Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

Beijing, October 14

China today aggressively pitched for its idea of a modern day ‘silk road’ and a ‘maritime silk route’, both announced by President Xi Jinping in October 2013, to give a boost to trade in the Indian Ocean. But this posture of China has put India in a dilemma. To join the 60-odd countries’ club, which promises to be an emerging global order, or remain independent of it and push its own strategy in the Indian Ocean.

The ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) today kicked-off a three-day conference to highlight the importance of these two trade routes making countries economically inter-dependent. One is the ‘silk road ‘ — almost identical to the ancient silk route – but has no link up with India’s ancient silk route which had an artery running through Leh in Ladakh linking with Kashgar in Xinjiang (now part of China).

The modern day ‘silk road’ shall run from its ancient city of Xi’an in Eastern China and end at Rotterdam in the Netherlands. This is proposed to run in ‘loops’ running around strategic-geographical divides via the resource-rich Central Asian countries like Iran, Turkey, Russia and Europe. One artery shall cross Kazakhstan and the other through Mongolia and link up with the trans-Siberian railway to reach Moscow and Europe. Beijing terms this as ‘one belt one road’ (OBOR).

The second part is the maritime silk route (MSR) that includes India. It proposes to run the sea route from China’s southeastern coast via the contentious South China Sea, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, India, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Sudan (Red Sea) onwards across the Suez Canal to Greece and Venice in Italy.

At the opening of the conference titled ‘New vision of the silk road actions for common development’, Liu Yunshan, member of the all-powerful seven-member standing committee of the CPC Politburo, said: “We are all interdependent. We have proposed peaceful co-existence”. Political parties from Europe, south-east Asia and Central Asia are in attendance.

India-China bilateral trade for 2014 stood at $71.59 billion, making China largest trade partner of India in goods. At the conference, Indian delegates representing the ‘Left’ and the ‘Right’ — Sitaram Yechury of the CPM and Vijay Jolly of the BJP, respectively, hoped India joins the MSR.

Jolly, a former MLA from Delhi, who is in the standing committee of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP), told The Tribune: “India must join, do trade”. Yechury was equally eloquent: “The MSR is a good option. It’s like the ‘spice trade route’ which in ancient days ran from China to Portugal via India”.