OBOR, Chinese Strategy and Implications

[SSridhar]

Forum triggers thaw in China-Japan ties - Atul Aneja, The Hindu

The recently concluded Belt and Road Forum in Beijing has triggered a cycle of diplomacy between China and Japan, which could yield a summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, as well as Tokyo’s participation in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

Japan reported that China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, is heading for Tokyo next month to lay the groundwork for a possible summit between the two leaders. Mr. Abe said on Monday he hoped to meet Mr. Xi on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Germany in July. But there are also fresh signals that a dialogue between the two could materialise in their respective capitals. Japan decided to send a delegation, notwithstanding contested sovereignty with China over a set of reefs in the East China Sea. Mr. Yang’s likely visit to Tokyo has been preceded by the presence of secretary-general of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Toshihiro Nikai, in Beijing.

The Global Times reported that in his meeting with Mr. Nikai, President Xi said Tokyo is welcome to discuss cooperation with China under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative.

[Philip]

The Yanquis wanted to see and hear what was being offered by the Asiatic dragon,wanting to like the East India Co.,"to trade' but resulted in "raid"!

This the line that India must very strongly advise all ASian/Afrcian ME nations about.How the EIC buil;t the infrastruture to ostensibley "trade: but later the Raj came to "raid"! It took Asia 500 years to throw off British/European imperialism/colonialism. Do we want to risk another 500 years of Chinese imperialism instead? We should instead forge strong bi-lateral eco/cultural/strat. relationships with individual nations,or smaller groups wherever possible to stem the Chinese armada of "junks",pardon the pun! Those nations who've already started smoking Chinese "opium" should be weaned off it or if they resist,sent into "rehabilitation".The time will come for us to test again/demonstrate our ICBM capability to everyone. The timing is most important.We should be at the ready.

[shiv]

road link between India and Myanmar, thailand which was to be opened in 2016 !! .

According to Ragini Mehra of makemytrip.com
https://www.makemytrip.com/blog/India-M ... nd-highway

If you still haven’t heard about it, we have some epic news for you: the 3200-kilometre India-Myanmar-Thailand highway will open up in 2016, which means an incredible India-Thailand road trip is now a reality like never before!

It is OK to discuss what India is not doing on this thread as long as links can be found to chicks and other wimmens of age between 18 and 35.

[A_Gupta]

http://www.orfonline.org/research/the-r ... y-project/

The Indian government is giving a renewed push to road connectivity with Southeast Asia. On 13 November 2016, the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway (IMT Highway) Friendship Car Rally was flagged off in Delhi by Mansukh Lal Mandaviya, Indian Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways, Shipping and Chemicals and Fertilizers. According to the government, the objective of the rally was to sensitise stakeholders to the potential benefits of a motor vehicles agreement (MVA) between the three countries. Earlier, on 8 September 2016 at the 14th India-ASEAN Summit held in the Laotian capital of Vientiane, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had stressed the need for further strengthening Delhi’s ties with the regional bloc ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations). Emphasising the significance of overall connectivity, and physical connectivity in particular, as the first step to enhancing people-to-people contacts, Modi proposed the setting up of a Joint Task Force on connectivity to work on extending the IMT highway even further to Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.[ii] Just a month before that, during the visit of President Htin Kyaw of Myanmar to India in August 2016, two MoUs were signed for the construction and upgrade of bridges and approach roads in the Tamu-Kyigone-Kalewa section and the Kalewa-Yargyi section of the IMT highway in Myanmar.[iii]

The same link says:

Bilateral trade between India and the CLMV nations has grown from $0.46 billion in 2000 to over $10 billion in 2015-16, showing annual growth of 24 percent.

[A_Gupta]

This is from the Indian Embassy:
http://www.indiaembassyyangon.net/index ... 9&lang=ENG

It is Myanmar that is supplying dal.

India has been a major trading partner of Myanmar. Since the signing of India and Myanmar trade agreement in 1970, bilateral trade has been growing steadily. Bilateral trade rose from US$ 328 million in 1997-98 to US$ 921.19 in 2006-7 and climbed up to US$ 2.052 billion in 2015-16 (though Myanmar trade statistics are far lower). In 2014-15, bilateral trade declined to US$ 2.01 billion due to ban on export of Myanmar timber. India is the fifth largest trade partner of Myanmar (3rd largest export destination for Myanmar and 7th largest source of imports into Myanmar). Since opening up of Myanmar economy new players have started to enter the country aggressively both for trade and investment. There is a huge potential for bilateral trade, investment and economic cooperation with Myanmar.

Myanmar is the second largest supplier of beans and pulses to India. Timber and wood products accounted for more than 27% of Myanmar's exports to India (USD 600 million) in 2013-14. Timber exports to India slowed down to USD 382 million since the ban of exports of logs from Myanmar from April 2014. India’s exports to Myanmar include, pharmaceuticals, rubber products, plastics, machinery and equipments, cotton, garments, iron products, electrical machinery mineral oil, etc. Exports of pharma, which enjoy a good reputation in Myanmar, grew from about US$ 50 million in 2010 to US$ 169.17 million in 2014-15. Growth of imports from India outpaced growth of exports to India

[A_Gupta]

From the Indian Embassy:
http://www.indianembassy.in.th/pages.php?id=174

Overview

1. Thailand is the second largest economy in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS). It is an upper middle income country with a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of US$ 395.1 billion in 2015. The growth of GDP in Thailand has averaged between 3% to 4% in the last decade.

2. India’s economic and commercial relations with Thailand are rooted in history, age-old socio cultural interactions and extensive people to people contacts. India and Thailand celebrated 66 years of diplomatic relations in 2013. India’s ‘Look East’ policy (since 1993) and Thailand’s ‘Look West’ policy (since 1996) have been complementary in consolidating bilateral relations including economic & commercial linkages.

3. Two-way trade in 2015 totaled US $ 7.92 billion, with about US $5.29 billion in Thai exports to India and US $ 2.63 billion in Indian exports to Thailand. In the ASEAN region, Thailand ranks as India’s 4th largest trading partner after Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. The growing ties between the two countries have come at a time when the AEC is expected to bring greater integration among member countries be it in the form of physical connectivity, economic links, cultural and educational ties

4. The fast growing Indian market remains attractive for Thai investors, given the vast opportunities available in infrastructure sector, tourism and retail industries. India continues to remain an interesting market for export of goods from Thailand. Currently, Thai goods have benefited from tax reduction under ASEAN-India FTA in Goods, which came into effect from 01 January, 2010 and resulted to the flow of more goods into Indian market. An Early Harvest Scheme (EHS), covering 82 products (now 83 products) under the proposed India-Thailand FTA, in place since September 2004, has already resulted in phenomenal growth in our bilateral trade.

Bilateral Trade

5. Thailand views India as the gateway to South Asia and beyond. As a result of the reduced tariff rates and new initiatives adopted by both the countries, trade between two countries increased manifold in recent years. Bilateral Trade has multiplied eight times since 2000 to reach US$ 7.92 billion in 2015. Trade figures between the two countries are as under: {table omitted}

6. Major imports from Indiaare in the following sectors : Machinery & Parts, Crude Oil, Electrical machinery & parts, Chemicals, Iron, steel and products, Parts & accessories of vehicles, Electronic integrated circuits, Jewellery including silver bars & gold, Computers, parts and accessories, Other metal ores, metal waste scrap and products, Electrical house-hold appliances, Vegetables and vegetable products, Natural gas, Metal manufactures, Plastic products, etc.

7. Major exports to India are in the following sectors: Motor cars, parts & accessories, Automatic data processing machines and parts thereof, Precious stones and jewellery, Polymers of ethylene, propylene etc. in primary forms, Refine fuels, Electronic integrated circuits, Machinery and parts thereof, Rubber products, Chemical products, Iron and steel and their products, Rubber, Rice, Air conditioning machine and parts thereof, Other electrical equipment and parts thereof, etc.

[A_Gupta]

Also
http://www.assamtribune.com/scripts/det ... 717/oth050

India has commenced work on a 120-km road inside Myanmar, a road that is part of the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway which is expected to give a massive boost to surface connectivity and trade in Southeast Asia in the backdrop of the Act East policy.

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has been appointed as technical executing agency for upgradation of the Kalewa-Yargi road in the Sagaing region, a project that will cost around Rs 1,177 crore. The present condition of the road is poor and has earthen and gravel top in majority length.

The Trilateral Highway starts from Moreh (Manipur) in India up to Mae Sot in Thailand through Myanmar. Construction of a 130-km-long stretch of the road connecting Moreh (India)/Tamu (Myanmar) to Kalewa in Myanmar has already been completed by the Border Roads Organisation of India.

The remaining stretch – Yargi-Moywa-Mandalay-Moe Sot – will be taken up by the governments of Myanmar and Thailand.

[A_Gupta]

This is from December 2016:
http://currentaffairs.gktoday.in/kolkat ... 37845.html

A deep water port built in Myanmar’s Sittwe by India is ready to be commissioned. Thus, open Kolkata-Mizoram trade route via Myanmar. The Sittwe port is starting point for the Kaladan Multi Modal Transit Transport Project in Myanmar. Once shipments arrive at Sittwe port from Kolkata, they will be transferred to smaller freight carriers which would sail upstream into Mizoram. Significance Provides alternative route to India to ship goods to the landlocked north-eastern States. Significantly lower the cost and distance of movement from Kolkata to Mizoram and beyond. Reduces dependency on only route narrow strip dubbed as the Chicken’s Neck in West Bengal, sandwiched between Bhutan and Bangladesh. India has piped post Chinese endeavour to create a deep-sea berthing infrastructure and SEZ at Kyaukphyu in Rakhine.

[Deans]

The posts about trade with Thailand/ Myanmar, building roads etc, miss the point. To put it rather simplistically:
Transport cost is on average 10% of the price paid by an importer. Landlocked countries pay more than those with a port.
Transport cost depends on volume of trade and time. for e.g. shipping costs reduce when you can load a vessel full of containers from point A to B, without the need to trans-ship On the other hand, a spanking new highway which reduces time, may not reduce cost if there is insufficient volume of traffic.

Our trade with our neighbors is based on the demand for each other's goods. Improved roads don't help if demand for goods isn't very much more than current levels. The neighbour we have the most trade with is China and a negligible amount is by road. That will continue to be the case even if we have 8 lane highways across Tibet and into India. We don't buy anything from Pak despite a good road & rail network across Punjab.

Most of what China's western neighbors and Russia export to China is energy, which is transported by pipeline. (Pakistan does not even have that).
Roads and railways from China to these countries help in the flow of Chinese goods into these countries, which is what China is trying to do with OBOR.
There is already a sufficiently strong network of ports connecting China with its major trading partners. Roads/railways across Central Asia will not really reduce landed prices for either EU or China, to a point where prices will fall and the volume of trade will consequently increase significantly.

[A_Gupta]

^^^ Deans, I take it to mean that a road is meant to remove an impediment to trade, and one sizes it based on the expected traffic. IMO, that is what India is doing. With China, the road is meant to propagate a brand, and a six lane highway through a desert is meant to show Chinese might and prosperity.

[manjgu]

A_Gupta, Deans .. i kind of agree with you. but highways/roads ideally should be built with atleast 30 to 40/50 years perspective planning. the Brits built roads in new delhi area i think atleast 70 years ago which still remain usually clog free..compare it with roads in the newly planned colonies in west delhi, south delhi etc ? demand is important but demand changes if there are goods..there was no demand for chinese mosquito killing racquets..but once they came into the market the demand spiked and so is the case with many other goods. the markets are flooded with goods for which there was 0 demand in the past. anyway my gripe was that India has not paid adequate attention to infra in roads , ports etc. we dont have to join OBOR or any chinese initiative..if we get our house in order we can do a lot.

[SSridhar]

View: China could find its new empire too hard to handle - Mihir Sharma, Bloomberg

To Indian eyes, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s big Belt and Road Forum -- which attracted 29 heads of government and representatives of 130 countries -- looked awfully familiar. It looked, in fact, like an imperial durbar -- the sort of grand spectacle that the British in India used to arrange periodically, with princelings from across the subcontinent turning up to pay their respects to the Raj.

Many, of course, would contest this comparison. The Belt and Road initiative, China's grand plan to build trade-supporting infrastructure across the world, is being sold as a cooperative enterprise. Partner governments will, of course, have a say in what projects are approved and under what financial terms.

Even so, there are good reasons for disquiet. For one thing, the whole poorly-defined initiative might fail, burdening weak nations with unsustainable debt and stressing the Chinese economy. But even otherwise, it might ensnare China and its client states in something that will look perilously like a 21st century empire.

This shouldn't come as a surprise. Few empires were consciously created. The British Empire may not have been born in a “fit of absence of mind,” as John Robert Seeley famously claimed, but it wasn’t exactly planned in advance, either. And we know from history how nations stumble into their imperial obligations. Trade follows domestic prosperity (or, in China's case, enables it). Infrastructure follows trade.

That infrastructure is vulnerable to local security threats. Forts -- or more modern forms of power projection -- are built to respond to those threats. Political interference follows power projection, and boots on the ground follow that.

As Peter Frankopan, the writer of a superb history of the original Silk Road, has pointed out:

The process of acceleration -- from [economic] partners to having privileged positions to administrators and rulers -- was one echoed in many parts of the world that Europe came into contact with: empire was not part of a European master plan. It just so happened that opportunities kept opening up which were too good to miss out on.

It’s easy to see how this centuries-old dynamic could play out today in places like Central Asia.

Perhaps the problem is that nobody studies the history of empires any more. They've been airbrushed out of the history of the West, where British Trade Minister Liam Fox could quite incredibly claim that “the United Kingdom is one of the few countries … that does not need to bury its 20th century history." And China is one of the only two Asian countries never to be really colonized, although huge swathes of the country were occupied by the Japanese.

But the leaders of China’s Communist Party should at least have read Lenin -- and particularly the 1917 book that explains imperialism as “the highest stage of capitalism." When capital and productive capacity builds up at home in excess of its ability to earn returns, Lenin argued, it must seek monopoly power and thus returns elsewhere, which is how imperial projects come to be. Surely the parallels to the Belt and Road -- justified in part by the need for giant state-controlled Chinese companies to utilize their overcapacity -- are obvious.

A 21st-century empire would not look like those that came before. After all, did the East India Company look anything like the Ottomans, even when it ruled a fifth of humanity? It may be entirely true, as Belt-and-Road defenders like London School of Economics lecturer Keyu Jin have argued, that China’s “intentions are far from malicious." But history has a way of rendering intentions irrelevant. Facts on the ground -- facts like unpaid debts, like terrorist attacks on your workers, like the threat of expropriation -- can change one's thinking swiftly and reasonably enough. And the initial benefits of the scheme -- financing for infrastructure in a capital-starved developing world -- might seem powerful enough to obscure worries about the future.

As anyone in India can tell you, a controlled political environment is a big advantage when it comes to completing an infrastructure project. China’s enviable and near-unique success in this field has emerged from its own special circumstances: control of savings, control of land and control of political consequences.

But when its infrastructure-building projects fail to provide the returns that they should, when messy local politics begin to interfere with their construction and operation, then how will China’s companies and governments respond? Will they not blame the problems on failed local systems and attempt to correct those systems, to bring them into greater harmony with the successful system China has developed back home?

Infrastructure, throughout history, has never been a purely economic game. From Roman roads to American railroads to the Raj’s railways, they've influenced and been influenced by politics. We should not fear the economic failure of China's grand scheme. We should worry about what will be required for it to succeed.

[SSridhar]

China's OBOR fails to get global traction, faces opposition from big nations - DIPANJAN ROY CHAUDHURY, ET BUREAU

India was not alone in raising a red flag over the strategic and economic implications of China's much vaunted One Belt One Road (OBOR), when it decided to skip the just concluded summit in Beijing.

Of the 64 countries identified by China along the OBOR initiative, only 20 countries were represented by their top leaders and 44 other nations sent ministers for the May 14-16 mega show. Incidentally nine other nations whose top leaders were present in Beijing for the summit are not in the list of 64 countries.

A joint communique outlining outcomes from the summit would reflect that China could not push its entire agenda in a unilateral fashion it would have originally envisaged, pointed out experts who have followed OBOR initiative since it was conceived. ET has learnt that leaders, ministers and officials from Germany, France, England, Greece, Portugal and Estonia had objections to the original text of the communique over issues of transparency and environmental protection.

While Russian President Vladimir Putin called for more negotiations on the project on day one the summit, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta also felt that there should be more transparency in the entire process to implement OBOR. The final Communique from the summit referred to key international principles including issue of sovereignty that India advocated passing through PoK was one of key reasons that influenced India to skip the Summit.

"Consultation on an equal footing: Honouring the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and international law including respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of countries; formulating cooperation plans and advancing cooperation projects through consultation," is what the communique read.

"We endeavour to expand people-topeople exchanges, promote peace, justice, inclusiveness, democracy, good governance, the rule of law, human rights, gender equality and women empowerment; work together to fight against corruption and bribery in all their forms," read a section of the communique.

[Yagnasri]

http://www.ndtv.com/opinion/modis-appro ... ud-1695284

Rare pro-Modi article here.

[A_Gupta]

A_Gupta, Deans .. i kind of agree with you. but highways/roads ideally should be built with atleast 30 to 40/50 years perspective planning. the Brits built roads in new delhi area i think atleast 70 years ago which still remain usually clog free..compare it with roads in the newly planned colonies in west delhi, south delhi etc ? demand is important but demand changes if there are goods..there was no demand for chinese mosquito killing racquets..but once they came into the market the demand spiked and so is the case with many other goods. the markets are flooded with goods for which there was 0 demand in the past. anyway my gripe was that India has not paid adequate attention to infra in roads , ports etc. we dont have to join OBOR or any chinese initiative..if we get our house in order we can do a lot.

What one does is acquire the expected necessary future right-of-way; but build only what is necessary.

[A_Gupta]

OBOR counters:
http://www.thenational.ae/business/ener ... nergy-ties

"India is actively working to build a network of energy relationships with its neighbourhood," says Srividya Kannan, the founder and director of Avaali Solutions, a consultancy based in Bangalore. "Consider what India has done in terms of tie-ups with Mauritius, Myanmar, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, and one gets a sense of the various types of relationships that have been established via this network. India is really getting its act together to best leverage this [position]."

http://www.sundayguardianlive.com/opini ... ina-s-obor
India, Japan plan counter to China’s OBOR

http://www.firstpost.com/india/indian-n ... 61590.html
Indian Navy to hold exercises with Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Australia

----
Krugman's speculation about OBOR:
https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2017/ ... de-policy/

[shiv]

There is one highway that will never take off. I bet both my testimonials that the Karakoram highway from Shitistan to Xinjiang will never reach its dreamed up potential. We have been following this plan for at least a decade now. In this decade, tthe Chinese have actually put in a lot of wrok on the Pakistani side of the Karakoram highway - they have asphalted it and put in place some protection against avalanches and built the odd tunnel here and there.

But the problem is that that road is blocked by avalanches fro 6 months a year. It is never going to be transporting goods by truck. There will be no railway like and the Cheenis are themselves saying that oil pipeline climbing 5 km up into permafrost is not on.

You heard it here first. Spread the word.

[yensoy]

There is one highway that will never take off.

How feasible is it to build tunnels through the avalanche prone areas? If it's a matter of saving face, the Chinese will do anything to show that they were not wrong, so I won't be surprised if a lot of money and effort is expended to solving these problems.

[shiv]

There is one highway that will never take off.

How feasible is it to build tunnels through the avalanche prone areas? If it's a matter of saving face, the Chinese will do anything to show that they were not wrong, so I won't be surprised if a lot of money and effort is expended to solving these problems.

If you spend some time looking at Google earth images - follow the highway and see where tunnels can be built it will be easier to understand than my saying anything. For even more information follow the main Chinese highway from Chengdu halfway to Lhasa and see how many tunnels they have managed to build. Tunnels typically require bridges as well. The highways in Northern Italy are an example - tunnel-bridge-tunnel-bridge-tunnel-bridge. Why tunnel and bridge? Unless you burrow 400 km under the whole mountain range - all you can do is enter a mountain side - come out 5-10 km away and then build a bridge to reach the next mountain side - make a 2-10 km tunnel through that mountain - come out on the other side and build another bridge to the next mountain side etc

Tunnels + bridges are very expensive to build and even inside China they baulked from building a railway directly from Chengdu because of the terrible challenges of the tunnel-bridge problem - and still there are areas that suffer avalanches. This is not just about good engineering or even cost because it is easy to argue that the Chinese have money and good engineers. It is about geography. They cannot build a 400 km long tunnel and avoid all exposed roads. Every one of those exposed roads gets blocked by snow in winter and rock-falls in spring and throughout the year.

If you have 2500 km highway from Gadhawar port to Xinjiang - all you need in ONE block and all traffic comes to a halt. That road is blocked for over 6 months a year. I am saying it now. No one believes me now, we all like to believe that the Chinese have money and will be successful or that they will do it to save face. Nope. It ain't gonna happen. But they are saving face by pretending that it is going to happen.

[Atmavik]

there was a landslide in 2010 that shut down KKH for 6 years and created Attabad Lake(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attabad_Lake).

crossing was done by ferry Paki style. there are a few Interesting videos of it on Youtube.(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40GTuOUZmiw)

The chinis have built a tunnel thru the side of the mountain now.(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gxv6EUNzyZk)

[shiv]

There were huge landslides in 2016 also. No lake. just block. All literature (plenty available) points to blockage of the road 6 months a year. OBOR land route will not include CPEC road as major route

[Atmavik]

WTF a Tunnel without a mountain on KKH . watch from 7:03 to 7:45. one has windows. what am i missing here?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKy6ZZvL7qU

[shiv]

WTF a Tunnel without a mountain on KKH . watch from 7:03 to 7:45. one has windows. what am i missing here?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKy6ZZvL7qU

There are dozens of those. What the Chinese have done on the KKH and on their own highways is to build a sloping "roof" over areas that are particularly avalanche prone so that the avalanche simply slides over the sloping roof while traffic passes underneath. This is a well known solution but not f avalanches occur everywhere all year round. I will post images from GE later. Unless you cover the whole damn highway there will be avalanches. And not just stuff falling from above - there are areas where the avalanche starts below the road so the road itself collapses

[shiv]

Here is a sloping-roof-tunnel in a landslide prone area. Just next to that the mountain side has collapsed under the road

[shiv]

When Pakis claim that the Chinese have "built tunnels" to avoid avalanches - they are referring to these sloping roof things. Of course we Indians will instantly crap in our pants with intense worry and imagine that PLA and IRBMs will soon be passing down that road. Unfortunately - as revealed by a recent article - even the so called "strategic community" of India have failed to see what is going on and believe this crap.

[Atmavik]

Thanks for the info. so i missed the inherent Pakistaniyat of these so called Tunnels

[ManSingh]

The sloping roof tunnel is called a snowshed. It is not that uncommon in snowy climes. What is required is knowledge of avalanche paths and real time avalanche monitoring.

https://cwmm.com/en/great-bear-snow-shed/

If the road adjacent to a snowshed itself collapses, then it is poor engineering.

The current way of making a narrow cut in the slope and then switch backs to gain elevation won't work for the volume of traffic required for OBOR. What remains to be seen is whether cheens are willing to re-engineer the whole road network in Karakoram mountains.

I think re-engineering would be doable but at what cost and time? Canada has been building their road network for ages and is still incomplete.

[Singha]

I think they will instead look for easier route through afghanistan to western kandahar herat area and then couple of routes via quetta ( afpak supply rt of massa) and perhaps a desert highway via makran to gwadar from the north. Lot easier challenges imho.

Avoid the khyber and avoid the merciless weather and terrain of the karakorum range. Grown men lungi shiver at mountaineering there..preferring the more placid area in nepal.

This is where getting the taliban in as part of afghan govt is key goal. They will seek rent for safe access through af.

[chetak]

I think they will instead look for easier route through afghanistan to western kandahar herat area and then couple of routes via quetta ( afpak supply rt of massa) and perhaps a desert highway via makran to gwadar from the north. Lot easier challenges imho.

Avoid the khyber and avoid the merciless weather and terrain of the karakorum range. Grown men lungi shiver at mountaineering there..preferring the more placid area in nepal.

This is where getting the taliban in as part of afghan govt is key goal. They will seek rent for safe access through af.

just for the argument's sake, is there a workable route that goes through India?? bypassing all the high risk areas now identified??

[shiv]

I think they will instead look for easier route through afghanistan to western kandahar herat area and then couple of routes via quetta ( afpak supply rt of massa) and perhaps a desert highway via makran to gwadar from the north. Lot easier challenges imho.

Avoid the khyber and avoid the merciless weather and terrain of the karakorum range. Grown men lungi shiver at mountaineering there..preferring the more placid area in nepal.

This is where getting the taliban in as part of afghan govt is key goal. They will seek rent for safe access through af.

just for the argument's sake, is there a workable route that goes through India?? bypassing all the high risk areas now identified??

Yes. The route currently taken by pilgrims going to Kailash Manasarovar

[chetak]

just for the argument's sake, is there a workable route that goes through India?? bypassing all the high risk areas now identified??

Yes. The route currently taken by pilgrims going to Kailash Manasarovar

Thanks, saar.

the route looks a tad complicated for use as a CPEC alternative.

[yensoy]

...This is a well known solution but not f avalanches occur everywhere all year round. I will post images from GE later. Unless you cover the whole damn highway there will be avalanches. And not just stuff falling from above - there are areas where the avalanche starts below the road so the road itself collapses

That is what I was looking for. Yes I am well versed with tunnel-bridge-tunnel design to maintain a level track as one sews through mountain ranges and valleys, you don't need to go as far as Italy, our very own Konkan Railway has it to some extent. The question was whether avalanche prone areas were localized or spread through the route. For known avalanche threat zones, snowshed or tunnel is feasible but if it's going to be along the entire route, it makes it hugely expensive and not worth the trouble.

I believe the Himalayan geology is quite unstable to even a basic tunnel in the Himalayas is rather costly to make compared with the same length tunnel in say the Alps or Western Ghats.

Both the new Patnitop Tunnel and new Rohtang Tunnels also avoid avalanches (in addition to shortening distances and avoiding hairpins/elevation gains).

[BharataTalwar]

Hi Guys. I am having a frustrating time finding an article I read a few months back. It was an Indian author (dhoti shiverer) trying very hard to make a case for China to abandon Pakistan and build a silk route through India instead. Among other things he talked about using an Indian port in Gujarat and connecting Central Asia etc. Does anyone recall reading something like this? A link would be appreciated. I want to do some further digging on the author...

[Deans]

There were huge landslides in 2016 also. No lake. just block. All literature (plenty available) points to blockage of the road 6 months a year. OBOR land route will not include CPEC road as major route

Even a misdirected bomb hitting the hillside instead of the highway, can cause a landslide.

[Bade]

just for the argument's sake, is there a workable route that goes through India?? bypassing all the high risk areas now identified??
Yes. The route currently taken by pilgrims going to Kailash Manasarovar

China's Aksai Chin hold on to territory unlike case of Tawang, was exactly for this reason. A route through Leh valley along the Indus, it connects to their G-219. Not for Kashgar up north but from the western Tibet side. That is a possible route if India blocks Gilgit by a takeover from Pakistan and China then will need India for access to the Indian Ocean by road to the closest port to the middle east. That is if the idea is for trade, but Gwadar is not that for a primary objective.

If you go back in history this was also the reason perhaps it invaded Tawang and came down all the way Tezpur to try and cutoff the north-eastern flank of India and try to make inroads into then East Pakistan, their ally. Since it was found to be difficult to hold on to, they later in '67 tried again via Sikkim, which is a faster route to East Pakistan to access the Bay of Bengal. So this perhaps was a long term plan for them. India creating Bangladesh closed that pathway for them for a long time to come.

[Peregrine]

Hi Guys. I am having a frustrating time finding an article I read a few months back. It was an Indian author (dhoti shiverer) trying very hard to make a case for China to abandon Pakistan and build a silk route through India instead. Among other things he talked about using an Indian port in Gujarat and connecting Central Asia etc. Does anyone recall reading something like this? A link would be appreciated. I want to do some further digging on the author...

BharataTalwar Ji :

I do not remember reading such an article but I remember working out & posting the distances from Mundra to Guangzhou.

I don't shiver in my dhoti - as I do not wear one - and should you so desire will locate the distances and post them here.
Cheers

[krisna]

kkh when searched on internet.
Just to be sure- the vehicles going thru KKH go at speeds of around 1 km/hr.

[hanumadu]

^^^This is probably not KKH.

[shiv]

kkh when searched on internet.
Just to be sure- the vehicles going thru KKH go at speeds of around 1 km/hr.

There are several such areas that are visible on the KKH on Google Earth. I was puzzled initially - thinking that they were sections of blocked road due to avalanches until I saw one image where a vehicle was entering from one side and another exiting the other side. I then realized that the road had been cut through solid rock leaving an overhang. If there is large solid rock - this is possible - but not in crumbly powdery rock - which is most of the Himalayas. That crumbly powdery rock is held "rock solid" in areas of permafrost and in other areas in winter. In warm weather it all loosens up and slides down

[ManSingh]

errr........What's a TATA truck doing at the end?

Anyways,


and of course Himachal:
http://topyaps.com/best-himachal-bus-drivers