China's latest outreach to Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan makes India worried

China’s latest move to build a four-nation coalition with Nepal, Pakistan and Afghanistan has set the alarm bells ringing in India.

The move to build the coalition was initiated when Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi had a video conference with his counterparts in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nepal on Monday. Though the video conference was held to discuss cooperation among the four countries to deal with the Covid-19 crisis, New Delhi anticipates that Beijing might try to turn it into a loose coalition of the four nations and use it beyond its professed objective of responding to the pandemic – in order to spread its tentacles in the northern and western neighbourhood of India.

China’s latest move came amid aggressive expansionist moves by its People’s Liberation Army along its disputed boundary with India.

Wang and his counterparts – Shah Mahmood Qureshi of Pakistan, Haneef Atmar of Afghanistan and Pradeep Gyawali of Nepal – agreed “to work together to fight the Covid-19 and resume economy”, according to a report by the state-owned Xinhua News Agency of China. The Chinese Foreign Minister proposed that the four countries should consolidate consensus of solidarity against the pandemic as well as step up cooperation to speed up economic recovery and development in the post-Covid-19 era.

The foreign ministers of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nepal expressed willingness to deepen cooperation with China to fight Covid-19, ensure the flow of trade and transport corridors, facilitate people-to-people and trade connection, build a “silk road of health” and community of a shared future for humanity, reported Xinhua.

The video conference came amid a renewed attempt by China to expand its geo-strategic influence in the neighbourhood of India – be it in Sri Lanka and Maldives in south, Bangladesh and Myanmar in east and Nepal in north.

Beijing already nudged Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli’s Government in Kathmandu to sour its relations with New Delhi by ratcheting up Nepal-India boundary dispute. Even as its PLA is engaged in a military stand-off with the Indian Army in eastern Ladakh, China’s “iron brother” Pakistan’s border guards have been flouting ceasefires along its Line of Control with India in Jammu and Kashmir.

Islamabad also sought to block New Delhi’s bid to breathe fresh life into the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and mobilize a regional response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Beijing has of late stepped up its outreach to yet another friendly neighbour of India – Afghanistan, where it is keen to take advantage of the imminent exit of the United States. It wants to extend the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) – a flagship project of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s controversial cross-continental Belt and Road Initiative – to Afghanistan and Iran.

New Delhi has been opposing China’s BRI, primarily because the CPEC runs through the Jammu and Kashmir areas India accuses Pakistan of illegally occupying.

India is also cautious about China’s proposed deal with Iran for a whopping $400 billion investment in the Islamic republic in West Asia over the next 25 years.