It was ongoing crisis in Pakistan and Sri Lanka who forced countries such as Maldives, Nepal and Bangladesh to think again on Chinese infrastructure loans and become part of BRI initiatives.
During his trip to India last week, Prime Minister Nepal Sher Bahadur Deuba informally shared a conversation about the visit of the Chinese Foreign Minister to Kathmandu at the end of March. PM Nepal, who has a wife who is equally political and educated Arzu, told Wang who visited that his country could only receive a grant from Beijing and not a loan for infrastructure projects. The fact is, not an agreement on a very famous belt road initiative (BRI) was signed during Wang to Kathmandu’s visit.
With China’s debt in South Asia up from USD 4.7 billion to the top of USD 40 billion, Nepal below Deuba chose to get out of the debt trap from the middle kingdom after seeing the increasing political crisis in the state of Pakistan and Sri Lanka in Beijing. With more than 10 percent of Pakistani external debt that owes China, milk and honey relations no longer taste sweet with the Islamic Republic goes into political chaos with all democratic institutions that are susceptible by the Prime Minister who serves themselves in Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi and its cronies .
The situation in Sri Lanka was no different and this time they did not have India to blame the country staring at the economic and political ravines with almost no foreign reserves to buy fuel and oil. An honest one is located at Rajapaksa’s door that is incorporated, which carries the country under severe economic pressure by taking high flowering loans from China on behalf of infrastructure development. At present, the country island under the public lock has no choice but to protest the condition of the Rajapaksa family government.
It was ongoing crisis in Pakistan and Sri Lanka who forced countries such as Maldives, Nepal and Bangladesh to think again on Chinese infrastructure loans and become part of BRI initiatives. Not long ago the Chinese Ambassador to Nepal was formerly Queen Bee in Nepal’s politics with Maoist politicians and communists who pay carefully to Beijing’s representatives.
Even though it seems that Sri Lanka realized that economic soup, Pakistan had doubled the economic recovery with PM Niazi to bring down the country into the full political crisis for its own survival. He tried to prepare public sentiments in his support by choosing the Biden government to secretly conspire with the opposition to bring down the regime. As if the US has Pakistan still with a high priority when the Russian President has invaded Ukraine.
While the harsh words of Imran Niazi against the US might be music to Beijing’s ear, China also had to worry about the future of BRI in Pakistan and about the recovery of multi-billion dollar loans given to Islamabad. Weak Islamabad will give strength to Fisipara forces in Pakistan because the nationalist movement is building in Balochistan, Sindh, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Given the US control in global financial institutions, both Pakistan and Sri Lanka will feel very difficult to recover because both countries have divert loyalty to Beijing in the past two decades.