'Southern silk road' linking China and India seen as key to boosting ties
Ancient trade route between India and China seen offering huge economic potential but New Delhi worries over security implications
An ancient trade route where old suspicions intersect opportunities for trade and exchange between Asia's two giants will be in focus during Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Beijing trip, with China wanting India to fast-track an ambitious regional project.
The plan for the BCIM corridor is also at the centre of Premier Li Keqiang's offer of a "handshake across the Himalayas". It was during Li's visit to India this year that the corridor first found mention in official statements, even though it was mooted more than a decade ago.
India, on the other hand, is fearful of the security implications of allowing China direct access to its border states and being overrun by China's more developed economy. But several Indian experts see in the BCIM plan the promise of economic salvation for the country's impoverished northeastern states and are urging the government to seize the opportunity.
"As Yunnan is the most advanced in the cluster, India fears that it will become BCIM's economic centre, with the rest of the region reduced to its periphery," says Binoda Kumar Mishra, the director of India's Centre for Studies in International Relations and Development.
Mishra is also the secretary-general of the Kolkata to Kunming (K2K) Forum, one of the organisations behind the first K2K car rally, which crossed the route that makes up the heart of the proposed BCIM corridor.
Land connections - through the central Asian silk route and the Yunnan-India southern silk route - were what drove trade between ancient India and China. In second century BC, Zhang Qian, a Han-dynasty envoy to central Asia, reported that goods from Sichuan and other southwestern regions of the empire were reaching Bactria (present-day Afghanistan) through India. By the seventh century, the route had become a bustling channel for trade and migration.