During the G20 summit in India in September 2023, India, the U.S., the UAE, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, Italy, and the European Union (EU) announced plans to create the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) and signed the IMEC memorandum. IMEC is a project under the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment framework launched by former U.S. President Joe Biden. While the IMEC plan was partly about countering Chinese influence, the creation of a corridor that connects India, the Middle East and Europe without going through the Suez Canal was also expected to be hugely beneficial for the countries along the corridor. What becomes of this framework now that Donald Trump is back in power remains to be seen, but what is China’s take on the plan?
Since the IMEC plan was announced in September 2023, the view that IMEC is the Indian version (or Narendra Modi version) of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has gained traction in China. According to some Chinese commentators, India proposed the scheme in an attempt to catch up with and push back against China, but India’s plan quickly ran aground as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict intensified, with an exchange of missiles between Iran and Israel. Italy’s participation in the IMEC project despite having withdrawn from the BRI also tends to be highlighted.
China’s understanding is undoubtedly that the IMEC project has been a disaster, mostly because of the worsening Middle East situation. The project does, however, appear to have gotten off the ground again in the second half of 2024. In December 2024, Deputy Prime Minister & Minister of Foreign Affairs H.H. Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the UAE visited India and called for the implementation of IMEC. South Asia Gas Enterprise Pvt. Ltd. (SAGE), a private consortium based in India, is also undertaking a project to build undersea natural gas pipelines connecting Gujarat state in western India and Oman. That said, finance is the IMEC project’s Achilles’ heel. If a transport corridor is ever going to be actually built, then an enormous amount of funding will be required, but there is as yet no clear prospect of securing the necessary finance.
Chinese commentators are scathing about IMEC, criticizing IMEC’s organizational fragility and lack of developing country focus, alluding to the BRI’s clear first-mover advantage, IMEC’s overreliance on maritime transport and lack of overland connectivity, and its exclusion of Iran and Turkey.
Such criticisms are not necessarily off the mark. Indeed, IMEC is problematic for all these reasons. But surely more to the point is that just when China is standing up to developed countries, specifically the U.S., as the self-declared representative of developing countries, moves are afoot among developing countries to stand up to China. India is taking a strong stance against China’s BRI by hosting the Global South Summit and not inviting China, and by spearheading the IMEC initiative. If this pushback continues, China’s hopes that developing countries, led by China, will challenge the global order imposed by developed countries will be dashed. Surely this is reason enough to be slightly less critical of IMEC while at the same time giving China something serious to worry about.
KAWASHIMA Shin is a professor at the University of Tokyo.