FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

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China Scholars Welcomes India Proposal as a Movement Toward Belt and Road

Aug. 19, 2018 (EIRNS)—The Press Trust of India (PTI) reported on Aug. 18 that “Scholars in China have cautiously welcomed India’s move to invite limited Chinese investments for the development of [India’s] northeastern states by connecting them with Bangladesh’s Chittagong port.”

PTI quoted Zhao Gancheng, director of the Shanghai Institute for the International Studies Centre for Asia-Pacific Studies in Beijing, telling Global Times, “China would highly welcome India’s proposal,” but stressed that it needs to be confirmed by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi or his government.

EIR Daily Alert reported Aug. 17 that senior ministers from three northeast Indian states, along with Ram Madhav, the general secretary of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, had visited Guangzhou and invited China to bring its Maritime Silk Road to the Indian Ocean through those three states to Chittagong. The states are Assam, Tripura and Nagaland.

PTI called this a “major plan for the region’s development” initiated by India, and said it was the first time that Chinese Belt and Road Initiative investments have been welcomed in India. And it quoted Zhao, in his Global Times interview, saying,

“If the Indian government confirms an invitation to China to participate in its northeastern projects, that means India is shifting toward China’s Belt and Road Initiative.”