China’s ‘Silk Road of Health’ Seeks Soft Power in South Asia, Experts Say
NEW DELHI—A quadrilateral meeting hosted by China in the middle of this year with Pakistan, Nepal, and Afghanistan sought to promote a Chinese-led “Silk Road of Health” during the pandemic, rebranding the regime’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in the region, according to a new analysis released on Nov. 12.
“It is certainly going to increase the vulnerabilities and dependencies,” Abhinav Pandya, CEO of Usanas Foundation, an India-based geopolitical think tank, told The Epoch Times. “In fact, I would say that these three countries have already accepted China as some kind of a major regional player, if not world power or superpower, but definitely as some kind of a very potent factor in South Asia.”