“China’s rejuvenation is finally within grasp and any attempt to bully the nation will be met with a steely response”, Chinese President Xi Jinping said on July 1, 2021, in a spirited speech marking the Communist Party of China’s centenary.

Reacting to the president’s remarks that the era of China being bullied is gone forever, former Indian minister and current MP Shashi Tharoor has rightly pointed out that under Xi Jinping, China is transitioning from the "bide your time approach" that it undertook under its late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping - who wanted China to grow and become strong and wealthy but "keep its head down" - to “Wolf Warrior diplomacy”, a term that has been used to describe confrontational rhetoric by Chinese diplomats to ward off criticism on a host of issues.

In addition to the recent skirmishes on the Ladakh border, there are a few more developments that may be considered as a major security and economic challenge to India.

In January 2020, Chinese President Xi strongly reaffirmed China’s commitment to revive the stalled multibillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects in Myanmar by signing 33 new memoranda of understanding. The infrastructure route in Myanmar, labeled as the “China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC)”, promises to connect the Indian Ocean oil trade to China’s Yunnan Province by upgrading the deep-water port at Kyaukphyu town (situated in the Rakhine province of Myanmar) on the Bay of Bengal. With CMEC in the east, China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in the west, heavily Chinese funded Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port and Colombo Port City SEZ in the south, China has strategically surrounded India.
 
Moreover, the departure of the American forces from Afghanistan, by August 2021 (as per the latest deadline given by Washington), has given rise to civil war and the Taliban making rapid gains. Sensing an opportunity, China has stepped in to fill the vacuum. If this materializes, then China Afghanistan Pakistan Economic Cooperation (CAPEC) will ensure China’s gateway to Europe, Middle East, and Central Asia through Afghanistan. India will lose its traditional trade routes to the west.

Sino-India cooperation vital

India cannot ignore China anymore. The sleeping dragon has woken up and it is dancing. India-China cold war will not be beneficial to either of the nations. As before, the US and its allies will be the major beneficiaries. But if the dragon and the elephant decide to dance together, others will leave the floor.

One of the reasons why India had decided not to join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) was the genuine fear that Indian businesses would not be able to compete with big players like China, Japan, South Korea, and Australia in a free trade arena and the domestic market will get overwhelmed. 

Experiences with earlier comprehensive economic agreements with Japan and South Korea were disappointing. Industry leaders and policymakers have realized that Indian products are not globally competitive in most of the sectors. Over-dependence on Europe and America for scientific and technological knowledge has made India weak and uncompetitive in high tech products and services which, at present, dominate the world market.

India should now look to the east, not for a wider market for goods but to acquire the much-needed scientific and technological knowledge. Herein lies the importance of China, Japan and South Korea. Sino-India cooperation has to be built on a technological and ecological alliance

Revival of BCIM-EC

The Kunming-Kolkata (K2K) Initiative (1999), which was rechristened as the BCIM Forum (Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar) for regional cooperation, primarily aims to boost the economic prowess of the region and increase connectivity.

The proposed BCIM Economic Corridor reminds one of a geographical space consisting of the 19th century Bengal Presidency (that consisted of the present-day Eastern and North-Eastern parts of India, Bangladesh, Myanmar) and Yunnan province of China, adjacent to the Myanmar border. It aims to link Kunming with Kolkata, via Mandalay – Myanmar’s second-largest city - and Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh.

An important aspect of the BCIM was the Kolkata-Dhaka-Mandalay-Kunming car rally in 2013. The long-proposed 2,800-km-long BCIM corridor, after being dropped by Beijing from its Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) following New Delhi's opposition, got a fresh lease of life at a meeting in 2019 held by the four stakeholders in Kunming.

Instead of entering into a broad-based umbrella trade agreement, India should revive the dormant BCIM Economic Corridor for improving the physical connectivity of the region and sustaining the common ecosystem.

Specific agreements on connectivity (by road, rail and water) with China’s technical support may be entered into. Recently, China has inaugurated the bullet train service between Lhasa and Nyingchi in Tibet, bordering Arunachal Pradesh (which China calls Southern Tibet). Chinese expertise will be useful for developing the much-needed infrastructure.

Common ecosystem

This region shares a common ecosystem which demands cooperation and coordination among all the stakeholders for maintaining the same. Between two great valleys of Brahmaputra (in India’s Assam state) and Myanmar’s Chindwin lies a long range of jungle-clad mountains, stretching from the Himalayas in the north to the port of Akyab (Myanmar) on the Bay of Bengal in the south. River Brahmaputra, the lifeline of Assam and Bangladesh, originates from the Tibet Administrative Region of China.

India and Bangladesh have 54 transboundary rivers between them, all of which are part of the drainage system of the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) basin. The Padma (the Ganga), the Jamuna (the Brahmaputra) and the Meghna (the Barak) and their tributaries are integral in maintaining food and water security in the region. The GBM river basin is a transboundary river basin with a total area of over 1.7 million sq. km, distributed between India (64 percent), China (18 percent), Nepal (9 percent), Bangladesh (7 percent) and Bhutan (3 percent).

Cooperation among BCIM members is essential for the sustainable development of the GMB basin. Mekong Ganga The cooperation (MGC) model, which is in operation for many years, may act as a reference.

(The writer is president of the Nilkantha Trust for Studies on Bay of Bengal Region, Kolkata. The views expresssed are personal. He can be contacted at drdipankardey1964@gmail.com)