China’s One belt One Road initiative & India

We Indians always thanks British for many tings including railways. But we forget that Indian railways was built for British by British capital for safeguarding British interests. Shshi Tharoor, a noted Indian writer terms the colonial Indian railways as a big colonial scam. It provided exorbitant ROI (Return on Investment) to British capital and facilitated British troops & goods movement in India. I consider China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) similar project but with very vast scope. China will be spending trillion of dollars in upgrading infrastructure across the globe in Asia, Europe and Africa to overwhelm these area with Chines capital, goods & Labor.

Just look around the world. You will find China building infrastructure projects in Laos, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Pakistan, Namibia, Kenya, Greece etc. The world has never seen such big infrastructure push after American Marshall Plan. Even China is financing around a third of a Nuclear power plant in Britain. China’s domestic consumption has slowed in recent years after building massive mega cities and infra structure projects in China. China needed to do something to keep their mega infrastructure related factories running and then china came us with OBOR initiative in 2013. This project has been designed by China for enhancing China’s economic & military power by Chines capital & workforce. Just look at the example of Pakistan. China will be pumping around 50 plus billion dollars in CPEC (China Pakistan Economic Corridor) to connect Chines Xinjiang province to Gwadar port on Arabian Sea. China will provide capital as loans for these massive infrastructure projects like power plants, roads, railways etc. Pakistani Government has provided sovereign ROI guaranty on this investment and Pakistan will have to repay the loans starting 2020. Even without CPEC loans roughly 40% of Pakistan’s revenues goes in loan payment. Thousands of Chines workforce is working in Pakistan and most of the raw materials/machineries have been manufactured in China and all the contracts have been awarded to Chines Company. Pakistani army is proving security to Chinese workforce and as per some reports Chinese forces may arrive or may have arrived in Pakistan to safeguard the project. It is a recipe for disaster for Pakistan and Pakistan is going to become a virtual Chinese colony.

There have been protest against Chines investment in Sri Lanka, Namibia, Laos, Indonesia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan etc. either by Government or by local residents. Chinese investment has run into trouble in many countries. Some examples are -The high speed railway project in Indonesia has been delayed over land acquisition, Thailand the government is demanding better terms for a vital railways, projects in Kazakhstan has been stalled over differences, port building in Sri Lanka has gone into trouble, Laos is not happy with the financial terms. Let us assume that all projects of OBOR gets completed. After that China will dump its goods all over the world. Pakistan’s garment industry may be a thing of past, Sri Lanka will lose control of its vital ports, Greece will become a gateway to dump China made goods into heart of Europe. China needs access to markets around the globe and it already runs a huge trade advantage with all the leading economies of the world.

Now let us consider OBOR impact on India. Like Japan, Australia India is apprehensive about the whole project. OBOR is a major challenge for India as it challenges the Indian sovereignty. CPEC (a part of OBOR) runs through Indian state of Kashmir (which is under illegal occupation of Pakistan). With OBOR, China will have infrastructure facilities around India (string of Pearls) which can be used by Chinese military in case of conflict with India. India has rightly decided not to attend the OBOR submit but India will have to find an alternative to OBOR. We need to safeguard Indian interests but we can’t be left out when whole region is getting integrated into OBOR. India should try to extract some Chinese concession on CPEC. If we can have trade with China despite having boarder dispute then we can take advantage of OBOR. China has become a new leader of globalization but its globalization is different from that of West. West backed globalization has been one of the reasons of growth of China & India in recent years. India can take advantage of this project but it needs to be very cautious in dealing with China. India can continue opposing CPEC and join other projects via East Asia like Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Corridor. In parallel we can have greater co-operation with Chinese rivals like Australia and Japan. It’s a crunch decision making time. I hope that Indian government will take a correct decision regarding OBOR.

In an article in Ney York Times, Edward Wong wrote that “China looks like a giant that has every right to rise, yet why must it reject many values that many countries share?” We should pray that China should not become the new Colonial power of 21^st Century.