Jabin T. Jacob

Abstract: China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is often simplistically understood as being opposed by India and supported by Pakistan. The reality on the ground is rather more complex. The emerging consensus in India appears to be that, far from being exclusively an economic and infrastructure development program, the BRI may be understood as a long-term strategic initiative that seeks to convert China's current economic might into diplomatic influence. While attempts have been made by Beijing, the reflexive Indian suspicion of Chinese international projection, including of China's BRI, has not yet been met by a coherent discourse designed to specifically address Indian concerns. In contrast, in Pakistan, widespread acceptance of the importance and necessity of the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor is increasingly coupled with concerns within sectors of Pakistani society over the fairness, transparency and eventual economic outcomes of the project. Accordingly, this paper is divided into two parts: the first looks at how Indian analysts have viewed and responded to the Chinese discourse and arguments on the BRI; the second considers the debate over the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor within Pakistan.

Abstract: The China–Pakistan relationship has seen several ups and downs in the last decade and especially since 9/11. While Sino-Pakistani ties remain strong, there has been a visible drawdown in Chinese political commitment to Pakistan. Partly, this has been because of Beijing’s concerns about political instability, including terrorism, in Pakistan, and the spread of Islamic radicalism from that country into China. In part, this has also been because China’s global political rise has meant that it is more conscious of its need to adhere to international norms, which includes refraining from nuclear proliferation to Pakistan. In this context, this article argues that one, India is no longer the central concern in the Sino-Pakistani relationship and two, New Delhi’s capacity to play the game-changer in the China–Pakistan relationship has grown over time.

Abstract: The China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which has both sea- and land-based links to China’s MSRI, represents an adjustment of bilateral ties between the two countries from a military- and political-elite-dominated relationship to one based on economic foundations. The process is, however, far more complex and fraught than is evident in the mutually reinforcing rhetoric of the two sides. Much about the CPEC remains uncertain including its ultimate economic benefits for both countries. For India, however, despite these uncertainties mere opposition might not be an option or the wisest course of action given that it could both potentially play a swing role in the success of the CPEC, with economic benefits for itself in the process, and refashion bilateral ties with its two neighbors.

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has dented China’s image as an efficient party-state, given how an effort to cover up the outbreak and the resulting delays in reporting led to the virus spreading beyond its ...

Abstract: The Sino-Indian boundary dispute is one of the oldest remaining disputes of its kind in the world and given the “rising” of the two powers in the international system, also potentially one of the most problematic. While the dispute has its origins in the British colonial era under geopolitical considerations of “the Great Game,” where Tibet was employed as a buffer between British India and the Russians with little or no thought to Chinese views on the matter. The dispute has two major sections – in India’s northeast and in India’s northwest. The Simla Convention of 1914 involved the British, Chinese and the Tibetans but the eventual agreement between Britain and Tibet in which the alignment of the Tibet-Assam boundary was agreed upon in the form of the McMahon Line was not recognized by China. And today, this disagreement continues in the Chinese claim over some 90,000 km of territory in Indian control covering the province of Arunachal Pradesh. Arunachal, which the Chinese call “Southern Tibet,” includes the monastery town of Tawang, birthplace of the Sixth Dalai Lama, and a major source of contention today between the two sides. Meanwhile, in the Indian northwest – originally the most significant part of the dispute – the Chinese managed to assert control over some 38,000 km of territory in the 1962 conflict. This area called Aksai Chin by the Indians and considered part of the Indian province of Jammu and Kashmir, was the original casus belli between the newly independent India and the newly communist China, when the Indians discovered in the late 1950s that the Chinese had constructed a road through it connecting Kashgar with Lhasa. The 1962 conflict between China and India was a short one, but permanently scarred the psyche of the Indian political, bureaucratic and military leadership. From a high of friendship and desire to jointly turn the world around for the better in the immediate aftermath of World War II and independence/liberation, Asia’s two giants entered a period of “cold peace” in which the Indians in a sense tried to block out the Chinese from their worldview and strategic planning for the longest period and which also suited the Chinese, given their preoccupations with internal upheavals, Soviet revisionism, the Taiwan issue, Japan’s reemergence and of course, American hegemony. While

Abstract: The Dragon's Gift. The Real Story of China in Africa, Deborah Brautigam, Oxford University Press, Oxford (2009). xiii + 397 pp. US$29.95 (hbk). ISBN 978-0-19-955022-7. Deborah Brautigam, a well-inf...

Abstract: In 1998, I published a paper that showed that under a wide range of specifications, residential investment led GDP, while non-residential investment did not. That papers was followed by a number of others, including Coulson and Kim (2000), Davis and Heathcoate (2005) and Leamer (2007) that used more sophisticated techniques than my paper, but found the same outcome— that residential investment led GDP. Leamer famously announced that housing was the business cycle. But in light of the Great Financial Crisis, the subsequent crash in residential investment, and the fundamental changes in the mortgage market, I thought it worth revisiting housing as a leading indicator. I have found that it is a much weaker leading indicator than before, and that it is much less sensitive to Federal Reserve Policy—especially changes in the Federal Funds Rate—than before. It is possible that the increasing stringency of local land use policy had interfered with the ability of the Federal Reserve to use housing as an instrument on monetary policy.

Abstract: Since the mid-twentieth century China and India have entertained a difficult relationship, erupting into open war in 1962. Shadow States is the first book to unpack Sino-Indian tensions from the angle of competitive state-building - through a study of their simultaneous attempts to win the approval and support of the Himalayan people. When China and India tried to expand into the Himalayas in the twentieth century, their lack of strong ties to the region and the absence of an easily enforceable border made their proximity threatening - observing China and India's state-making efforts, local inhabitants were in a position to compare and potentially choose between them. Using rich and original archival research, Berenice Guyot-Rechard shows how India and China became each other's 'shadow states'. Understanding these recent, competing processes of state formation in the Himalayas is fundamental to understanding the roots of tensions in Sino-Indian relations.

Abstract: This paper studies the impact of China's “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) on Chinese firms' outward foreign direct investment (OFDI). Overall, the BRI positively impacts on Chinese OFDI activities. However, both the direction and the magnitude of this impact depend on the host countries' willingness to participate in the BRI. The BRI promotes more OFDI to developing countries that welcome China's economic engagement and alters the effect of Chinese domestic push factors on its OFDI patterns. In addition, Chinese firms in construction and infrastructure, manufacturing, and trade-related sectors are more responsive to the BRI than firms in other sectors.

Abstract: An important objective of “the Belt and Road Initiative” is to promote the economic growth of countries in the region. China’s successful development experience, proposed in the initial stage of re...