Brahma Chellaney is deeply critical of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which, rooted in the ancient Silk Road, seeks to re-energise trade, connecting the larger Asia-Pacific region with the Indian Ocean nations.The world's biggest infrastructure programme is President Xi Jinping's "project of the century." The estimated $900 billion project could eclipse America's Marshal Plan in the post-war Europe.

The author, an Indian scholar, says Sri Lanka's example is "proof of just how effective China’s debt-trap diplomacy can be." He names a number of cases that cast a negative light on China's role in BRI, calling it "creditor imperialism." In 2016 a Chinese firm bought the Mediterranean port of Piraeus for $436 million from the cash-strapped Greece. In 2015, a Chinese firm took out a 99-year lease for $388 million on Australia’s deep-water port of Darwin, which is home to more than 1,000 US Marines. And there are many more cases,

Recently Sri Lanka, "unable to pay the onerous debt to China it has accumulated, formally handed over its strategically located Hambantota port to the Asian giant." China has been building a string of deepwater ports along the coast of the Indian Ocean, fuelling the growing concern of neighbours in the region. Beijing rejects allegations of "neo-colonialism by stealth," claiming the BRI is a "win-win" project, that will bring a new "golden age" of globalisation.

India, which has long-standing border disputes with China in the Hamalayas, is strongly opposed to an economic corridor that China is building in Pakistan that runs through the disputed Kashmir all the way down to the Pakistani port of Gwadar as part of the BRI. Delhi sees the Indian Ocean as its backyard and watches with fear how China has been chipping away at its influence in both the Maldives and Sri Lanka.

While the BRI is an opportunity for Asia, which suffers from a chronic deficit of infrastructure, there are critics who maintain Beijing is using its infrastructure project as a ploy to lure less powerful countries into its economic orbit and boost its geopolitical power. Some doubt China’s true intentions, claiming BRI is funded by Chinese banks, overseen by Chinese state-owned coompanies and staffed by Chinese workers. This leaves little opportunities for local or multinational companies to create jobs.

Feeling encircled by Beijing, India has been the most vocal critic, accusing China of engaging in projects that would create an “unsustainable debt burden" for the countries involved, damage the environment or infringe upon other countries’ sovereignty. Delhi insists that such initiatives “must be based on universally recognised international norms, good governance, rule of law, openness, transparency and equality”. India sees BRI as little more than a "colonial enterprise" that would create debt and broken communities.

The author says, China wants to impose “its own rules and norms” on weaker countries and criticises its "predatory approach." He highlights how debt-laden countries are forced to sell their stakes in Chinese-financed projects or hand over the management to Chinese state-owned firms. In financially risky countries, China even demands majority ownership up front. The projects that China supports often do not aim to develop the local economy, but to facilitate Chinese access to natural resources, or to open the market for its exports etc.

There is a proverb: "Do not do unto others what you don't want others to do unto you." China had suffered enormous injustices for a long period known in Chinese history as the "century of humiliation" at the hands of Western aggressors over 150 years ago. The author says although Beijing does not replicate the "gunboat diplomacy" of the 19th century, its foreign policy of offering "easy loans" and using "sovereign debt to bend other states to its will" is no better than what Western colonialists did to China.