China moves to take advantage of Covid-19 in South Asia

China has moved to take advantage of the Covid-19 crisis to spread its tentacles in the neighbourhood of Indiaࢀ"promising South Asian nations access to the vaccines to fight the virus and pledging to expand infrastructure projects under its controversial Belt-and-Road Initiative (BRI) in the region. Apart from its ࢀ˜iron brotherࢀ™ Pakistan, China has, of late, also moved to secure support from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal to restart works on the BRI infrastructure projects, which remained stalled during the past few months due to the shutdowns imposed to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. Though it has drawn flak for using the…