Posts Tagged ‘China-South Asia’

China is a habit that Pakistan cannot break

Posted: July 25, 2021 in Nikkei Asia Review
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A new outlet for a well-trodden topic. Exploring the China-Pakistan relationship for Nikkei Asian Review, using the recent terrorist atrocity in Pakistan against a busload of Chinese engineers as the way into the topic and the tensions around it between Beijing and Islamabad. It has generated some chatter online which is always good to see, at least someone is reading! Undoubtedly more on this topic to come.

China is a habit that Pakistan cannot break

Ties with Washington further strained by the need to declare fealty to Beijing

Imran Khan, pictured in Beijing in November 2018: the Pakistani Prime Minister is increasingly China’s staunchest defender on the international stage.   © Reuters

An attack on a busload of Chinese workers en route to the Dasu Hydropower plant in Pakistan has once again highlighted the complex precariousness of the relationship between Beijing and Islamabad.

The rapid comment by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs citing terrorism as the reason, while their Pakistani counterparts suggested an accident of some sort, did little for the dead Chinese engineers and their Pakistani guards. But it did reveal the evident tension between the two powers, in stark contrast to the public rhetoric surrounding their relationship. Rust, it seems, is weakening the bond between these iron brothers.

The most curious aspect of the tension is paradoxically visible in the public displays of fealty from Prime Minister Imran Khan, who is increasingly China’s staunchest defender on the international stage. While it is not surprising that he would agree with his most important ally’s perspective, it seems odd that he feels the need to do so repeatedly in such an ostentatious way.

Many other countries that enjoy strong ties with China have successfully avoided situations requiring them to make such displays.

While the declarations may win favor in Beijing, they are undoubtedly going down badly in Washington. Since U.S. President Joe Biden was sworn in, he has not engaged with his Pakistani counterpart in any public way. The only high-level in-person engagement has been between National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and his Pakistani counterpart Moeed Yusuf.

At the same time, U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin has visited Delhi, and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has hosted India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in Washington. When Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi visited New York in May, he was able to meet with members of the Senate and Congress, but, publicly at least, there were no meetings with administration officials.

Biden himself has long-held concerns about Pakistan. As vice president in Feb. 2010, Biden told CNN that Pakistan was a large country with a “significant minority” that was radicalized and was not “a completely functional democracy in the sense we think about it,” adding that its status as a nuclear power was his biggest “foreign policy concern.”

As Washington pivots from the war on terrorism to confrontation with Beijing, Islamabad risks being left stranded in the middle. Always an awkward U.S. partner in Afghanistan, the U.S. withdrawal means this is no longer a primary consideration for Washington.

In the years ahead, Washington is likely to look at Islamabad through the lens of its growing tensions with Beijing, with Pakistan seen to be sitting firmly on China’s side.

All of this comes as Islamabad has been trying to signal, often through U.K. contacts, that it is eager to find ways of building a more constructive relationship with Washington. The problem is that Pakistan is no longer as important to Washington as it once was, especially as it is seen as being unlikely to do much to support attempts to contain China.

Islamabad has, however, been playing fast and loose when it comes to its relationship with Beijing. Articles in the Pakistan media discussing the China-Pakistan relationship are often peppered with off-the-record dissenting government voices hinting that significant parts of the Pakistani establishment feel they are locked in a bad relationship. Perhaps this explains why Beijing saw the need to send a new ambassador with strong party links, rather than the traditional South Asia expert.

People wheel a gurney towards an ambulance outside a hospital in Dasu after a bus with Chinese nationals on board plunged into a ravine following a blast on July 14.   © Reuters

Irritations are also building on the security front with the attack on the busload of engineers in Dasu coming after a separate incident in Quetta which came close to hitting the Chinese Ambassador, as well as earlier targeted attacks by Baluchi and Sindhi separatists on Chinese nationals and projects. Beijing is doubtless not shocked by these, but the loss of life in the Dasu incident was a step too far.

Signs that Beijing is losing patience include thunderous Global Times editorials warning Pakistan to get its house in order or China will explore deploying forces. Officially deploying a team of investigators immediately to look into the attack and being quicker than Pakistan to blame terrorists for the Dasu attack all illustrate a willingness by Beijing to start assuming the worst. The decision to cancel the next meeting of the Ministerial Joint Coordination Committee of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor is the clearest signal Beijing can send about its displeasure.

This hardly speaks to a relationship that is “higher than the mountains and deeper than the oceans” as diplomats on both sides like to sing. It speaks instead of a relationship where Beijing is increasingly frustrated with a partner that has failed to deliver and appears preoccupied with mending fences with China’s principal adversary.

The bigger problem for Islamabad, however, is that their attempts to get Washington’s attention are not getting through, putting them in the position of having to continually emphasize their fealty to Beijing. Unfortunately for Pakistan, such behavior will only further deepen the rupture with Washington.

Islamabad has backed itself into a complicated position that it will struggle to extricate itself from anytime soon.

Raffaello Pantucci is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

China’s Presence in South Asia

Posted: May 5, 2021 in Diplomat
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The wonderful Katie Putz of the Diplomat was kind enough to invite me to do an interview with her excellent publication – covering a wide range of China in South and Central Asia questions, though mostly looking southward with a bit of a focus on Afghanistan. Have not posted it all here as behind a firewall at the moment, but will hope to later. Am posting after it a podcast recording that I did with Suzanne Raine of Cambridge University (and formerly of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office) looking at how terrorist threats are evolving.

Raffaello Pantucci on China’s Presence in South Asia

The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan highlights the importance of South and Central Asia to China.

Pakistan and Chinese soldiers take part in a joint exercise in Jhelum, Pakistan Thursday, Nov 24, 2011.
Credit: AP Photo/B.K.Bangash

As the United States embarks on its withdrawal from Afghanistan, some wonder what China will do given the country’s critical interests in South and Central Asia. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative is merely the latest articulation of a strategic narrative that imbues the South and Central Asian region with critical importance to China. As Raffaello Pantucci, a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), explains in the following interview, China has long-running interests in the wider region. While Beijing is not poised to follow the Soviet Union and now, the United States, into the “graveyard of empires,” those interests remain important to China.

What interests in the wider South and Central Asia region most draw Beijing’s attention?

China is most worried about security problems it perceives as being based in South and Central Asia which might threaten domestic stability. Principal amongst these is a fear that the region might become a staging ground for Uyghur dissidents or militants to create instability in Xinjiang. A secondary group of concerns emanates from a fear of threats to Chinese economic investments and interests in the region. In Beijing’s conception these investments are also linked to Xinjiang as well, as their success is in part linked to prosperity and growth in Xinjiang, which China sees as the key to longer-term stability within its borders.

At a wider strategic level, China is worried that the region could be used by adversary powers, like the United States, as a place from which to foment instability within China. This has most recently been tied by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs directly to Afghanistan, but is a persistent fear that has always lurked in the back of Chinese minds. From their perspective, the region is their backyard and directly linked to some of the most sensitive parts of their country.

Finally, this region is the cradle of Xi Jinping’s foreign policy vision, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The concept was launched in the Kazakh capital, then-Astana (now Nur-Sultan), and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is called the keynote project of the vision. This gives it a particular importance conceptually to Beijing as failure here would be tantamount to failure of his vision. The economic interests that are linked to BRI in the region are important to China, but are often overstated as the priorities for Beijing’s concerns. The economic interests are important to the specific firms involved; the strategic aspect comes in terms of the impact they might have on domestic growth and stability, in particular in Xinjiang.

Read more here.

Also, am posting the podcast discussion with Suzanne Raine for the Centre for Geopolitics at Cambridge University.

Why China is becoming the bogeyman in its border lands

Posted: September 20, 2020 in South China Morning Post
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Next a piece for the South China Morning Post looking at what’s happening to China in its immediate neighbourhood.

Why China is becoming the bogeyman in its border lands

Chinese people, embassies and projects are increasingly the target of separatist and terrorist violence as protests against Uygur treatment grow

As a big player, China’s mere presence and support for the authorities in the region makes it a target for local anger

Raffaello Pantucci

Screen Shot 2020-09-20 at 09.08.43

When you become a big power, you become a big target. This is a lesson Beijing is increasingly learning. While much of China’s concern is with tension and anger from the West, there is an undercurrent sweeping through China’s immediate periphery which illustrates how this can become a sharper local problem.

China’s southern and western borders are increasingly marked by countries where angry minorities are focusing their rage on Beijing. In some extreme cases, this is resulting in terrorism. The most dramatic cases are in Pakistan and Indonesia.

Earlier this year, Sindhi and Balochi separatists announced an alliance to fight against China and Pakistan. While Sindhi groups have been fairly limited in targeting China, Balochi groups have undertaken high-profile attacks – with little success, admittedly – on the Chinese consulate in Karachi, Karachi Stock Exchange and a hotel at the Chinese investment project in Gwadar.

The groups, which also claim to target the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, are angry at Beijing for supporting the federal government in Islamabad, therefore supporting their oppression.

In Indonesia, the case is more multilayered. Crack security forces recently arrested groups associated with the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah network for planning attacks on Chinese targets. The groups were reportedly fearful of Communist infiltration and saw Chinese shop owners in Banten as targets for retaliation.

This followed the stabbing of former security minister Wiranto last year and the arrest of a man linked to Islamic State who reportedly also discussed the targeting of Chinese in Banten.

Meanwhile, Indonesia’s Mujahidin Indonesia Timur, an Isis-linked terrorist group, has connections with Uygur networks that have fled China and has reportedly provided training for them in Southeast Asia.

There is little evidence of the group ever launching attacks against China, although they were linked to plots in Indonesia and an ambitious plan to launch a rocket attack from Batam on the Marina Bay Sands hotel and casino complex in Singapore.

A backdrop of anti-Chinese anger has existed in Indonesia for a long time. The country’s ethnic Chinese community has repeatedly been the target of violence. In many ways, local jihadists are merely building off this history.

But China is now a very different power on the world stage, and these Indonesian groups’ propaganda is often coloured by anger against China’s treatment of its minority communities in Xinjiang.

Across the region, China has faced attacks linked to militant networks. The unresolved case of the Erawan shrine bombing in Bangkok was blamed on Turkish-Uygur networks, for example. And the Chinese embassy bombing in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, was undertaken by Uygur networks with links to Syria.

China stands accused of manipulating separatist groups for its goals, and this exacerbates anger from the local authorities and minorities. In Myanmar, China (or the local Yunnan authority) has a long history of discretely supporting ethnic armies.

This is a source of frustration for the powerful Myanmese military, which recently went on a public campaign complaining about Beijing’s support for some of the many ethnic armies fighting the state. In India, similar accusations have been levelled at Beijing’s support for Assamese separatists.

Here, the support is much harder to pin down, and the groups have very little track record in terms of effectiveness. And of course, Delhi is continually angry at Beijing’s support for Pakistan and the many anti-India groups that operate from its territory.

But anger against China is not simply at state level. Smaller protests are emerging among a growing mix of non-state groups in both Bangladesh and India. Over the weekend, a group gathered in Dhaka to protest against the plight of Uygurs.

In India, one of the political branches of the Naxalite movement, the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, wrote a long treatise in its magazine which condemned China’s treatment of Uygurs, placing it on a par with India’s treatment of its minorities in Kashmir and elsewhere.

There have also been similar tensions in Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, where there have been protests, discussions of targeting of China sotto voce, and displeasure at how China has handled repatriated Uygurs. Security officials complain that they have never received adequate answers about where repatriated Uygurs end up.

To China’s north, in Central Asia, there is a similar but different story. China is a distinct source of local anger to varying degrees, but these tensions are often manipulated by local political actors. In some cases, communities are angry at China’s treatment of minorities in Xinjiang – mostly when they come to communities linked to the large Kyrgyz or Kazakh diaspora that live within Xinjiang and get caught up in China’s camps system.

In others, locals protest against Chinese projects as a way of attacking the local government. Other foreign investors face such protests as well, but those against China have been most consistent in recent years.

This, in many ways, articulates Beijing’s bigger problem. It is becoming the bogeyman across its land borders. In some cases, it is making things worse through its manipulations, but mostly, it is a by-product of Beijing becoming the big player in the yard. This attracts negative attention and means China is going to find itself increasingly dragged into local problems.

The old logic of non-interference, where people do not find you objectionable, will no longer hold water. By being present and supporting the local authorities, you are going to be a target for local anger which might previously have been directed solely at the capital. Your mere presence is “intervention”. This is one of the costs of becoming a great power.

Raffaello Pantucci is senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London

Why developing countries can’t resist joining China’s massive infrastructure plan

Posted: July 12, 2018 in South China Morning Post
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Another op-ed for the South China Morning Post, on a not dissimilar topic to the last two, focusing on the Belt and Road Initiative and its consequences on the ground. It has gotten a bit of attention on Twitter, and the point is to try to challenge the rather empty policy responses we hear about BRI for the most part.

Beyond this op-edding in the SCMP, have also been delinquent in updating media commentary. Since this was last done, I spoke to the Telegraph about a Pakistani Taliban video, the Independent about the fact that Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s son was killed fighting in Syria, to the Telegraph again about the worrying set of arrests in Germany that included someone who had managed to make Ricin, to Huffington Post about the fact that al Shabaab issued an edict about banning plastic bags, and to the Independent again about ISIS telling its followers to beware of fake social media accounts. Beyond this, The Conversation posted a podcast which included a longer conversation I had had with them about lone actor terrorism as part of the preparation for making this comic strip about the phenomenon.

Why developing countries can’t resist joining China’s massive infrastructure plan

Raffaello Pantucci writes that Beijing’s offer of investment and a connection to a regional ‘balancing force’ is tough to pass up for poor nations with few options

PUBLISHED : Saturday, 07 July, 2018, 10:02pm
UPDATED : Saturday, 07 July, 2018, 10:05pm

COMMENTS: 44 

Raffaello Pantucci

6 Jul 2018

There is an understandable trepidation about China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The problem is, there is a tendency to analyse it solely through the lens of China the adversary, forgetting that numerous countries along the way are affected by this foreign policy initiative and their calculation around China has to be very different.

For them, China the adversary is a second-order issue, often trumped by the necessity of seeking either inward investment or a balancer against other regional powers.

If the world wants to find a way of reacting, countering or engaging with the Belt and Road, this is the chief element to bear in mind. Simply rejecting, shouting about or expecting people to reject China’s massive infrastructure plan will have little impact on Beijing’s foreign policy concept.

China has made a dramatic leap in a few generations. From a developing power facing domestic poverty (which still affects substantial parts of the country), Beijing has leapfrogged its way into globe-straddling gianthood, led by a one-party government which talks in dramatic terms about becoming one of the major powers on the planet.

Seen through the lens of this transformation, the Belt and Road Initiative is interpreted as a way for Beijing to restore itself to its rightful place at the centre of the world, with economic corridors emanating from it in every direction.

And there is some truth to this. The impetus behind the Belt and Road is restoring China to its pre-eminent place on the Eurasian continent. But to simply conclude that this effect is the only one, is to reduce the impact for those along the way.

The Belt and Road cuts across vast swathes of underdeveloped Eurasia and beyond, often through countries which have not benefited in the same way from the prosperity in the West. Their governments have not always been able to match China’s breakneck speed of development, and are instead burdened with fundamental domestic issues which impede progress.

Along comes China, offering loans, companies that can deliver projects rapidly and few value judgments about the governance of the countries in question.

There may be some political pressures, but these initially are kept light, and are often focused on matters that are of relatively marginal concern to the countries at hand: recognition of Taiwan, or willingness to back China in the United Nations.

Over time, this dynamic can change. As countries find themselves unable to repay debt, they will accumulate more.

For politicians there is a deep attraction to an outside power that brings jobs, infrastructure and investment. This is an understandable impulse.

If countries are not receiving this investment from elsewhere, or are finding themselves having to fulfil difficult governance requirements to get loans, it is understandable that they will choose the easy option.

Having got themselves into this hole, finding that their predatory lender is leaning with ever greater intensity on them is familiar to anyone who has found themselves taking on more debt than they can handle from the bank.

What is the lesson here? And what is the policy response from the West?

First, there is clearly a need to call out China’s rhetoric of creating a community of shared destiny.

Beijing cannot necessarily be held responsible for bad choices made by other governments, but there can be no doubt that by letting countries take on too heavy loans that ultimately require them to get bailed out by international financial institutions, China is not helping the international order.

Rather, it is taking money from international institutions which help cover debts incurred by countries that use China’s companies to build their infrastructure. This is reducing the volume of money on the planet to help it develop: hardly the action of a globally responsible stakeholder.

Underdeveloped parts of the world need investment. In the absence of other options, it cannot be surprising they welcome China.

But at the same time, China is also merely offering countries an option they choose to take as other offers are absent or unattractive.

This is the perspective the West needs to take.

If other powers want to really counter Belt and Road in the underdeveloped world, they need to think logically about how to do this. Simply telling powers not to take the investment is unlikely to go far.

Offering them alternatives, either bilaterally, in cooperation with other powers or through international financial institutions, is more effective.

At the same time, such choices can sometimes not be an option. China’s economic firepower can be hard to compete against, and in some cases, there are good reasons why countries have been omitted from international financing.

The carrot of investment can be used as an incentive to change behaviour. There is a paternalistic aspect to this approach, but in these contexts, working closely with local authorities to help them develop the capacity to manage Chinese investment is a more productive way forward.

Helping poor countries develop managerial capacity or helping them take advantage of Chinese investment is more likely to have a lasting effect.

The answer to the Belt and Road needs to be a sensible one. Railing against the system when you are not offering anything else is pointless.

China clearly is taking advantage of some poor countries. But these are underdeveloped parts of the world which need investment. And in the absence of other options, it cannot be surprising they welcome China.

This is the crux of understanding how to respond to the Belt and Road. If you want to marshal a more effective response, you need to answer the need on the ground to which it is responding.

Until you do that, you are merely shouting against the storm.

Raffaello Pantucci is director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London

How Beijing, Delhi and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor could reshape global foreign policy in Asia

Posted: July 9, 2018 in South China Morning Post
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Have failed to keep up on posting working on longer things. Have a few longer pieces which will eventually land, but in the short run a few opinion pieces in the South China Morning Post, looking at the Belt and Road in various incarnations.  First, a piece about South Asia, intended to be in the wake of the Wuhan Summit meeting between President’s Xi and Modi.

How Beijing, Delhi and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor could reshape global foreign policy in Asia 

Raffaello Pantucci writes that a China-India symbiosis stemming from the infrastructure projects being built in Pakistan will force the West to rethink its South Asia strategy

PUBLISHED : Monday, 11 June, 2018, 8:02am
UPDATED : Monday, 11 June, 2018, 11:13pm

COMMENTS: 15 

Raffaello Pantucci
There is an air of possible change in South Asia. After a positive summit in Wuhan, presidents Modi and Xi both made it clear they wanted the event to be the opening gambit in a rapprochement between India and China.

The modest practical achievements presented from the meeting should be seen as positive, illustrating that both powers are aware of the tensions and limitations of their relationship.

Nevertheless, the decision to focus on Afghanistan as a possible source of Indo-Chinese cooperation highlights the leaders’ willingness to be ambitious in their thinking. In Islamabad, however, there is a sense of concern about Pakistan being the potential loser in this larger regional rapprochement.

This short-sighted logic is founded on the perennial tensions that exist between Delhi and Islamabad. Yet, it misses a few key elements. China is clearly committed to Pakistan. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is the flagship project of the broader “Belt and Road Initiative” concept that Xi Jinping has advanced.

The People’s Bank of China’s expansion of the currency swap between the countries highlights a doubling down of China’s willingness to continue to invest in Pakistan.

The imprimatur given to the project by President Xi highlights the degree to which this part of the broader concept has to be delivered on, notwithstanding the sometimes awkward economic logic that underpins some projects.

For China, the undertaking is an important one and tied not only to its domestic security and prosperity, but also to the strategic assets it receives from its interest in the Gwadar Port.

But the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor sometimes does frustrate and worry Beijing. While Chinese diplomacy is an exemplar of keeping disputes out of the public eye, there are some issues.

Workers have been murdered and various insurgent and terrorist groups around the country have made specific targets of Chinese nationals and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor in an attempt to undermine the government.

That the Chinese consulate in Karachi had to issue a travel advisory to nationals earlier this year, dissuading them from travelling to Quetta, illustrates the security concerns China feels in the country.

That the minister responsible for managing the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (who is also the interior minister) was injured by an assassin’s bullet does little to inspire confidence in Pakistan’s national security.

None of this is to talk about the awkward economics that exist around some of the corridor’s projects.

And China has proven willing in the past to side with Delhi on security problems. The statement after the BRICS summit last year in which China agreed to specifically single out some Pakistan-based groups for criticism, as well as Beijing’s regular efforts to get Delhi and Islamabad to talk after incidents, highlight the Chinese government’s awareness of the problems that exist.

What Islamabad needs to bear in mind is that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is not the only part of the Belt and Road Initiative. It is one strand of Xi Jinping’s bigger foreign policy concept. It is not even the only South Asian corridor (the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor is another slow burning concept), but rather the first to be implemented with vigour.

The ability of China and India to hold a summit and discuss ideas for cooperation sensibly when hawkish administrations are in both Beijing and Delhi, reflects the underlying direction in which South Asia is moving.

For China and its companies, India is in many ways the bigger game to play. The growing number of tech purchases by Chinese firms in the Indian market highlights an awareness of India’s booming potential. And beyond India, China realises that a more interconnected, stable and cordial community of South Asian nations will ensure the prosperity that will help stabilise China’s immediate land peripheries.

Afghanistan needs stability to be prosperous and not export problems to Central Asia, Pakistan and, ultimately, China. From Beijing’s perspective, this will only work if the country is more connected to its region.

Wang Yi and other officials have talked about connecting the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to Afghanistan, but it is not clear how positively Islamabad views this idea. The corridor will only deliver the prosperity that will help Pakistan grow if it is a truly regional project, and this means it must connect better with its immediate neighbours as well as those in the Khunjerab Pass area.

This is the point Islamabad needs to keep in mind: China and India want to find ways to engage and tap each other’s economic opportunities.

India may be sceptical of the broader belt and road plan, but it remains keen to engage in some aspects of it, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the chance to bring Chinese investment into the country. A nation hungry for investment, Modi’s India is keen to find any way to grow to catch up with its richer Asian neighbour.

For Beijing, this is an opportunity in every direction: a prosperous India would be good for China. A prosperous and stable Pakistan would be a net boon. And a stable and secure Afghanistan would achieve a long-awaited goal for the entire region.

While Beijing is still working out how it will manage to deliver on this vision, the direction of travel is clear – and should be appreciated, not just by the region but the world.

Notwithstanding the tensions that will undoubtedly create some bumps in the road, the ability to hold a summit and discuss ideas for cooperation sensibly when hawkish administrations are in both Beijing and Delhi, reflects the underlying direction in which South Asia is moving.

Islamabad needs to pay attention before casting all its chips in one basket; the West needs to focus on what South Asia’s course means for any attempts to use India as a counterbalance to China.

Ultimately, these Asian giants know their own backyard, and will focus on that over any global ideological confrontation.

Raffaello Pantucci is director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Islamabad should not fear signs of Sino-Indian rapprochement

China’s South Asian Miscalculation

Posted: March 27, 2018 in Current History
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Another slightly longer piece about China lands this time in Current History, ‘the oldest US publication devoted exclusively to world affairs’. This looks at China’s growing push into South Asia, and India’s increasingly tense response to it. Somewhat relevant but a bit late for this piece, a Chinese colleague recently described managing relations with India as ‘ticklish’ which struck me as quite apt. This topic is going to grow in significance as time goes on, and am sure will end up doing more about it. In the meantime, for those interested in similar topics, check out the China in Central Asia site. I have posted a version of the paper here, but do check out the Current History site as well for the rest of the excellent journal.

“Beijing’s miscalculations regarding India have created conflict with a regional power that has the capability and desire to disrupt China’s outward push.”

China’s South Asian Miscalculation

South Asia: April 2018

April2018

At a conference in China a few years ago, I watched as a Chinese expert gave a presentation laying out Beijing’s view of the military conflict that it faced in nearby seas. It was largely a story about the United States and East Asian competitors, and China’s aggressive assertions of ownership of islands in the South China Sea. At the end of the presentation, a former Indian officer raised his hand and indignantly asked why India had not been mentioned as a competitor.

In a moment of surprising candor, the Chinese expert responded that he did not include India because, from his perspective, it did not pose much of a threat to China. The answer riled the Indian participant, but it reflected a fundamental calculation that exists in Beijing about India. It is a calculation that could cause serious complications for China’s broader South Asian vision, and ultimately provoke a clash between the two Asian giants.

At stake is China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a much-discussed and puzzled-over concept. It has been variously described as a Chinese power grab; an attempt by China to promote its companies’ overseas interests and build infrastructure to suit its own interests; an effort by Beijing to claim leadership of the international order; or, by Beijing’s own account, a project to bind together a “community of common destiny.” But it is really best understood as an umbrella concept that acts as a central organising principle for China’s foreign policy.

The core of this scheme—building trade and economic corridors that emanate from China in every direction—strengthens China’s position in the global order and across the Eurasian landmass. The aim of these corridors is not only to help Chinese firms go out into the world and increase China’s trade connections. Most importantly, they will help China develop domestically.

Ostensibly, this is a benign concept. By improving trade and transportation links through investments in infrastructure, China is enhancing the global commons. Few would say that more eco- nomic connectivity and prosperity is a bad thing. But the reality is of course very different. China is advancing its own national interests, and is doing so by offering a one-size-fits-all policy—which means that it can appear to be proffering the same opportunity to European powers and Southeast Asian neighbors alike. While this is a perfectly understandable self-interested approach, Beijing has been blind to geopolitical problems that it is exacerbating and which may in the long term disrupt its entire strategy.

For more, go either to Current History or get in touch or download it here.

China’s Eurasian Pivot: The Silk Road Economic Belt

Posted: January 26, 2018 in Royal United Services Institute
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Been a bit quiet of late, am focused on some larger writing projects which should be coming out over the next few months. We did, however, finally launch the Whitehall Paper authored with my colleague Sarah Lain which came out last year at an event at RUSI in London with Mark Field, MP, Minister for Asia at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and James Kynge of the Financial Times. Given it is behind a paywall, I cannot just post the paper here, but it can be found online and if you get in touch with me, I can see what I can do to help. Many thanks to the MacArthur Foundation for their generous support of this work, and as ever, to find more work on this topic, check out China in Central Asia.

Separately, spoke to Eurasianet about China’s rail activity in Central Asia, WikiTribune about ISIS, the Times quoted my book in an article about Hafiz Saeed, and the Financial Times about the Belt and Road.

China’s Eurasian Pivot: The Silk Road Economic Belt

WHP_Chinas Eurasian Pivot
Raffaello Pantucci and Sarah Lain
Whitehall Papers, 31 May 2017
China, New Silk Road, International Security Studies, Pacific
The modern Silk Road is a key component of China’s political and economic strategy in Eurasia.

China’s growing influence across its western and southern borders is one of the great geopolitical trends of the past decade. With the development of its western domestic regions, Beijing has been drawn into building trade and economic corridors in nearby Central and South Asian countries. Yet these states are home to security risks which China is only now beginning to address.

China’s Eurasian Pivot analyses the country’s growing regional footprint from an economic, security and political perspective. It offers a comprehensive overview of China’s relations with Central and South Asia, showing that the policies now shaped by the concept of the Belt and Road Initiative are ones that China has been implementing in the region for some time.

The paper concludes that China is still developing its approach to the region, which is increasingly being driven by events and external relations. Beijing has stressed that its policies must be successful – both within the region itself and in terms of the impact back home. This highlights the degree to which Beijing feels that it must not fail, and why its approach to the region will continue to be a driving national priority for the next few decades.

Non-RUSI Members and Members with Standard Access

Read the Introduction for free

Buy the book through Taylor and Francis

Untangling the web of India, China and Pakistan diplomacy

Posted: May 25, 2015 in Reuters
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Another short op-ed in between longer pieces of work, this time for Reuters looking at the China-India-Pakistan trilateral relationship and all its complexities. Reflects a number of views I heard on recent trips to all three capitals.

Untangling the web of India, China and Pakistan diplomacy

By Raffaello Pantucci
May 25, 2015

(Any opinions expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily those of Thomson Reuters)

On the eve of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to China, Xinhua published a rare opinion piece by his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif. The obvious choreography of the visit and article shows the delicate balance in relations between China, India and Pakistan.

For Beijing, both powers are important if it is to realize its ambitious strategy of trade and economic corridors emanating from the Middle Kingdom under the rubric of the Silk Road Economic Belt. For current governments in Islamabad and New Delhi, Beijing’s economic miracle offers a way of helping develop their economies. Yet we are some way off before this trilateral relationship will be able to live up to its potential as the economic powerhouse at the centre of Asia.

Islamabad reaped substantial benefits from President Xi Jinping’s delayed visit to Pakistan. The formalization of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) to the tune of $46 billion signalled a major investment by China into Pakistan’s future (even if one takes a skeptical view that the money was repackaged old deals and multiple-year contracts conflated for a public announcement).

The current outline for the CPEC is a multistage strategy starting with the development of Pakistan’s parlous energy infrastructure and the redevelopment of its road, rail and pipeline network. A series of economic zones will be established along the CPEC route in Pakistan to attract industry that is finding itself increasingly priced out of Chinese markets. As envisaged, the corridor will not only open up China’s western regions to the seas through Gwadar Port, but also create a latticework of prosperity across Pakistan.

India has traditionally seen a close China-Pakistan relationship as a source of concern. Seeing it as a relationship that is built on the foundations of anti-Indian sentiment, hawks in New Delhi are concerned by this proximity. But the new government of Narendra Modi has appeared willing to open up a new conversation with Beijing, one that tries to look beyond these historical tensions to build stronger economic ties, resolve long-standing border disputes and helps reshape the global order to the advantage of the two Asian giants. China has also offered a direct link to India in one of the numerous trade corridors it is pushing out from Beijing — in the form of the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) Corridor.

But underlying these optimistic perspectives are a number of fundamental problems, the most central of which is regional security. In the context of CPEC, security in Pakistan (in the form of growing sectarianism, terrorism, as well as separatists in Baluchistan) and in neighbouring Afghanistan pose major threats to the route. And while India may be interested in the BCIM as a potential concept, it remains concerned about encirclement by China through the Maritime Silk Road and the network of relationships China is building in the Indian Ocean as well as the ongoing border tensions in Ladakh. India has continued to keep China out of SAARC and Modi’s Project Mausam is a direct pushback to China’s maritime strategy, in contrast to the country’s willingness to engage on the BRICS Bank, AIIB and to work on joint projects in Iran.

And bringing the trilateral complexity of these relationships into focus are incidents like theattack on the Park Palace Hotel in Kabul. While it remains unclear what the ultimate target was, the potential presence of the Indian Ambassador and Indian casualties immediately painted the incident as part of the shadow war between Pakistani intelligence and the Taliban on the one side, and Afghan intelligence and their Indian supporters on the other. Such incidents stoke paranoia on all sides and complicate efforts to try to forge a regional peace and stability.

The China-India-Pakistan trilateral relationship is a complicated one. All three need each other to succeed, but do not believe this to be the case, remaining fiercely independent in their outlooks and jealous when the other two appear to be moving closer together. On the one hand, China has the potential to act as an honest broker, offering economic investment to all while trying to help offer a platform for discussions. But in reality, China wants no part of a situation where it ends being responsible for brokering peace in such a fractious part of the world, and it continues to take advantage of opportunities to assert its dominance over its Asian neighbours. For India and Pakistan, history continues to be stuck in the legacies of partition.

Yet this is a trio of countries that together account for about a third of the world’s population and where future prosperity is likely to come from. The danger at the moment is the assumption that economic development and prosperity will resolve everything and is the goal that needs to be achieved for regional stability. In reality, all three powers need to shed their historical legacies, and find ways of ending the paranoid tensions that underlie their global outlooks. Until this has been achieved, the CPEC, BCIM and any other regional economic framework will be undermined and no long-term stability will be found in the heart of South Asia.