Dharamshala, 25th October: At the recently concluded second UN Sustainable Transport Conference, India expressed its strong opposition to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and its flagship project, the CPEC, where the Indian diplomat’s microphone mysteriously went silent while she was highlighting New Delhi’s opposition to the controversial projects.
The startling “mike failure” at the United Nations meeting, which China hosted here from October 14 to 16, caused a flutter and required several minutes to recover. The video of the next speaker began to play but was interrupted by UN under-secretary-general Liu Zhenmin, a former Chinese vice foreign minister, who pushed the Indian ambassador, Priyanka Sohoni, Second Secretary of the Indian Embassy here, to resume her address.
The Belt and Road Plan (BRI) is a multibillion-dollar initiative that Chinese President Xi Jinping initiated when he took office in 2013. Its goal is to strengthen China’s influence while simultaneously connecting Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Gulf area, Africa, and Europe through a network of land and maritime links. The BRI’s showpiece project is the USD 60 billion CPEC, which connects Gwadar Port in Pakistan’s Balochistan with China’s Xinjiang province.
India has been vociferous in its opposition to China’s CPEC, which is being built across Pakistan-controlled Kashmir (PoK). Beijing, for its part, is downplaying India’s concerns, claiming that it is merely an economic endeavor that hasn’t changed its moral stance on Kashmir.
A Pakistani official had praised the BRI and its flagship project, CPEC, a few speakers before Sohoni, calling it a “game-changer” for the region. Xi, who has actively supported BRI in recent years, mentioned it in his speech on the first day of the UN conference, which focused on supporting sustainable transportation to reduce carbon emissions, on October 14.
Following Sohoni’s speech, Chinese transport minister Li Xiaopeng, who was in attendance at the conference, responded to Sohoni’s criticism. According to diplomatic reports, the Chinese minister’s response to the Indian diplomat at the conference may have violated UN protocol.