The second BRI Forum was recently held at Beijing (25-27 Apr 2019). In the first Forum, grandiose plans were announced and BRI took off like a tornado and suffered hiccups. Countries became wary of Chinese debt trap diplomacy and started reviewing their commitments with China. In the second forum, a chastened China had to reassure the participants that BRI would be more transparent and corruption free. However, it was still all about how to further Chinese economic and geopolitical dominance. India very rightly refused to participate in it since CPEC, the flagship of BRI, does not take into concern our sovereignty issues and is inimical to India’s interests. The Chinese reaction to our non-participation was multi-faceted. In public it stated that it understood our compulsions at non participation and that instead there will be a one on one meet as a follow up on Wuhan. It sounded conciliatory. In the same breath it also stated publicly that CPEC did not violate Indian sov
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