Leading Chinese scholars have proposed setting up a security mechanism and accelerating a legal dialogue among Bangladesh, China, India, and Myanmar, in order to turn the proposed BCIM corridor into an economic reality The Hindu reported on 29 June.
The BCIM corridor is an ambitious undertaking that hopes to connect Kolkata with Kunming, capital of Yunnan province. It envisages the formation of a thriving economic belt, focusing on cross-border transport, energy, and telecommunication networks.
In a conversation with The Hindu, Ren Jia, president of the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, advocated a four-country institutional tie-up to address the non-traditional security threats to the BCIM project. “Security is a very important aspect of BCIM,” Dr. Ren said, pointing out that ethnic insurgencies, terrorism, drug trafficking and the accompanying spread of HIV infections, antiques smuggling, as well as cross-border human trafficking, threatened to derail the project.