ABSTRACT
Connectivity, when it occurs across borders, is usually understood in terms of physical connectivity in the form of road and railway routes primarily for the purposes of trade. The governments of India and China have long used physical connectivity and infrastructure development projects as part of their overseas development initiatives in the belief that this was necessary to develop capacity in sovereign states as well as exchanges between them, but also for the purposes of diplomatic advantage. With its launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), however, China has begun to scale up its objectives from physical connectivity projects abroad. It has added substantially more forms of connectivity including the spread of ideological views, access to digital data, and people-to-people contacts. The chapter examines the domestic views and consequences of connectivity projects abroad before ending with a look at how India has responded to Chinese connectivity projects.
