India is not worried about China’s attempts to establish close ties with South Asian countries as New Delhi has strong relations with its neighbours, India’s envoy Gautam Bambawale has said. The South Asian countries are free to have ties with any country including China, India’s Ambassador in Beijing Bambawale said. “India has its own relationships with all these countries. These are very strong relationships and India is also doing a lot of projects in all these countries, such as the Maldives, Nepal or Sri Lanka,” he said in an interview to Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.
“Our relationships with these countries are very strong, they are historical, people-to-people contacts,” the envoy said, citing example of India and Nepal having open borders.
There is an open border between Nepal and India so people can come to India without any visa, and the reverse is also the case, he said.
“So, we have very strong relationships with all these countries and we are confident that this relationship will become even stronger and richer in the coming months and years. I don’t think we are worried about what China is doing. Those countries are free to have relationships with any third country including China,” Bambawale said. He also spoke of India’s strong reservations about China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) which is a part of China’s multi-billion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). “When we talk about development projects or connectivity projects, they must be transparent, fair and equal. There are certain internationally accepted norms for such projects,” he said, in an apparent reference to the criticism that the BRI projects lack transparency.
“If a project meets those norms, we will be happy to take part in it. One of the norms is the project should not violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a country. Unfortunately, there is this thing called CPEC, which is called a flagship project of BRI, violates India’s sovereignty and territory integrity. Therefore, we oppose it,” he said.
The CPEC traverses through the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
India follows the principle of not “letting differences of opinion becoming disputes, of doing projects which are not opaque but open; transparent and meet ecological and environmental standards; does not violate anyone’s territorial integrity, then we will find a situation where the Chinese dragon and the Indian elephant will actually be dancing together,” Bambawale said.
He played down the talk of India-China rivalry saying: “As far as India is concerned, India does not look upon China as a rival or a competitor. We look upon China as a partner in progress and development”.
He referred to historically high bilateral trade between the two countries which touched USD 84.5 billion last year.