At China-led regional summit, India refuses to back Beijing’s infrastructure vision
Raffaello Pantucci, a senior fellow at the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said India had a practical reason for withholding its endorsement.
“The Belt and Road goes through contested territory in Kashmir with Pakistan … There’s a sort of practical dilemma always for the Indians to try to engage with the SCO with the Belt and Road Initiative. They’ve always been very reticent. They’ve always said it was a bad idea,” said Pantucci.
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In his summit speech, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi stressed the need for cooperation to fight regional terrorism, underlining a divergence from Beijing and Moscow.
“Terrorism has become a threat to regional and global peace … We have to fight together against terrorism that may be in any form and any manifestation,” Modi said.
Others made more concrete appeals. Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev urged more energy cooperation and said SCO member states should set up an investment fund. Xi repeated a call to establish an SCO Development Bank.
Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested “payment infrastructures” be set up to boost regional economic integration and build an “independent financial structure”.
Both China and Russia called for wider use of national currencies in trade between SCO members, in a push for deeper economic integration within the bloc.
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But Pantucci said India has other options.
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“I don’t think they feel the same sort of position. They’ve got lots of Western powers that are eager to sort of engage with them and develop free trade areas and free trade relationships,” he said.
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“There was no real concurrence on what everyone wanted to do and achieve … [and that became] a question of divergent priorities.”
As Modi spoke about the terrorist threats faced by the nation, he said “some countries use cross-border terrorism as an instrument of their policies and provide shelter to terrorists”.
“SCO must not hesitate to criticise countries that support cross-border terrorism as part of state policy. There should be no place for double standards on such serious matters,” Modi said.
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While Pakistan was not mentioned directly, Li Hongmei, a research fellow at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, said it was an obvious reference to India’s neighbour, which Modi wanted the SCO to jointly pressure.
China hopes the SCO will become a platform for both security and economic cooperation, but India remains more concerned about terrorism, which has worsened since the Taliban took over Afghanistan, Li said.
“Regional connectivity was also mentioned in Modi’s speech, [but] this is a secondary concern or secondary goal of India, and counterterrorism is India’s number one goal in SCO,” she said, adding that the Indian economy has shown signs of “desinicisation” since the deadly border clash with Chinese troops in the Galwan Valley in 2020.
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Despite lingering tensions from the border dispute, Pantucci said New Delhi remained active in the regional bloc and has led several working groups, including those focused on the digital economy.
Source: South China Morning Post
