China should maintain its “strategic focus” in the face of joint Japanese and Indian attempts to contain its rise, argues Lin Minwang, deputy director of the Center for South Asia Studies at Fudan University.
In an opinion piece for the journal Contemporary World, Lin writes that India and Japan are unlikely to agree on the best way to proceed given their disparate goals. Lin claims that in Japan's case security concerns trump economic cooperation, whereas India’s main goal is to use Japanese money and technology to fuel its economic growth.
Even if Japanese companies flooded the Indian market, Chinese investors would not lose in the long term, the scholar believes. The trade volume between Japan and India stood at US$15 billion in 2016, just a quarter of that between India and China, he said.
Neither does the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor – an economic agreement inked between India and Japan in May – pose any threat to China's Belt and Road Initiative, he insists. This is because it is expected to draw only three billion US dollars from Japan over the next three years and one billion from India over the next five.
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