SAARC+China

SAARC Plus China

The eight-member South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC), whose leaders are meeting this week in the Maldives, already has nine observers.
These are the United States, China, Japan, South Korea, Myanmar, Australia, Iran, Mauritius and the European Union. Turkey is now pressing to join SAARC as an observer.
As the subcontinent’s geopolitical weight grows, India must devote some attention to the emerging role of South Asia as a bridge between different regions —East Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East.
Right now, the SAARC members are divided on the role of observers. India’s smaller neighbours, for example, want to see China play a larger role in the economic development of the region and take a more active part in the SAARC process.
Delhi’s own strategic instinct has been to limit the role of China in SAARC.
From Beijing’s perspective, it has as much right as any one else to develop all-round cooperation with India’s neighbours.
some of the more sensitive frontier regions of China - Xinjiang, Tibet and Yunnan - makes the region very special from Beijing’s internal security perspective.
China encourages all its provinces with international borders to initiate direct engagement with countries across the fence.
This, of course, stands in contrast to some of our own chief ministers in border states, for example, in West Bengal or Tamil Nadu, who think burning bridges with the neighbours makes better political sense.
For more than a decade, the Yunnan province has spent much energy in developing economic cooperation with Burma, Bangladesh and India. The Tibetan regional government in Lhasa wants to develop closer links with Bhutan, Nepal and India. Xinjiang, which had long benefited from trans-Karakoram links with Pakistan, is now exploring similar connectivity with Afghanistan.
As China develops the historic city of Kashgar in Xinjiang as a regional hub, the idea of a “Pamir Group” bringing Xinjiang, Afghanistan and Pakistan together into a regional forum
In the last few years, China has made sustained overtures to the SAARC secretariat and developed a track-two process involving consultations with scholars and policymakers from the eight member states.
The notion of “SAARC Plus China” does not find too many takers in official India. No surprises there.
A structured bilateral conversation between Beijing and Delhi could help dispel the notion of a Sino-Indian rivalry in the subcontinent and explore ways to leverage the weight of the world’s two fastest-growing economies for regional stability and prosperity.