Bhopinder Singh  

A lethal Chinese combination of economic-military-diplomatic beneficence is ensnaring financially vulnerable countries. Beijing’s use of debt-traps must be exposed

There was always something fishy in the way the Chinese agreed to finance the construction of a clearly unviable port at Hambantota in Sri Lanka, after India had turned down an obvious commercial hot-potato. The China Harbour Engineering Company, one of China’s largest State-owned enterprises, stepped in, constructed the facility, and waited patiently as the Sri Lankans struggled to repay the debt terms with negligible business generation — soon renegotiation with the Chinese ensued and the 15,000 acres of Hambantota facility was handed over to China on a platter for a 99-year lease.

The relatively anti-Indian tilt and rhetoric of the then President of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, had offered a glimmer of toehold to the Chinese and through sheer economic muscle, opportunistic urgency and guile, the Chinese have now established a firm foothold in the dangerous vicinity of India. Soon it was the same pattern, predicament and trap that befell the tiny nation of Djibouti at the tip of the Horn of Africa. Like Sri Lanka, Djibouti bit more than it, could chew in terms of accepting the ostensible Chinese generosity and is said to be in a terminal slide towards debt distress. Already, the Djiboutian Government has given 200 acres of port land to the Chinese to establish their first overseas base at a strategic choke point, within shouting range of Camp Lemonnier, the only permanent US base in Africa.

The relentless Chinese juggernaut of mixing a lethal combination of economic-military-diplomatic beneficence is ensnaring financially vulnerable countries in South America, African continent, Montenegro in Europe to potentially Maldives, Pakistan and Nepal in India’s immediate neighbourhood. Few years back, the Chairman of the Senate Standing Committee on Planning and Development of Pakistan, had presciently forewarned of the inevitable trap of the Chinese investments in the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC): “Another East India Company is in the offing; national interests are not being protected. We are proud of the friendship between Pakistan and China, but the interests of the state should come first.” It is the same fear that haunts the nation of 600,000 population Montenegro that is in the midst of constructing yet another unviable infrastructural initiative, cynically called the ‘highway to nowhere’ — the Chinese gratification at the end of the deal is clearly a gateway into the Europe Union (EU), when Montenegro joins EU.

It took the experience, ingenuity and wisdom of a 93-year Mahathir Mohamad, the wily Malaysian Prime Minister, to decline the Chinese largesse worth $22 billion with some typical plain-speak, “we cannot afford this” and that, “we do not want a situation where there is a new version of colonialism happening because poor countries are unable to compete with rich countries.” Re-elected after a self-imposed political hiatus of 15 years, Mahathir had the sagacity and guts to recognise and address the suffocating debt-trap of $250 billion that Malaysia is already reeling under.

The Chinese have suddenly come unstuck with Mahathir’s legendary obduracy and steel as he called off the projects signed by the previous Malaysian regime in the proximity of China’s most feared maritime choke point in the Malacca Straits. The Malaysians were quick to draw comparisons with the Hambantota example and Mohamad Mahathir unambiguously pointed to the Chinese when he said, “They know that when they lend big sums of money to a poor country, in the end they may have to take the project for themselves.” The fine print, opaque terms and subtle cues like developing a deep-water port with berths large enough to host an aircraft carrier, where the economic feasibility of the port is inherently weak, are all tell-tale signs of the Chinese long-term plans. All overseas Chinese economic investments seem to have a ‘control’ lever embedded with the creation of ‘dual-usage’ (commercial and military) platforms.

China is systematically creating a complex global network of its ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI) that envisages interlinkages, facilities and sovereign dependencies that will connect the links and hubs to the Chinese mainland and ultimately fructify the hegemonic aspirations of the Dragon. The carrot and stick policy of deploying both coercive and non-coercive means are visibly at play from a Doklam to a Male, with the Chinese filling in the void of the Cold-War linearity of belonging either to the Western bloc or to the Soviet bloc. Its ability to virtually ‘buy-out’ loyalty is exemplified by the case of Philippines, wherein Manila was initially embroiled in a bitter spat with Beijing at the International Court of Justice. China lost the landmark arbitration case that called the bluff of the dragon’s belligerence in the South China Seas, only to see Manila do a complete volte-face and aligning themselves to such an extent (post generous financial commitments and investments from China) that the Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte literally told the US President, “You can go to hell.”

Today credible murmurs of the national Filipino debt of $125 billion, mushrooming to over a trillion dollar in less than 10 years are pointing towards another potential victim of the Chinese debt-trap. While Pakistan is left with too few options to bail them out of the CPEC-led trap, Delhi would be wise in showcasing the now-well-established pattern of the Chinese debt-trap to both Maldives and Nepal who have sought a supposed ‘balance’, as against the historic ‘India-first’ approach that existed earlier.

 

In a struggling global economy, China is a rarity as it is flush with funds, eager to intervene and offers an initial no-strings-attached approach which endears itself to illiberal and authoritarian regimes like North Korea and Maldives. The BRI is the virtual road-rail-maritime ‘gateway to the globe’ that seeks to make China the epicentre of all activities, at any cost to the other participating nation. However, it is the accompanying spectre of the Chinese submarines repeatedly popping up in the waters of Sri Lanka, Maldives and Pakistan that has Delhi worried, immediately. The patent formula of Chinese debt-traps and their implications need to be exposed and highlighted as urgencies, vulnerabilities and temptations in the region to accept the dragon’s doles will only increase with time, irrespective of inevitabilities.

(Bhopinder Singh, a military veteran, is a former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands, and Puducherry)

DISCLAIMER:

The views expressed in the Article above are Author’s personal views and kashmiribhatta.in is not responsible for the opinions expressed in the above article.

Courtesy: Pioneer:  Monday, 27 August 2018