As the Quad — the US, Japan, India and Australia — seeks to constrain Beijing’s ambitions, China is quietly building a counterarchitecture aimed not at the Quad as a whole, but at its most exposed member: India. Through patient investments, military partnerships and political leverage across South Asia, Beijing is turning India’s geography from asset into vulnerability.
From “String of Pearls” to encirclement
Early talk of a Chinese “String of Pearls” focused on port access from the South China Sea to the Persian Gulf. That has since evolved into a denser network of economic corridors, dual-use ports and political influence capable of generating simultaneous pressure on nearly every Indian frontier.
The logic resembles Cold War containment, but with 21st-century tools. Where Washington once built formal alliances around the Soviet Union, Beijing is weaving trade, infrastructure finance and security ties with India’s neighbors to ensure that every land border and maritime approach is contested.
Pakistan: the hard-power cornerstone
Pakistan remains the central pillar of this architecture. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, whose announced value has risen to about $62 billion, gives China a direct route from Xinjiang to the Arabian Sea via Gwadar, easing the Malacca Strait chokepoint and locking in a long-term presence on India’s western flank.
Militarily, the relationship has deepened. China supplies the bulk of Pakistan’s major arms, including JF-17 fighters and Type 054A frigates, and has assisted sensitive missile and nuclear-related capacities designed to offset India’s conventional superiority.
Talk of “CPEC 2.0,” focused on industrial zones and deeper economic integration, underlines how far Islamabad has become a quasi-strategic tributary: economically dependent, militarily intertwined and diplomatically aligned with Beijing against New Delhi.
Myanmar and Nepal: the vulnerable east and north
To India’s east, China’s embrace of Myanmar’s junta after the 2021 coup secured another corridor from Yunnan to the Bay of Bengal.
The China-Myanmar Economic Corridor and access to Kyaukpyu port provide Beijing with both Indian Ocean reach and potential electronic intelligence sites monitoring Indian forces. For New Delhi, years of investment in Myanmar’s democratic transition and Act East policy have been largely neutralized.
On the Himalayan crest, Nepal has shifted from near-exclusive Indian influence to contested space. Chinese-backed roads toward Tibet and a proposed trans-Himalayan railway, rising investment commitments above $2 billion and close party-to-party links with Kathmandu’s communist elites give Beijing unprecedented leverage.
The 2020 map dispute over Kalapani underlined how easily China can amplify India-Nepal frictions.
Sri Lanka and Maldives: tightening the Indian Ocean noose
In the Indian Ocean, Sri Lanka and the Maldives anchor China’s southern and central arcs.
The 99-year lease of Hambantota following Sri Lanka’s debt distress and the multibillion-dollar Colombo Port City project give Beijing a long-term foothold astride vital sea lanes just off India’s southern coast.
Even if described as commercial, port visits by Chinese submarines at Colombo have already demonstrated latent military utility.
The Maldives’ sharp tilt under President Mohamed Muizzu, elected on an “India Out” platform, is an even starker signal. His demand to remove Indian military personnel and his opening to greater Chinese investment and security cooperation put a key mid-ocean state controlling central Indian Ocean shipping lanes in play for Beijing.
For India, seeing a traditionally friendly microstate pivot toward China carries outsized psychological and strategic impact.
Bangladesh: the decisive swing state
Bangladesh may prove the most consequential swing state in this constellation.
Dhaka has preserved strong ties with India but relies heavily on China for arms and infrastructure, including marquee projects such as the Padma Bridge and deep-sea port development at Matarbari and Payra.
Chinese activity in and around Chittagong, including facilities linked to submarine operations, places China inside the Bay of Bengal, eroding India’s long-assumed naval dominance there.
Tensions over river waters and border management already test India-Bangladesh relations. A leadership change in Dhaka could move policy closer to Beijing and complete a de facto encirclement of India’s eastern flank.
A converging two-front challenge
What makes this arc particularly dangerous for India is its convergence with Pakistan’s long-standing strategy.
China and Pakistan together create a two-front scenario: continental pressure in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh and a western front via Pakistan, combined with a rising Chinese naval presence in the Indian Ocean.
Any crisis with China on the Line of Actual Control will now be viewed in New Delhi through the lens of possible Pakistani opportunism and maritime vulnerability.
Diplomatically, this convergence is visible in China’s repeated UN shielding of Pakistan-based militants and aligned positions on Kashmir in multilateral forums, constraining India’s room for maneuver.
India’s response dilemma
India’s options are constrained by asymmetries of both economics and geography.
Bilateral trade with China reached roughly $136 billion in 2023, making China India’s largest trading partner, and has continued to hover above the $100 billion mark even amid border clashes. Efforts to derisk and diversify supply chains are real but will take years to materially reduce dependence on Chinese manufacturing.
At the same time, India must prepare for potential high-altitude conflict with China, deter Pakistan and fund a blue-water navy capable of contesting Chinese activity from the Arabian Sea to the Andaman Sea.
Diplomatically, New Delhi’s Neighborhood First outreach struggles to match the scale and speed of Chinese financing or Beijing’s readiness to underwrite authoritarian or fragile regimes without governance conditionalities.
The long game — and what Delhi needs
China’s anti-India arc reflects patient long-term investment rather than opportunistic adventurism. By building overlapping economic and security stakes around India’s periphery, Beijing has created multiple pressure points that can be dialed up in any future confrontation.
For India, the task is not just faster growth or more ships and missiles but a fundamental reset of regional statecraft.
That means prioritizing a few neighbors for sustained high-level political engagement rather than episodic crisis diplomacy; offering viable, transparent alternatives to Chinese infrastructure finance, even if on smaller scales, including cofinanced projects with Quad partners; and leveraging India’s democratic appeal, people-to-people links and educational pull to rebuild societal goodwill that Chinese money alone cannot buy.
The struggle for primacy between Asia’s two giants will shape the Indo-Pacific order well beyond South Asia. For now, Beijing has seized the initiative on India’s doorstep. Whether New Delhi can claw back strategic space will help determine the wider balance of power in the decades ahead.
Colonel Maqbool Shah is an Indian Army veteran.
