India on Thursday tacitly warned its neighbors as well as Indian Ocean nations against China’s debt trap diplomacy.
“History has taught us that in the name of development partnerships, nations have been forced into dependency partnerships. It gave rise to colonial and imperial rule. This gave rise to global power blocs. And, humanity has suffered,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, taking a subtle dig into China’s predatory lending practices.
Modi was Speaking via video link at a ceremony marking the inauguration of Mauritius’ new Supreme Court building in the Indian Ocean nation’s capital, Port Louis, on Thursday. He joined Mauritius Prime Minister Pravind Kumar Jugnauth to virtually inaugurate the building, which New Delhi helped construct with a $28.12 million grant.
The prime minister pointed to the distinction between the ways India and China have supported development projects in other countries – but without directly referring to the communist country.
He cited examples of India’s support for development projects not only in Mauritius and neighboring countries, such as Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nepal and Afghanistan, but also in Niger in Africa and Guyana in South America.
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The prime minister said India’s approach to development was “mainly human-centred” and that it wanted to work for the welfare of humanity. “India is forging development partnerships marked by respect, diversity, concern for the future and sustainable development,” he said, adding, “For India, the most fundamental principle of development cooperation is respect for our partners”.
He said “sharing development lessons” was New Delhi’s “only motivation” to support the pursuit of prosperity in other countries. “That’s why our development cooperation comes with no strings attached. It is not influenced by political or commercial considerations,” the Prime Minister said.
Beijing has financed a large number of infrastructure projects in several countries in the South Asia and Indian Ocean region as well as in Africa, under its Belt-and-Road Initiative (BRI), thereby building strategic assets across continents. But Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ambitious intercontinental connectivity initiative has also come under criticism from around the world – for exposing smaller participating countries to the risks of getting into a debt trap.
Even as its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is locked in a standoff with the Indian military along its disputed border with India in eastern Ladakh, China has renewed its bid to further extend its tentacles in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean region. He recently offered new loans and economic packages to support not only development projects but also to help small countries cope with the Covid-19 crisis, including India’s neighbors like Sri Lanka. and the Maldives, although they are struggling. to get out of the debt trap, the communist country has already put them with BRI projects.
In recent months, Beijing has pushed Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli’s government in Kathmandu to sour relations with New Delhi by escalating the Nepal-India border dispute. He is reaching out to Kabul to extend his China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project to Afghanistan. It is also offering loans of up to $6.4 billion for several infrastructure projects across Bangladesh, in addition to extending the reach of its trade concession to the least developed country.
