ABSTRACT
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), or the One Belt One Road (OBOR), was announced to the world by President Xi Jinping of China during his visits to Kazakhstan and Indonesia in 2013. The BRI comprises a trans-continental passage that links China with Southeast Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, Russia and Europe by land. It includes a sea route connecting China’s coastal regions via Southeast and South Asia, South Pacific, Middle East and Eastern Africa, all the way to Europe. It is by any standards in political vision or economic aspiration in the history of mankind, the grandest that has been conceived, covering 70 countries, involving nearly 65% of the world’s population and a combined GDP of 40% of the world. Notwithstanding these distractive developments concerning China, world attention is constantly focused on the BRI. This chapter attempts to look at BRI in an off-beat South Asian historical perspective, leaving the much-trodden String of Pearls theory, China–Pakistan friendship, China–Myanmar relations etc. aside. In doing so, it aims to generate discussions for newer policy avenues to South Asian neighbours and international lending agencies in dealing with the compelling attractions of BRI.
