Abstract

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is an upshot of the enduring relationship between Pakistan and China. It is an umbrella venture proposed under China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative. CPEC is an exertion for supercharging the China-Pak relationship in order to pressurize India for safeguarding footing in the Arabian Sea capable of empowering Chinese PLAN to project influence across the Indian Ocean. Delhi has been importing most of its requirements of oil from OPEC countries of the Middle East through the Strait of Hormuz. This transportation marine route of oil from countries of the Middle East towards Indian ports is enormously substantial for India. New Delhi seemingly believes that China and Pakistan may block the route of ships carrying Indian oil in case of any conflict. India sees the emergent China-Pak strategic connections and substantial investments by China in Gwadar as a hurdle against its intents to access the CAR’s and Afghanistan for conceivable trading linkages through bypassing Pakistan. This research aims for analyzing Challenges to China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) with respect to the Indian perspective and opines that India usually interprets its correlation as to be a zero-sum game vis-a-vis Pakistan. The consideration of IndoPak relationship as to be of a zero-sum strategic equation means that the gain of one’s is the loss of the other. This aggressive approach has created an environment of security dilemma in South Asia.

Key words: Silk Route, Kashgar, Indian Ocean, OBOR, Middle East, PLAN.