Nepal-India’s ‘Love & Hate’ Neighbor

SALEEM SAMAD

India is in a diplomatic quagmire with its neighbors in a series of political crises of ‘youth quake’ by Gen Z (generation Z), which have struck Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal in South Asia.

South Block in New Delhi, before it could understand what was happening in Kathmandu, Nepal’s elected government, headed by Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli, collapsed and fled to an unknown destination. India miscalculated its steps in response to the uprising among its neighbors. Delhi is having hiccups with Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal joining the bandwagon, after its recent political turmoil.

For 14 months since becoming the prime minister of Nepal last July, Sharma Oli kept knocking on the door of South Block in New Delhi. This September, the door was supposed to swing open to let him in. His political mistake with its giant neighbor, according to New Delhi, the newly elected Prime Minister Sharma Oli made his first official visit to China, instead of her neighbor India.

China’s inroads into Nepal with mega projects, offers, and connectivity irked India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership. China’s massive infrastructure investments under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), including projects like the cross-border railway and road networks, are seen by Nepalese as tangible signs of development and economic opportunity, further enhancing China’s appeal over India.

“Oli knew his premiership would remain shaky without New Delhi’s backing. India, which has deep trade and cultural ties with landlocked Nepal, has traditionally been a big determinant of the longevity of governments in Kathmandu,” wrote The Diplomat news portal.

Alas, the planned visit of Sharma Oli to Delhi has been dented by a two-day youth-quake by Gen Z (Genji) street protest. Interestingly, China’s response to Gen Z to the current political developments appeared cautious and calculated, reflecting its broader regional strategic interests.

Finally, on 10 September, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson issued a statement saying, “China and #Nepal are each other’s traditional friends and neighbors. Hope the various sectors in Nepal will approach the domestic issues properly and restore order and stability in the country soon.”

After 2008, Beijing has carefully treaded with the Communist leadership in Nepal to deepen its diplomatic ties and goodwill in Nepal. The move has been viewed as a key element for strategic influence over the region. Leaders like Sharma Oli and Pushpa Kamal Dahal alias Prachanda did not hesitate to use the China card to stoke the nationalistic sentiments in Nepal.

Rishi Gupta, commentator on Global Affairs with India’s The Print portal that a day after the protests began in Nepal on 8 September, India stated the next day that it was “closely monitoring the developments in Nepal…(and) our thoughts and prayers are with the families and deceased. India also added that “as a close friend and neighbor, we hope that all concerned will exercise restraint.”

The same evening, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted, “The violence in Nepal is heart-rending. I am anguished that many young people have lost their lives. The stability, peace, and prosperity of Nepal are of utmost importance to us. I humbly appeal to all my brothers and sisters in Nepal to support peace.”

In the same statement, India had urged that “issues on which there are differences should be resolved through dialogue in an atmosphere free from violence and intimidation and institutionalized in a manner that would enable broad-based ownership and acceptance,” as it was deemed as external interference. It would not be an exaggeration to say that small-state syndrome became an intense public mood in Nepal as it approached relations with India, especially after Nepal promulgated the constitution in 2015, wrote Gupta.

There was a divided crowd on social media about India’s approach, whether it was helpful and friendly or interventionist, but this came as no surprise, as the so-called border blockade of 2015 had already set the social media toolkit on India with hashtags like #BackoffIndia #GoBackIndia, wrote The Print.

For most who are watching Nepal closely, glimpses of the street protest and follow-up that unfolded in Kathmandu were reminiscent of the uprising that gripped Bangladesh in 2024 and Sri Lanka in 2022. In four years, three street protest movements showed how public anger against political corruption toppled the heads of government of Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh, and led to their capitals.

The three South Asian countries are bedecked with corruption, nepotism, and favoritism by party leaders, lawmakers, and their family and relatives, who enjoyed the luxury and comfort from the perks from state exchequers, handsome commissions from government contracts, and sharks of bank loans.

Though Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are also India’s closest South Asian neighbors, Delhi’s relationship with Kathmandu is special because of historic people-to-people, economic, and strategic ties, wrote the BBC news portal. The protests in Nepal were initially seen by India’s political leadership as just young people upset at not being able to use social media. Delhi woke up when the government collapsed after the uprising escalated quickly.

On September 11, Kantipur, the country’s leading daily, reported that while Western media explored corruption, unemployment, and the social media ban as triggers, much of the Indian media pushed conspiracy theories – claiming either foreign powers like China and the US or a “deep state,” a conspiratorial term denoting bureaucracy and security forces, were behind the protest.

Nepal’s government has officially announced a total of 72 fatalities from the recent protests led by Gen Z. The total casualty of the nationwide Gen Z protests has reached 72. Newly appointed Prime Minister Karki of the caretaker government has declared that bereaved families of those killed in the protests will be compensated, while 191 still receiving treatment in hospitals will be treated for free.

The protesters killed during the Gen Z movement have been declared martyrs and cremated with due state honors. On 17 September, the nation paid tributes to the fallen protesters and declared the day a national holiday.

Viral videos on TikTok and Instagram have contrasted the lavish lifestyles of political families, with trends and hashtags #NepoKids #NepoBabies, #PoliticiansNepoBabyNepal involving designer clothes, foreign travel, and luxury cars, with the harsh realities faced by young people, including unemployment and forced migration.

Nepal is fraught with frequent political instability, and each prime minister’s tenure has lasted just a year or two since the new constitution came into effect in 2015. The country abolished its monarchy in 2006, after a violent uprising that forced its former king to give up his authoritarian rule, the American-based Associated Press (AP) writer said.

South Block and the ruling BJP are intensely watching political developments across the border, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi swiftly reacting to the unfolding events and writing his feelings on Twitter (X). “The violence in Nepal is heart-rending. I am anguished that many young people have lost their lives,” Modi wrote in a post on X on Tuesday.

The Gen Z youth leaders protested during a scheduled meeting with the country’s Indian trained military chief, Ashok Raj Sigdel, over why Indian media had been given clearance to attend the meeting at the military headquarters, where a planned dialogue was scheduled, while Nepali media were barred.

While selecting the possible candidates for the prime minister, the youth leaders struck names for the premiership, who are pro-Indian and have close ties with Delhi. What angered the Gen Z protesters was that the Indian television channels declared the protests they had joined were not about inequality but about restoring Nepal’s monarchy.

While right-wing television led the charge, newspapers and digital outlets also amplified the narrative. In the process, their coverage downplayed the protesters’ actual grievances, corruption, inequality, and economic hardship by focusing on the theme that was never central to the demonstrations.

Nepali youth demanding accountability versus Indian media, especially outlets close to the ruling BJP, eager to weave the protests into its own narrative, wrote an Indian media outlet.

Indian pro-establishment “Godi Media” was actively downplaying the Gen Z movement in Nepal. Fuelling the narrative are allegations from Indian broadcasters and politicians that rioters vandalized Nepal’s Pashupatinath temple, a revered Hindu site in the Himalayan nation, BBC reported.

“Some rioters, hiding within the crowd of protesters, attempted to vandalize the temple, and it was only after this incident that the army was deployed,” an anchor for the right-wing Zee News, a staunch ‘Godi Media’ television channel, said in a report featuring a clip of people climbing onto the temple’s gate and violently shaking it. KN Swami, a respected monk in the Pashupatinath temple, also posted clips on social media to refute claims it had been attacked by protesters.

Jivesh Mishra, a member of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in eastern Bihar state, which shares a border with Nepal, told reporters last week, “An attack on a temple is an attack on (the) Hindu faith.” Hundreds of social media posts have claimed without evidence that the protests were “instigated and funded” by “anti-Hindu forces and Islamists” to attack religious sites.

The French news agency, AFP fact-checkers, traced the footage to a religious ritual called Naxal Bhagwati Jatra, filmed weeks before the violence. Similarly, the Godi Media have been actively doing the same with political developments in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Other posts viewed thousands of times on Twitter (X), Instagram, Threads, and Facebook have compared the unrest in Nepal with protests in Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority country where a student-led revolt ousted long-time leader Sheikh Hasina, daughter of the founder of Bangladesh.

Why is India worried about the instability in Nepal? Delhi deems direct and indirect security threats to India’s interests. In the political crisis in Nepal, the 1,700-kilometre open border with India could be a security threat to the region. Political chaos and a breakdown of law and order can lead to a surge in cross-border smuggling, human trafficking, and an increase in the activities of anti-India elements, wrote the popular NDTV network’s opinion column.

The potential for a security vacuum in Nepal could be exploited by hostile actors, particularly Pakistan’s ISI, to foment trouble in India, cautioned opposition Congress lawmaker Shashi Tharoor, a popular writer and commentator.

First published in the Stratheia Policy Journal, 17 November 2025

Saleem Samad is an independent journalist based in Bangladesh and a media rights defender with Reporters Without Borders. He is the recipient of the Ashoka Fellowship and the Hellman-Hammett Award. He could be reached at <saleem.samad.1971@gmail.com>; Twitter (X): @saleemsamad

https://stratheia.com/nepal-indias-love-hate-neighbor/

China’s Neo-Economic Imperialism Shackles Defaulting Small Nations

SALEEM SAMAD 

Communist China for decades used to air propaganda on its state radio that the United States, Japan, Britain, and European countries are economic imperialists, warmongers and back autocratic regimes in third-world countries.

Political economists and several think tanks describe China has become an economic giant and definitely a new superpower.

There are reasons to be concerned about the dramatic rise of China as a military power in the Asia-Pacific region.

A British popular tabloid newspaper The Sun claims that China is “colonizing” smaller countries by lending them massive amounts of money, which they can never repay.

Developing countries from Pakistan to Djibouti, the Maldives to Fiji, all owe huge amounts to China and have fallen into a debt-trap.

Alarm bells are ringing for Pakistan’s public debt is piling up, while a new narrative taking shape in the West that the controversial Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is creating a debt trap for developing economies, many are quick to link Pakistan’s ballooning debt to loans incurred under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

The BRI flagship $62bn project in Pakistan links with the persecuted Uyghur Muslims in East Turkistan (now Xinjiang Province) of China and is being built through disputed territory in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and restive Balochistan.

The ambitious project fails to address the participation of the fiercely independent Baloch people. Time will explain whether the full utilisation of Gwadar Port built by the Chinese will be feasible.

Now Pakistan will have to repay $100 billion to China from 2024 of the total investment of $18.5 billion, which China has invested on account of bank loans in 19 early harvest projects, under CPEC.

Very recently, Rhodium Group, a US-based research organization, reviewed 40 cases of China’s external debt renegotiations.

It was found that defaulters are being pressured into surrendering control of assets or allowing military bases on their land.

Sri Lanka is the best example of being riddled with debt. Owing more than $1 billion in debts to China seized control of Hambantota port for use by companies owned by the Chinese government on a 99-year lease.

The Sun article alleges that the defaulters have been pressured into surrendering assets and territory or allowing military bases on their land, thus increasing its military footprint in the region. There is only one other reported case of asset seizure from Tajikistan in 2011.

Meanwhile, the Doraleh Container Terminal in Djibouti has fallen into Chinese hands, particularly because it sits next to China’s only overseas military base. Djibouti is home to the US military’s main base in Africa.

A report from The Center for Global Development, a Washington DC-based nonpartisan, nonprofit think-tank offers some insight into the spreading China debt.

Researches exemplify how infrastructure project loans to Mongolia, Montenegro, and Laos have resulted in millions or even billions in debts, which often account for huge percentages of the countries GDPs.

Well, most of the projects are linked to the BRI and undertake work on roads and ports with part-funding from China, a bold project to create trade routes through huge swathes of Eurasia, with China at the centre.

China’s economic empire is visible in the Pacific region, prompting fears the country intends to leverage the debt to expand its military footprint into the South Pacific.

Australia expressed alarm at this move, which would effectively increase Chinese military presence on a key gateway to Australia’s east coast.

Sydney’s Lowy Institute think-tank, which has closely monitored China’s activities in the Pacific, estimates Beijing has poured nearly $ 1.74 billion into Pacific countries since 2006.

Among the projects this money funded was the largest wharf in the South Pacific – considered capable of accommodating aircraft carriers.

China approached Vanuatu about setting up a military base. The country owes $238.32 million to China.

Tonga also carries some big debts and has already admitted to struggling with repayments.

Other big debtors include Papua New Guinea, which owes roughly $621.30 million in development and aid debt, Fiji, which owes $606.23 million, and Samoa, with a debt of  $225.77 million.

Critics, however, dismiss China’s lending practices explaining the Chinese were “sincere and unselfish” in mega-projects in countries that are unable to repay loans.

The change of heart from a third-world leadership to “economic imperialism” cause fear among the poor and developing countries.

First published in The News Times, Dhaka, Bangladesh, February 26, 2023

Saleem Samad is an independent journalist and a media rights defender. A recipient of the Ashoka Fellow (USA) and Hellman-Hammett Award. Twitter @saleemsamad; Email: saleemsamad@hotmail.com

What will President Joe Biden’s strategy be for South Asia?

President Joe Biden signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington/ Photo REUTERS

SALEEM SAMAD

Hours after President Joe Biden took oath in Washington DC, the leaders of South Asia showered tribute to the new leadership of the United States.

Months before the formal swearing-in on January 20, there were frantic exchanges of diplomatic cables from the capitals of South Asian countries to the United States capital, eager to know the 46th US president’s strategy for South Asia.

Most South Asian think-tanks were of the opinion that the policy would be different from the outgoing president, Donald Trump. The regional leaders and think-tanks have mixed feelings on Trump’s policy on South Asia, which was dubbed as “out of focus.” Most of the think-tanks on South Asian affairs were confident that Biden’s foreign policy would be far more pro-active and pragmatic.

The new US president is likely to engineer a full-scale foreign policy plan to augment cooperation with the 8-member South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), 11-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 55 member states of the African Union, 21-member state Organization of American States (OAS), 22-member Arab League, 6-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and so on and so forth.

Michael Kugelman, deputy director for the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington, DC, believes that Biden will fully back a rapidly growing US–India partnership that enjoyed much forward movement during the Trump years -- just as it had throughout every previous administration back to the Bill Clinton era.

Incidentally, Biden is a long-time friend of India’s, who once described the US–India partnership as the defining relationship of the 21st century.

On the other hand, thousands of bipartisan Indian expats in America, who are effectively influential in American politics and administration, were able to churn hard facts into a pro-active foreign policy towards India in South Asia.

The two countries have a shared concern over combating terrorism and the challenges that the emerging Chinese hegemony pose -- these will have Biden’s full-throated support. He will also increase pressure on Pakistan to shut down the India-focused terror networks on its soil, especially with the receding US footprint in Afghanistan.

Nevertheless, Washington’s delicate relationship with Pakistan won’t be upended by abrupt moves, such as a sudden decision to cut security aid. Like Trump, however, Biden strongly supports total withdrawal from Afghanistan.

However, when he was vice president of Barack Obama’s administration, he was a vocal opponent of his policy regarding additional troop deployment to battle the Taliban and the remnants of Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.

He is expected to toe the line of Trump for a workable relationship with Pakistan that revolves around securing Islamabad’s diplomatic support in advancing a fragile peace process in Afghanistan with the jihadist Taliban.

Meanwhile, the rest of South Asia will receive strategic focus, as it did during Trump’s era. The attention will be largely framed through the lens of the US-China rivalry and, increasingly, the India–China rivalry amid Beijing’s deepening footprint across the region, fuelled by its controversial Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), says Kugelman at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre.

Washington’s radar will once again lay emphasis on democracy and human rights issues in South Asian states, an emphasis which was often overlooked by the previous administration.

Biden is likely to go relatively easy on India for strategic reasons, but Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka could find themselves subjected to sharp and frequent criticism.

Fortunately, climate change is another priority for Biden, which is a major threat to South Asia, especially Bangladesh, Maldives, India, and Sri Lanka, and this offers an opportunity for less tense US engagement in the region.

In short, the South Asian policy under President Joe Biden will be a rare case of a continuity program. It will definitely have an impact upon the incoming administration and will reset the US foreign policy, presenting both new opportunities and fresh challenges for the region.

First published in the Dhaka Tribune, 26 January 2021

Saleem Samad is an independent journalist, media rights defender, and recipient of Ashoka Fellowship and Hellman-Hammett Award. He can be reached at saleemsamad@hotmail.com; Twitter @saleemsamad

Bangladesh speaks no evil about illegal immigrants

SALEEM SAMAD

Bangladesh authorities do not have any data on immigrants or migrants who have illegally entered or are staying after their stay permit or tourist visa has expired.

The illegal immigrant issue was never a concern for the government, politicians, research outfits, nor the media. No wonder, the issue of illegal migration was never on the political agenda of the ruling party or the opposition.

Most critics do not want to understand that there are illegal and legal migrants in Bangladesh. The illegal migrant is not unusual when the migrant's countries such as India and Myanmar share porous borders, despite having barbed wire fences and stringent border management and border guards along both sides of the international border it is still not easy to seal the difficult terrain.

Countries in this region for more than seven decades are prone to the smuggling of contraband goods, human trafficking, and cross-border terrorism ----- activities which make the border and adjacent regions sensitive.

On both sides, there are many people whose livelihoods are dependent on the non-formal trade along the border.

Indian authorities in the last ten years have raised the issue of illegal immigration from Bangladesh at bilateral talks. Meanwhile, the Indian National Register of Citizens (NRC) has made an outcry in both India and Bangladesh media, among political parties and government.

Bangladeshi media debates the issue of illegal immigrants, who have allegedly settled in Assam from Bangladesh.

Nearly one million expats are legally and illegally working in garments, composite textile mills, knitwear, sweater, buying houses, merchandiser companies, fashion houses, food processing and marketing, poultry, tannery, and research organisations, according to a security agencies report.

A recent report in Obhijatra, a Bangladeshi news portal, argues that illegal immigrants are a huge burden for Bangladesh’s economy. The report identifies Afghanistan, Algeria, China, Congo, Ghana, India, Iraq, Libya, Myanmar, Nepal, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Philippines, Russia, Somalia, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Tanzania, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States, are major countries from where illegal immigrants come into Bangladesh.

According to a study by Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), Indians in Bangladesh sent more than $126 million back home in 2017, while Bangladesh got $4,033 million in remittances from India the same year.

The national census and other surveys carried out by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) do not indicate any illegal migration.

Neither India nor Bangladesh has any specific official data on illegal immigrants. The Indian government has time and again reiterated that the country lacks an official database of illegal immigrants.

Researchers argue that migration takes place for either economic reasons or due to compulsions arising from persecutions. It appears that Bangladesh has crossed the economic threshold, and if anything, people from poorer countries are migrating there in large numbers.

First published in Bangla Tribune online edition, 31 October 2019

Saleem Samad is an independent journalist, media rights defender, also a recipient of Ashoka Fellow (USA) and Hellman-Hammett Award.
He can be reached at saleemsamad@hotmail.com

Victims of abduction in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Nepal & Ugyhur

Women shout slogans during a protest following restrictions after the government scrapped the special constitutional status for Kashmir, in Srinagar August 14, 2019. Photo: REUTERS

SALEEM SAMAD

As the world observes the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances on Aug 30, another hundred or more people will be abducted silently by state security agencies globally.

Their relatives will hold portraits of disappeared family members and call upon governments to stop such abductions, and seek accountability for the enforced disappearances, killings, and abductions, in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Palestine and elsewhere.

Families cry for answers on International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances on August 30, a day declared by the United Nations.

Since its inception in 1980, the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances has registered 56,363 cases across 112 countries — but thousands of other cases were simply not reported!

Unfortunately, governments are often reluctant to respond. Besides, security agencies engaged in enforced disappearances, while non-state actors also settle their scores in muddy waters. They enjoy their impunity as they rub shoulders with the mighty in the corridors of power.

The impunity is extended to these forces, often because their crimes against humanity may have had government sanction.

The legal explanation does not, however, convey the horror families endure as they try and grapple with the enforced disappearance of a loved one.

Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director of Human Rights Watch says, under international human rights law, an enforced disappearance occurs when a person is taken into custody by government officials or their agents and the state refuses to acknowledge the person’s fate or whereabouts, placing the victim outside the protection of the law.

In South Asia, the recent history of violent conflicts ------ whether the war in Afghanistan; insurgencies in Balochistan, Pakistan or Kashmir, India; the civil war in Sri Lanka and Nepal; or political violence in Bangladesh and the Maldives------ has witnessed serious human rights violations including secret detentions and enforced disappearance, states the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

Bangladesh authorities have traditionally trashed allegations of the disappearances even after the security forces have taken someone away in front of witnesses. Instead, the agencies claim that the ‘disappeared’ are hiding to evade banks loans or are felons dodging arrest.

In Indian administered Kashmir, they use the shocking word ‘half widow,’ for women whose husbands are missing.

In Kashmir, hundreds of unidentified foreign jihadists are buried in unmarked graves, but the government is yet to order forensic tests to determine whether the remains of "disappeared" Kashmiris also lie buried in those graveyards.

In Sri Lanka, families of the tens of thousands of people who disappeared during the three-decade-long bitter ethnic civil war are camped in street corner protests. The war ended in 2009, and these families are still hoping that their loved ones will be found.

In Nepal, a Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons received nearly 3,100 complaints but failed to explain the causes and origin of the scary social phenomenon experienced so widely during the country’s ten-year civil war.

The victims experience egregious form of human rights violation, removed from legal protections, remaining at the mercy of their captors, at severe risk of torture or inhumane treatment, and of extrajudicial killings, says Meenakshi Ganguly.

"The families of missing ones spend the rest of their lives waiting for their loved ones to return home, or at least be told where they are buried. This is a severe form of psychological torture," said Leonce Byimana, a psychologist and Executive Director of TASSC, a US-based Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition.

On this International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, human rights leaders will be speaking on behalf of missing loved ones---- for the Sindhis in Pakistan, the Kurds in the Middle East, the Tamils in Sri Lanka and Uyghur Muslims in China at the National Press Club in Washington DC.

Sufi Laghari, Executive Director of the Washington DC-based Sindhi Foundation also coordinating the Washington Press Club event, said: "We want people to understand how governments carry out enforced disappearances to silence their dissidents."

Until their whereabouts are determined, families of the disappeared should have access to effective remedies and reparations, including regular updates on the status of the investigations. This cruelty needs to stop.

First published in the Bangla Tribune, 30 August 2019

Saleem Samad, is a journalist, media rights defender, also recipient of Ashoka Fellow (USA) and Hellman-Hammett Award. Twitter @saleemsamad; Email: saleemsamad@hotmail.com

China’s neo economic imperialism shackles small countries who can never repay

SALEEM SAMAD

Communist China for decades used to air propaganda on its state radio that the United States, Japan, Britain, European countries are economic imperialists, warmongers and backs autocratic regimes in the third world countries.

The political economists and several think-tanks argue that China has become an economic giant and definitely a new superpower.

There are reasons to be concerned about the dramatic rise of China as a military power in the Asia-Pacific region.

A British popular tabloid newspaper The Sun claims that China is "colonizing" smaller countries by lending them massive amounts of money, which they can never repay.

Developing countries from Pakistan to Djibouti, the Maldives to Fiji, all owe huge amounts to China. Countries around the world owe huge sums to China and have fallen into debt-trap.

Some think-tanks are calling it "debt-trap diplomacy" or "debt colonialism" offering enticing loans to countries unable to repay, and then demanding concessions when they default.

Alarm bells are ringing for Pakistan’s public debt is piling up, while a new narrative taking shape in the West that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is creating a debt trap for developing economies, many are quick to link Pakistan’s ballooning debt to loans incurred under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

The BRI flagship project in Pakistan fails to address the participation of the fiercely independent Baloch people, which has scaled up armed insurrections in Balochistan. Time will explain whether the full utilization of Gwadar Port built by Chinese will be feasible.

Very recently, Rhodium Group, a US-based research organization, reviewed 40 cases of China’s external debt renegotiations.

It was found that defaulters are being pressured into surrendering control of assets or allowing military bases on their land.

Sri Lanka is the best example of being riddled with debt. Owing more than $1billion in debts to China seized control of Hambantota port for use by companies owned by the Chinese government on a 99-year lease.

The Sun article alleges that the defaulters have been pressured into surrendering assets and territory or allowing military bases on their land, thus increases its military footprint in the region. There is only one other reported case of asset seizure from Tajikistan in 2011.

Meanwhile, the United States is desperate to stop the Doraleh Container Terminal in Djibouti falling into Chinese hands, particularly because it sits next to China's only overseas military base.

Incidentally, Djibouti is home to the US military’s main base in Africa, also looks likely to cede control of a port terminal to a Beijing-linked firm.

A report from The Center for Global Development, a Washington DC-based is a nonpartisan, nonprofit think-tank offers some insight into the spreading China debt.

China, the neo-economic imperialist.Researches exemplify how infrastructure project loans to Mongolia, Montenegro, and Laos have resulted in millions or even billions in debts, which often account for huge percentages of the countries' GDPs.

Well, most of the projects are linked to the BRI and undertake work on roads and ports with part-funding from China, a bold project to create trade routes through huge swathes of Eurasia, with China at the center.

China economic empire is visible in the Pacific region, prompting fears the country intends to leverage the debt to expand its military footprint into the South Pacific.

Australia expressed alarm at this move, which would effectively increase Chinese military presence on a key gateway to Australia’s east coast.

Sydney’s Lowy Institute think-tank, which has closely monitored China’s activities in the Pacific, estimates Beijing has poured nearly $ 1.74 billion into Pacific countries since 2006.

Among the projects this money funded was the largest wharf in the South Pacific - considered capable of accommodating aircraft carriers.

China approached Vanuatu about setting up a military base. The country owes $238.32 million to China.

Tonga also carries some big debts and has already admitted to struggling with repayments.

Other big debtors include Papua New Guinea, which owes roughly $621.30 million in development and aid debt, Fiji, which owes $606.23 million, and Samoa, with a debt of  $225.77 million.

China defended its lending practices, saying they were "sincere and unselfish", and insisting it only lent to countries that could repay.

First published in the Bangla Tribune news portal on 20 July 2019

Saleem Samad, is a journalist, recipient of Ashoka Fellow (USA) and Hellman-Hammett Award, also Bangladesh correspondent of Paris based international media rights organization, Reporters Without Borders (RSF). Twitter @saleemsamad; Email: saleemsamad@hotmail.com