China’s new trilaterals reshaping regional balance in South Asia

Beijing deepens relations with its neighbours to counter India.

For over a decade, China has pursued its grand strategic project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and more recently its extensions - the Global Security Initiative and the Global Civilisation Initiative.

It has also spent decades promoting regional multilateral organisations such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. Over time, Beijing has encountered natural inertia in some of these projects and has decided to innovate once more by creating new, smaller groupings with sharper political and security agendas.

Two trilaterals in India’s neighbourhood stand out. In May, just days after India and Pakistan had reached an uneasy pause in hostilities, China organised a trilateral meeting in Beijing with the foreign ministers of Pakistan and Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Less than a month later, Beijing convened the inaugural meeting of the Bangladesh-China-Pakistan trilateral mechanism in Kunming.

Understanding China’s motivations

The context is crucial. After the initial euphoria over the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul, long backed by Pakistan’s security establishment, Islamabad and Rawalpindi soon clashed with the Pashtun nationalism underpinning the Taliban’s Islamist ideology. As a result, tensions have frequently erupted along the Pakistan–Afghanistan border, with Kabul accused of supporting insurgents inside Pakistani territory.

China has its own concerns about the presence of Uyghur insurgents in Taliban-controlled areas, while the Taliban have been frustrated by the slow pace of Chinese investment and development projects.

Meanwhile, the Pakistan-China relationship, though longstanding, has grown complicated over the past decade due to issues surrounding the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and the safety of Chinese workers in the country. Sino-Pakistani military collusion, as seen during Operation Sindoor, was perhaps inevitable, but tensions within the relationship likely spurred such cooperation as a way of returning to the partnership’s core: an anti-India plank.

Given its increasing worries about New Delhi’s tilt towards the West, Beijing sees it as important to bolster Pakistan as a proxy against India. Peace, or at least stable relations, between Afghanistan and Pakistan is part of this process. Given their poor international standing and strained economies, neither Pakistan nor Afghanistan can afford to reject Chinese proposals.

Bangladesh, meanwhile, finds itself at a particularly delicate moment. Its caretaker government faces both internal and external pressure to hold parliamentary elections on schedule. One objective of this government appears to be reversing the perceived closeness to India of the previous Sheikh Hasina regime. To this end, Dhaka has undertaken a series of domestic policy measures that have opened the door for both Pakistan and China to expand not only their bilateral ties but also to explore a trilateral framework.

Such a format potentially eases the normalisation of Pakistan–Bangladesh relations despite their history, gives Dhaka cover for a more independent foreign policy, and allows Beijing smoother access into India’s immediate neighbourhood.

China’s motivations

Clearly, these trilaterals, with China as the organising power, aim to resolve differences between countries with histories of antagonism — not just with India but also with one another — so Beijing can strengthen its balancing act against Indian influence in South Asia. At the same time, the trilateral format provides scope to appear more than just anti-India, offering discussions on economic cooperation and people-to-people exchanges.

One could argue that these new trilaterals are extensions of China’s BRI and other global initiatives, part of Beijing’s bid to play an even greater economic role and to build alternatives to moribund regional groupings like SAARC and the India-driven BIMSTEC.

Beyond the political and economic dimensions, there is also an ideological aspect. As Chinese competition with the liberal global order deepens, Beijing seeks partners and allies — particularly in its neighbourhood — whose political systems present alternatives to Western models of governance or who oppose Western and Indian intervention.

While China claims that each country has the right to develop its own model of politics and economic development, in practice, it promotes its domestic thinking abroad in the form of Xi Jinping Thought and so-called “Chinese wisdom”.

How should India respond?

Notably, China has not yet created a quadrilateral involving Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. This is not due to any limitation of China’s vision but rather reflects an understanding of its partners’ capacities and a keen sense of timing. The idea is to first generate a degree of familiarity and comfort that can build habits of engagement and eventually lead to cooperation.

For India, the opportunity lies in the natural contradictions between the countries China is attempting to bring together, just as Beijing exploits differences these countries have with India. However, this requires a shift in mindset within India’s political and foreign policy establishment.

As challenging as it may be, if India considers China the greater strategic threat than any of its smaller neighbours, it must move beyond its narrow preoccupation with Pakistani terrorism or Bangladesh’s targeting of minorities. Big nations do not lose sight of larger goals over occasional, however tragic, events. India’s failure to keep an eye on the bigger picture creates conditions for China to further exploit the region.


(The writer is Associate Professor, Department of International Relations and Governance Studies, and Director, Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar University, Delhi NCR)