This paper highlights China’s views regarding CPEC and argues that stakes are very high for China in CPEC, and it is a project that must succeed if BRI is to go down in history as a success. However, CPEC’s success cannot be ensured without responding to the security challenge present in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which has the potential to jeopardise the CPEC and as a result the entire BRI. Hence, China is required to engage with both Pakistan and Afghanistan to ensure the long-term security of the CPEC. Building of CPEC and its further extension leaves India with limited options but augmenting economic, political and security concerns.

Though long in the offing, US withdrawal from Afghanistan became a reality with the signing of the Doha Agreement on 29 February 2020, ultimately leading to the establishment of Taliban 2.0 in Kabul. The unravelling of the two-decade-old US-led war and reconstruction effort in Afghanistan led to a long-predicted scramble among the regional powers to fill the vacuum created by US withdrawal and threw up a plethora of intriguing questions, particularly regarding China’s role and interests in the region. This article seeks to understand and analyze China’s ever-growing engagement in Afghanistan through the paradigm of Realism, arguing that China has long-term geo-strategic and geo-economic interests in the region which requires it to coordinate more closely with Pakistan and Iran and innovate diplomatically. This article is divided into two sections. The first section focuses on China’s interests in Afghanistan viz. BRI-CPEC extension in Afghanistan, rare earth, and the need to ensure peace and stability. The second section assesses China’s response to the emerging situation by focusing on China’s engagement with the Taliban 2.0 and co-opting of Pakistan and Iran for safeguarding its long-term interests. This article concludes while looking at the position of India in the gamut.

With the global power axis shifting away from the Pacific-Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific region, new power alliances seem to be emerging, and New Delhi wants to play a greater role in shaping it. With the rapid expansion of trade, investment and production linkages in the area spanning the Indian and Pacific Ocean regions, it has given rise to what is now known as the Indo-Pacific geo-strategic arc. Geospatially, the Indo-Pacific, spreading from India to the Western Pacific, is the home to over 3.5 billion people, the combined GDP of over $20 trillion. The region signifies a combination of Asia-Pacific and the Indian Ocean Rim countries. It also has three of the four largest economies in the world, i.e. China, Japan and India. The Indian Ocean holds two maritime trade gateways: The Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca-and has around 85 percent of the world's maritime trade, primarily oil passing through it. Moreover, 65 percent of the world's oil reserves belong to just 10 of the Indian Ocean littoral states. With China's rise in Asia, and its expanding footprints in the Indian Ocean, the region is likely to face major security challenges. The most likely China challenge in Indo-Pacific is that of the security of the Sea Lanes of Communications (SLOCS). This has raised significant concerns for other major regional players such as India, Japan, and the United States, prompting new partnerships among the major countries, given their convergence of interests in the Indo-Pacific security architecture. The United States wants to re-balance its Asia strategy. Japan, Indonesia, Singapore and Australia have also gone to the extent of formulating the Indo-Pacific concept in their official lexicon. How is today's concept of Indo-Pacific different from the earlier concepts of Asia-Pacific? Is "Indo-Pacific" space the new theatre of 'rivalry' between the United States -China and China-India? What are India's interests in promoting the idea of Indo-Pacific?

This article aims to understand the evolving nature of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Central Asia. It examines how the BRI gives China an access to the abundant energy resources in Central Asia, alongside the trade connectivity, industry, infrastructure development, and expanding regional markets and facilitating regional cooperation, etc. While doing so, the article examines 261 small-and large-scale Chinese infrastructure projects in five Central Asian republics. As we understand, China’s BRI investments focus on rail and road connectivity projects, energy connectivity projects, trade promotion and industrial development, and people-to-people projects. This gives greater influence to China in the Central Asian region, thereby leading to a competition among the major powers such as Russia, the USA and India.