India’s Act East policy can meet OBOR: Chinese envoy

India’s Act East policy can meet OBOR: Chinese envoy

News:

1. Days ahead of a likely meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping along the sidelines of the G20 summit in Argentina, Chinese Ambassador Luo Zhaohui in the 1st India-China Youth Dialogue held recently batted for the ‘One Belt One Road’ project.

Important Facts:

2. China’s Ambassador, made another pitch for India to join China’s mega-infrastructure corridor, by stating that India’s Act East policy and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (One Belt One Road or OBOR) are a “natural” area of cooperation between the two countries.
3. However, India objects to OBOR on grounds of violation of sovereignty since its flagship project the China Pak Economic Corridor (CPEC) runs through PoK (Pak Occupied Kashmir).
4. He also suggested that the cooperation could come through the “China-India-Myanmar” BCIM corridor to India’s North-East.
5. The ambassador also encouraged more Indian students to study in China and more Chinese students to study in India stating that there are more than 20 Chinese universities which are teaching Hindi and also encouraged more Indian universities and educational institutions to teach Chinese.
6. India-China facts:

• China is the largest trading partner of India.
• In 2017 the bilateral trade volume reached $84 billion.
• Over 1,000 Chinese companies are doing business in India, creating more than 1 lakh jobs.

7. India had also agreed in Wuhan to work with China in the neighbourhood under what Beijing described as a 2+1 format.