China conspiring to put India’s neighbours in a debt trap, indicate analysts before the US Congress committee

Washington: A United States study group has expressed grave concern over the tightening Chinese debt trap around India’s neighbouring countries. This warning was issued by the analysts of the ‘International Assessment and Strategy Centre’ in a hearing before the US Congress committee. It was also claimed that China is trying to conspire against India by giving loans to Indian neighbours like Maldives, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh during the hearing.

A hearing is being conducted on the subject ‘China’s Worldwide Military Expansion’, in front of the ‘House Select Intelligence Committee’ of the US Congress. During the hearing, Richard D Fisher, a senior scholar with the ‘International Assessment and Strategy Centre’ detailed the Chinese conspiracy to corner India.

Saying that, ‘China has provided a loan of around 8 billion dollars to Bangladesh. China, at the same time, is increasing the military co-operation with Bangladesh and selling large quantities of defence equipment to Bangladesh,’ Fisher pointed out the extent of Chinese lending to the US Congress. Fisher clarified that India is aware of this Chinese conspiracy and has already initiated steps to counter that.

The United States scholars pointed out that India had made all the preparation for a war with Pakistan when tension was created because of the ‘Doklam’ standoff with China. Fisher also mentioned that during the Maldives crisis, India had immediately deployed ‘Air Assault Forces’.

Dan Blumenthal, another US analyst endorsed the views expressed by Fisher and warned that China was not only using this strategy in the Indian neighbourhood but was also preparing to take over important ports and strategic locations in various other parts of the world , with the strength of these loans. He further substantiated this claim about the Chinese expansion with examples of Sri Lanka in Asia, Greece in Europe and Djibouti in Africa. In the meanwhile, there are also examples of some of the countries having cancelled some ambitious projects jointly undertaken with China, on realising that they are being sucked into the debt trap.