Despite all the aggressive attempts by China, New Delhi through its continuous efforts to improve goodwill without business interests is pushing back against Beijing in the crucial region of South Asia, senior defence analyst and professor Derek Grossman said in a piece on the website of the think tank Rand Corporation.
Amid the intensifying strategic confrontation between the United States and China dominating most foreign-policy debates, another important competition is quietly playing out in the South Asia region.
“The jostling between India and China for influence in South Asia—from the Himalayas to the islands off the subcontinent in the Indian Ocean—will likely prove crucial to the fate of Washington’s strategy to keep the region “free and open” from Chinese coercion. And the good news, at least for now, is that New Delhi—an increasingly close US partner—has been mostly successful in pushing back against Beijing’s rising influence across the region,” Grossman stated.
According to the author, the South Asia region —comprising Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka—has been a hotbed of Sino-Indian strategic competition for years.
New Delhi’s concern is that Beijing, through its multiple border confrontations plans to spin a web of alliances to encircle India, on both land and sea and ultimately supplant it as the dominant power over South Asia.
Notably, all the region’s countries, except Bhutan, are participants in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a vast economic plan for investment and infrastructure development. Beijing has also secured access to key ports along the Indian Ocean, including Gwadar in Pakistan, Hambantota in Sri Lanka, and Chittagong in Bangladesh, that have caused New Delhi to worry about a so-called string of pearls strategy aimed at hemming India in, the think tank stated.
As per the author, the situation was ‘worrisome’ for India, as China-friendly governments came to power in the Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and, of course, Pakistan. But, today India has strong ties to the Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, and it has shored up relations with Bangladesh.
New Delhi has at least matched, if not surpassed, Beijing’s influence with the Taliban in Afghanistan. To be sure, Pakistan remains an intractable problem because of longstanding sovereignty and territorial disputes over the Kashmir region as well as Islamabad’s “all-weather partnership” with Beijing. But bilateral relations between India and Pakistan have not appreciably worsened either.
While India is worried that Bhutan has not included it in border negotiations with China, New Delhi maintains a longstanding relationship with the Himalayan kingdom, allowing it to keep close tabs on the situation to secure its interests. All of this indicates an important inflection point in South Asia.
“India is no longer losing—and may even be winning—its strategic competition with China in the region,” the author stated.
Following the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, China seemed like the obvious great power to fill the void. Beijing has long desired access to the Mes Aynak copper mine. In April, a Chinese firm offered the Taliban USD 10 billion to mine lithium deposits. In May, the Taliban agreed to allow China to extend BRI into Afghanistan from Pakistan.
While Beijing has cultivated ties to the Taliban, the reality is China has remained exceedingly cautious because of concerns that the Taliban might secretly harbour and instigate Islamic extremist groups to launch attacks into China’s Xinjiang province, the think tank stated.
India is likewise concerned that Taliban-run Afghanistan might once again become a playground for terrorists, especially those who are anti-India and supported by Pakistan, it has taken a gamble and forged working ties with the Taliban.
Despite all the frictions, India has developed into Bangladesh’s most important strategic partner in recent years. Bangladeshi State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam noted in May that Bangladeshi-Indian ties were “unparalleled, incomparable to any other achievements that bilateral neighbouring countries have made despite having some issues.” (Milap News Network)
