Bangladesh, China, India, Myanmar Economic Corridor (BCIM-EC): Security Dilemma Rider to Regional Economic Integration

Abstract

This study locates the BCIM Economic Corridor in history and discusses its evolution in the context of China’s aggressive economic engagement in the region and the opportunities and challenges it faces in the region. It also evaluates the pre BCIM-EC regional cooperation in terms of air connectivity, overland rail and road links, waterways, and the trade-and-commerce scenario. It holds that the BCIM–EC would mean deeper integration among the concerned countries and will open vistas of opportunities in many diversified areas, including trade, transport, and tourism, as well as cooperation in traditional and non-tradition security. It concludes that some of the landlocked regions of the BCIM-EC could be turned into nodal points of connectivity, enabling them to mitigate poverty and backwardness; the region as such will act as a bridge between the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean which is necessarily beneficial for regional integration.