Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

  

The third round of the India-China Strategic Economic Dialogue failed to reach an agreement on bilateral high-speed railway (HSR) cooperation. International media, as well as media in India and China, are speculating that India's decision to decline Chinese technology is based on security reasons.

The talks generated renewed prospects, but the result of this round of discussion ultimately proved to be a repeat of the frustration felt by those from both sides who have been working together on bilateral HSR cooperation.

Considering the effect of HSR investment and projects on upstream and downstream industry structures, the improvement and modernization of India's railway system represent timely strategic decisions, as they form an important part of the country's overall ambition to build up infrastructure.

HSR is an efficient and long-term form of transport for boosting economic development. India's decision to modernize its railway system will allow it to bypass the long periods of setbacks that other countries have gone through.

India has been receiving Japanese help, but its slow progress indicates there is still a long way to go. Some of our Indian counterparts with strategic vision decided to approach China, with the aim of learning from Chinese lessons and experiences, and to seek possible cooperation.

China has accumulated enough lessons and experiences on how to modernize a backward national railway system, and has managed to find an economically feasible and effective way.

This will be a useful reference for India since it shares similar national characteristics, such as a large population, a varied geography, a weak economy and starting from a backward railway system.

However, excessive security concerns surrounding India-China railway cooperation seem to undermine such efforts.

Opponents of such cooperation say that railway construction involves geographic surveys which can put Indian security information and data at risk.

They also believe that the construction process will undoubtedly involve sites near controlled military areas and this could have security ramifications.

An overly broad idea of what constitutes classified information will undermine basic economic and social activities. An easily detectable military establishment should check its own security safeguard measures, rather than use it as an excuse to reject a civilian project.

Taking a step back for a moment, if a site of high sensitivity is really involved, it would always be plausible to adjust the railway alignment and thus eliminate these concerns.

Hence there was again an incomplete consensus on bilateral railway cooperation in this round of dialogue, as security reasons are becoming an easy excuse to reject Chinese investment, and this has become a formidable obstacle to enhancing bilateral economic cooperation and bilateral relations as a whole.

In terms of approval institutions on foreign direct investment (FDI), India has employed automatic and government approval routes, with the former being the proud design of Indian economic liberalization to attract FDI and the latter regulating that some foreign investment projects are subject to prior approval by the government, which is proper and necessary in FDI regulation.

National security reviews, together with anti-monopoly reviews, form India's review institutions on foreign investment. However, unlike security reviews in other nations, India's version has not been implemented with proper laws or policies, which has led to unclear standards in reviewing FDI, especially when it comes to investment from China.

The unclear line between different review institutions and reviewing standards invites an overly broad view of security issues used as an excuse to turn down Chinese FDI.

This has been broadened to such an extent that investment from Chinese companies cannot use the automatic approval routes and always need to be subject to security reviews.

Similar situations occur in the field of bilateral railway cooperation. To some extent, we can argue that an early refusal is in both sides' interests, as at least this would not waste the significant time and labor on a futile bilateral HSR cooperation attempt.

The author is a PhD candidate in the Department of International Relations, Tsinghua University, and currently a visiting scholar at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn