-Pacific strategy are not for "keeping a low profile and making some achievements?"

India's budding relationship with the US and its participation in the quad meet this year gives reasons for China to be suspicious of India's motives. Foreign ministry officials from India, Australia, Japan and the US met in Singapore and reaffirmed their support for a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region.

Modi also pointed out at the Shangri-La Dialogue that the Indian armed forces, especially the navy, are building partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region for peace and security, as well as humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.

With calls for India to take on a greater role in the Indo-Pacific, China's concerns have compounded. BJP's national general secretary Ram Madhav wants India to take a more proactive role in the region. At the Raisina Dialogue 2018, he said that India needs to re-orient its strategic thinking from a westward thinking nation to an eastward-looking nation. He added that New Delhi does not want to remain a "mere spectator."

The BJP general secretary also said that the global power axis has shifted to the Indo-Pacific region and while the diminishing power of western nations is a reality in this region, the rising power of countries like China is also a strategic reality.

China's hardened stance and stern warnings to India come in the wake of calls for New Delhi to take on a more important role in the region.

The Wuhan summit and Modi's assurances that India seeks a "natural" region in the Indo-Pacific do not seem to have blunted China's criticism. Beijing has repeatedly called on India to avoid getting "trapped" by Washington and instead look to China for ways of self-development. The op-eds in Global Times are also a reflection of the growing concerns in China about India's role in the Indo-Pacific.
pankajs
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Re: OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

Post by pankajs »

This has been know on this forum from quite a while back. A little thinking was all that was needed.
Ananth Krishnan @ananthkrishnan

India, and not Nepal, may be the real objective of China's Trans-Himalayan railway https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/up-f ... 2018-06-30 … via @indiatoday
Same is true for CPEC. All the talk of connecting with West Ayesha and beyond is an after through. The real objective was always to get connected to the Indian market via Bakistan.

BTW, notice if we allow CPEC and Trans-Himalayan railways access to the Indian market we will be "helping" China to solidify its control over Xinjiang and Tibet.

Why do I say that?

The Chinese weapon of choice is flooding the region with ethnic Han and overwhelm the locals. BUT such a migration is more readily achieved with economic opportunity than subsidy which is a cost to the state. What if that cost could be offloaded to someone else? Access to the Indian market will provide the "migrant" Han's the economic incentive to shift en-mass to these regions without subsidy.

That is to say China wants India to fund the demographic subjugation of Uyghur and Tibetian locals.
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