India’s stand on BRI

INDIA, the host of Tuesday’s virtual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), refused to endorse China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), even as fellow SCO members Pakistan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan reaffirmed their support to the multi-billion-dollar Chinese project. The declaration issued at the end of the summit stated that these nations had taken note of the ‘ongoing work to jointly implement this project, including efforts to link the construction of the Eurasian Economic Union and the BRI’. India has maintained a consistently firm stand on the BRI, which includes the under-construction China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) that passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). New Delhi rightly sees the CPEC’s progress in that region as a blatant violation of India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

China’s double standards are plainly visible. In May this year, Beijing had boycotted the G20 Tourism Working Group meeting in Srinagar on the grounds that Jammu & Kashmir is a ‘disputed territory’. In stark contrast, it’s business as usual for China in PoK, which rightfully belongs to India.

During the SCO summit, India also managed to corner Pakistan and China on cross-border terrorism. In his address, PM Narendra Modi called on member states not to hesitate from condemning countries that sheltered terrorists and used terrorism as a policy instrument. Even though Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the ‘hydra-headed monster’ of terrorism and extremism must be fought with ‘full vigour and conviction’, he added a rider that the issue should not be used as a cudgel for diplomatic point-scoring. Beijing has been Islamabad’s close ally on this front too. China has repeatedly blocked proposals by India and the US at the United Nations to proscribe Pakistan-based terrorists. It’s laudable that India, the current SCO chair, has effectively used this platform to lay bare Pakistan-China complicity.