India snubs China’s ‘new Silk Road’ summit, underlining mounting tensions between Asian rivals

China invited Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and six cabinet colleagues to its “new Silk Road” summit this month, even offering to rename a flagship Pakistani project running through disputed territory to persuade them to attend, a top official in Modi’s ruling group and diplomats said.

But New Delhi rebuffed Beijing’s diplomatic push, incensed that a key project in its massive initiative to open land and sea corridors linking China with the rest of Asia and beyond runs through Pakistani controlled Kashmir.

The failure of China’s efforts to bring India on board, details of which have not been previously reported, shows the depths to which relations between the two countries have fallen over territorial disputes and Beijing’s support of Pakistan.

India’s snub to the “Belt and Road” project was the strongest move yet by Modi to stand up to China.

But it risks leaving India isolated at a time when it may no longer be able to count on the US to back it as a counterweight to China’s growing influence in Asia, Chinese commentators and some Indian experts have said.

Representatives of 60 countries, including the US and Japan, travelled to Beijing for the May 14-15 summit on President Xi Jinping’s signature project.