THE 62-billion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor runs through Gilgit-Baltistan ending at the port of Gwadar in the Arabian Sea — 2,450 km south of the China-Pakistan border. Many in India believe that the CPEC is also beneficial to India. But the Modi government is averse to the idea.

China is India’s largest trading partner with bilateral trade of a huge $85 billion in 2017, growing at 20 per cent per year. Despite the Doklam face-off with China, Indian exports grew by 40 per cent compared to the previous year totalling $16.5 billion.

India is inciting some peripheral countries like Nepal to spoil China’s efforts to expand trade frontiers with several countries. Nepal was not invited to the SCO Summit despite the fact that it holds a ‘dialogue partner’ status since 2008.

The Nepal-India-China (NIC) trilateral cooperation is an open secret. But India is opposed to trilateralism. Nepal’s export import ratio with China stands at an alarming 1.5 per cent, far worse than that of India, which stands at 7 per cent. The demand for traditional goods from Nepal — mainly foodgrains, clothing and construction materials in adjoining Tibet has fallen in the past couple of years after Lhasa got linked with the Chinese mainland through a railway network.

Even within Pakistan several questions — the glut of cheap Chinese products driving out Pakistani products, preferential treatment to Chinese companies, so on. We must allay the people’s fears.

D.M. Jaaved
Islamabad

Published in Dawn, July 5th, 2018