China’s New Silk Road Strategy and India’s Options: Competitive Cooperation?

India and China have a competitive yet cooperative relationship. India has not signed on to the OBOR strategy as it has concerns over some aspects of it – especially the China Pakistan Economic Corridor and the Maritime Silk Road and has proposed its own “Spice Route “ or SAGAR project with India at the centre of Indian Ocean relations. Nevertheless India has joined the new financial institutions the NDB, and the AIIB (as its second largest shareholder after China). These new banks are a potential source of long term infrastructure finance for India, however small in magnitude. China and India have growing but yet somewhat unbalanced economic linkages – with a large trade deficit in favour of China. In this seminar Chhibber attempts to discuss India’s options to collaborate with China at the event of the formation of new financial institutions and how should India engage with China’s new Silk Road strategy.

 

Dr Ajay Chhibber is Visiting Distinguished Professor at the National Institute for Public Finance and Policy and Visiting Scholar at George Washington University. He was India’s first Director General of Independent Evaluation with the status of Minister of State. He served as UN Assistant Secretary-General in New York and in senior positions at the World Bank,managing its programs in Vietnam and Turkey and in Indonesia and the Pacific. He was the lead author of the 1997 World Development Report on the Role of the State. He has a Ph.D from Stanford University, a Masters from the Delhi School of Economics and advanced management programs at Harvard University and at INSEAD, France.