China’s Strategy Towards South Asia in the Context of the Maritime Silk Road Initiative

Abstract

China’s strategy towards South Asia (SA) presents a patchwork of bilateral relations rather than a holistic policy due to the lack of a SA identity and China’s policy preferences. China has pursued a subtle balance in SA with the exception of the antagonism that exists between it and India. China’s Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI) objectives, while hardly excluding strategic concerns, mainly flow from economic considerations: for example, restructuring industries, updating China’s growth model, securing resource supplies, finding new markets, and so on, while increasing participants’ benefits. For China, supplying collective goods like the Silk Road Fund and technical and financial resources is both a cost of and a means to realize the MSRI. The implementation of MSRI, because of challenges such as India’s indifference to the MSRI, is stirring China to shape an integrated SA strategy.