As China and Pakistan moved to rope in Turkey, Uzbekistan and other countries to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and extend it to Afghanistan, India on Tuesday warned that any such move by any party would be tantamount to infringement of its sovereignty.
The Centre made it clear that any move by any country to join China and Pakistan in the CPEC projects would be unacceptable to India.
The top diplomats of China and Pakistan of late reviewed the CPEC projects and “agreed to promote cooperation schemes involving third parties in line with existing consensus, including extending to Afghanistan”, according to a press release released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China.
India has long opposed the CPEC, which passes through parts of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and Ladakh currently under occupation of Pakistan. The CPEC is one of the flagship projects of China's ambitious cross-continental Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which President Xi Jinping launched a few years back, but already triggered controversy due to predatory lending practices and debt-trap diplomacy by the government of the country.
“We have seen reports on encouraging a proposed participation of third countries in so-called CPEC projects. Any such actions by any party directly infringe on India's sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Arindam Bagchi, the spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, said in New Delhi. “India firmly and consistently opposes projects in the so-called CPEC, which are in Indian territory that has been illegally occupied by Pakistan.”
Russia so far rejected repeated outreach by China and Pakistan and refrained from joining the CPEC – ostensibly to avoid hurting the sensitivity of India. China and Pakistan have, however, renewed attempts to rope in other countries in the project, reaching out to Turkey and Uzbekistan.
The CPEC was originally envisaged as a $46 billion economic corridor to link China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region and the port city of Gwadar in southern Pakistan.
China’s debt-trap diplomacy over the past few years ballooned Pakistan’s total public and publicly guaranteed external debt from $44.35 billion in June 2013 to $90.12 billion in April 2021. Pakistan owed 9.3 % of its total external debt to China in 2013, but it went up to $24.7 billion in 2021.
“Such activities (participation in the CPEC) are inherently illegal, illegitimate and unacceptable, and will be treated accordingly by India,” said the MEA spokesperson in New Delhi.