At present, various sub-regional cooperation mechanisms in South Asia continue to emerge, gradually competing with the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) [1], which has become a unique feature of the development of regionalism in South Asia. In particular, the sub-regional cooperation mechanisms represented by Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) [2], South Asia Sub-regional Economic Cooperation (SASEC) [3] and the Bangladesh Bhutan India and Nepal (BBIN) sub-regional cooperation [4] have gradually received attentions and started to develop since the Modi government came to power. However, they also face many problems. Due to the coexistence of opportunities and challenges, the sub-regional cooperation mechanisms in South Asia are full of development prospects. This paper will start with the analysis of the reasons why the sub-regional cooperation mechanisms in South Asia have achieved significant attention and developed rapidly in recent years, and will then focus in detail on their emerging new developments, broader contextual dynamics, and likely future prospects within the region over the coming decade.

The Emergence and the Low ebb of the Sub-Regional Cooperation Mechanisms in South Asia

The Limited Development of the Overall Regional Cooperation Mechanisms in South Asia is the Direct Cause 

The emergence of the sub-regional cooperation mechanisms in South Asia is due to the limited development of regionalism [5] in South Asia as a whole. In the late 1970s, Bangladesh’s president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman first proposed the idea of establishing a South Asian regional cooperation organization in response to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan and India’s growing trend towards becoming a military ally of the Soviet Union. In his letter to several other leaders of South Asian countries at that time, he mentioned that it was necessary to establish cooperation among countries in South Asia to maintain regional peace and stability. Therefore, in order to deal with the complex regional situation at that time, establish political mutual trust among regional countries and strengthen cooperation among countries in the economic, social and scientific and technological fields, the six countries in South Asia finally signed the the charter of SAARC in 1985 after years of negotiations, and SAARC was officially established. The establishment of SAARC is a milestone in the overall development of regionalism in South Asia. However, the SAARC mechanism is not capable of achieving the above goals after its establishment, which is also the direct cause for the emergence of the South Asia sub-regional cooperation mechanisms.

First of all, India, the core power in South Asia, is the key point to restrict the development of the overall regional cooperation mechanism in South Asia. Excluding the intervention of extraterritorial factors, India is a veritable “super power” in South Asia. Therefore, its policy stance almost completely determines the development direction of the regional mechanism. For example, at the beginning of the proposal to establish SAARC, Indian government worried that the mechanism would become a diplomatic tool for other countries in the region to confront India [6]. Therefore, during the negotiation process of SAARC, the Indian representative requested to restrict the decision-making mechanism and agenda content of SAARC in order to prevent other countries from using SAARC to harm India’s national interests. Part X of the charter of SAARC emphasized that decisions at all levels should be made on the basis of consensus, and any bilateral and controversial issues should be excluded from the agenda [7]. In addition, India’s “superpower” status in South Asia makes it difficult to be restricted in the regional mechanism, which in turn makes SAARC lose the ability to deal with and coordinate any sensitive issues involving India. In the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack, for example, Indian government accused the terrorists of coming from Pakistan and even accused Pakistani government of supporting the attack. Finally, SAARC mediation failed. From this example, it can be seen that although the original intention of SAARC is to maintain regional peace and stability, SAARC can hardly play a constructive role in dealing with any security disputes between India and neighbouring countries due to India’s status as a major power in the region and its tough attitude, which seriously weakens SAARC as a platform for mutual trust and communication among South Asian countries. In a word, the huge power gap between India and other small and medium-sized countries in South Asia and India’s unwillingness to be bound by the mechanism make SAARC unable to play a practical role, which is also the fundamental reason for the limited development of regionalism in South Asia as a whole.

Secondly, economy is also an important factor that restricts the development of regionalism in South Asia and promotes the development of South Asia sub-regional cooperation mechanisms. During the reign of Nehru, import substitution policy was implemented in the field of foreign trade, which was the so-called Nehru-Mahalanobis model [8]. At the same time, other South Asian countries also implemented import substitution policies to varying degrees. Therefore, affected by this trade policy, the total amount of mutual trade between South Asian countries has been very limited. By the early 1990s, due to India’s long-term implementation of the economic policy of import-substitution, its foreign exchange reserves had been seriously insufficient. The collapse of the Soviet Union deprived India of its main external economic aid. Under intense economic pressure, India’s new Prime Minister, Pamulaparthi Venkata Narasimha Rao, was forced to embark on economic reforms. One important aspect was to relax import restrictions and actively encourage exports, so as to transform the former inward-oriented economy into an export-oriented economy. Based on this, the Rao government began to vigorously promote economic cooperation under SAARC framework. In 1993, seven South Asian countries signed the SAARC Preferential Trade Agreement which aimed to reduce tariffs on goods among countries in the region. However, the tariff concessions proposed in the agreement would be negotiated on a commodity-by-commodity basis due to the great differences in the level of economic development among countries [9]. Although the countries eventually reached tariff concessions on nearly 5,000 goods, these categories were not the important foreign trade products [10]. In the end, the agreement had little practical effect on promoting the development of regional trade. This economic cooperation based on the SAARC framework did not achieve considerable practical results. Therefore, at the 9th SAARC Summit in 1997, the goal of establishing a South Asia Free Trade Area by the end of 2001 was proposed. However, the process was affected by India-Pakistan relations. In May, 1998, India and Pakistan conducted five and six nuclear tests respectively, becoming the actual nuclear possessors. The military competition of nuclear weapons between India and Pakistan has seriously damaged regional stability, and once again broke the fragile foundation of mutual trust among South Asian countries. The overall South Asian market integration process and the development of the overall South Asian cooperation mechanism have also fallen into a trough. However, the sub-regional cooperation mechanisms in South Asia have developed due to the unsolvable defects of the overall regionalism in South Asia. Among them, Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation, (BIMSTEC) and South Asia Sub-regional Economic Cooperation (SASEC) emerged earlier, but their developments were also full of twists and turns.

The Tortuous Development of SASEC and BIMSTEC

Due to the slow process of SAARC market integration, the president of Bangladesh, inspired by the sub-regional cooperation in Southeast Asia, proposed at the end of 1996 that Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Bhutan could carry out sub-regional cooperation. This proposal was supported by the other three countries. In April 1997, the four countries reached a consensus on sub-regional cooperation and officially named the initiative “The South Asian Growth-Quadrangle” (SAGQ) [11]. The initiative did not aim at market integration, but focused on specific project cooperation in different areas of the region. The initiative was later funded by the Asian Development Bank and further developed into the South Asia Sub-regional Economic Cooperation (SASEC) in 2001.

In addition, the sub-regional cooperation in South Asia is not limited in this region. An important aspect of the foreign policies of the regional cooperation promoted by the Rao government is to strengthen economic cooperation with Southeast Asian countries, namely “Act East”. Although India has not had close economic and trade ties with Southeast Asian countries since its independence, India believed that it was necessary to strengthen economic cooperation with Southeast Asian countries in the face of the rapid economic growth of East Asia in the 1980s. At the same time, the “moving westward” Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) regarded India as one of the counterweights to maintain the balance of ASEAN. Therefore, both India and ASEAN needed a more inclusive and dynamic regional integration organization, so as to support each other politically and develop together economically [12]. According to an interview with the Indian diplomat ambranjit Gupta, after Indian government put forward the “Eastward policy”, he discussed the idea of strengthening the interconnection between India and Thailand in 1994 with Supachai, Deputy Prime Minister of Thailand. A few months later, Thailand government announced an economic cooperation plan including India and Sri Lanka [13]. This economic cooperation plan is the prototype of Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC). In June 1997, the four countries formally established BISTEC. In December of the same year, Myanmar joined the mechanism, which subsequently became BIMSTEC. In 2004, Bhutan and Nepal also became the members of the mechanism. So far, the South Asia sub-regional cooperation mechanism represented by SASEC and BIMSTEC has been established.

However, the South Asia sub-regional cooperation mechanism has not been fully developed after its establishment, but quickly fell into a trough, which was mainly due to the internal disputes within the mechanism and the impact of the external international political and economic environment. Take SAGQ as an example, this initiative is more theoretical than practical. On the one hand, the infrastructure level of relevant countries is poor, which cannot attract funds for investment cooperation [14]. Even with financial support from the Asian Development Bank, the amount of investment from 2001 to 2005 was only $2.3 billion, which was far from meeting the huge investment needs in the region. On the other hand, there are differences among member states about trying to implement sub-regional cooperation. Opposition parties in Bangladesh argue that sub-regional cooperation will not only undermine the significance of SAARC and decentralize its power, but also endanger the security of Bangladesh and make Bangladesh trapped in the conflict between China and India. Some Indian scholars believe that the goal of sub-regional cooperation can be fully realized through bilateral cooperation, and the establishment of sub-regional cooperation excluding Pakistan and Sri Lanka may be harmful to SAARC [15]. In addition, after BIMSTEC was established, the Indian National Congress (INC) government quickly lost enthusiasm for this sub-regional mechanism promoted by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and did not want to invest too much energy and resources in it. Thailand, another major initiator of the mechanism, also lost its willingness to expand the economic development of BIMSTEC after being hit by the financial crisis in 1998, and its demand for BIMSTEC also declined rapidly. Therefore, only three summits have been held since the first summit of BIMSTEC in 2004. In addition to setting up the necessary Secretariat, few achievements have been made. In the field of economic cooperation that the mechanism has been focusing on, the ten-year negotiation of the “agreement on trade in goods under BIMSTEC” also failed to gain consensus among countries, which greatly damaged the development of the mechanism and the internal cohesion between the member states [16]. In a word, BIMSTEC was not a highly-regarded sub-regional mechanism for quite a long time after its establishment.

To sum up, since the 1990s, although countries inside and outside South Asia have established several representative sub-regional multilateral mechanisms for the purpose of developing their own economies, almost all sub-regional cooperation mechanisms failed to achieve the goal of promoting regional cooperation in the following period of time. In addition to the lack of mutual trust among the countries within the mechanism, the main reason is that India, the major regional power, has not given enough political and economic support, making it difficult for the relevant mechanism to enter the stage of in-depth cooperation after its establishment. It can be seen that the further development of the South Asia sub-regional mechanisms must be inseparable from the support of India. 

The Revival of the Sub-Regional Cooperation Mechanisms in South Asia

India's Attention and Efforts and the Involvement of Big Powers Outside the Region

Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party was elected as the prime minister of India in 2014. After the Modi government came into power, it started to actively promote the South Asian sub-regional cooperation, which was first in line with the political needs of the “Neighbour First” diplomatic policy. From the perspective of political security, India has been trying to develop South Asia as its own sphere of influence, while rejecting the intervention of other powers outside the region. This philosophy has permeated India’s regional foreign policy at different periods. During Nehru Period, India began to control Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim by political and diplomatic means. For example, the Treaty of Permanent Peace and Friendship signed by India and Bhutan stipulated that Bhutan’s foreign policy needed to be “guided” by Indian government, and Bhutan could not unilaterally terminate or modify the treaty without India’s consent. In the peace treaty signed between India and Sikkim, the defense affairs of Sikkim were directly entrusted to India [17]. In the period of Indira government, India put forward the Indian version of “Monroe Doctrine”, namely “Indira Doctrine”. At that time, Indian government proposed that India strongly opposed the intervention of major powers outside South Asia in the affairs of South Asia. If the countries in the region needed assistance to deal with internal crises, they should first turn to India for assistance. In 1996, the United Front Government of India put forward the “Gujral Doctrine”, which was no longer as aggressive as the “Indira Doctrine”, but emphasis was placed on India’s unilateral assistance to its South Asian neighbors, and its purpose was always to strive for and maintain its hegemonic status in South Asia [18]. The significance of South Asia for India was also repeatedly highlighted in the report “non-alignment 2.0: India’s Foreign and Strategic Policy in the 21st Century”, proposed by a number of state-backed scholars in early 2011. In particular, it pointed out that the political spillover effect between South Asian countries would have an important impact on India’s internal affairs and diplomacy, and the stability of South Asian region was also a significant basis for India to achieve the goal of being a world power [19]. Therefore, after the Modi government came to power, India put forward the peripheral diplomatic policy of “Neighboring First” mainly from the economic perspective. As a result, India began to actively promote sub-regional cooperation and improve relations with its South Asian neighbors. More importantly, according to this strategic logic, India could gain absolute influence in South Asia.

Secondly, India’s regional diplomacy has shifted from bilateral mode to regional multilateral cooperation. At the beginning of the establishment of SAARC, Indian government was worried that the mechanism would pose a threat to India’s own interests, it especially restricted the relevant rules of SAARC. However, the subsequent diplomatic practice proved that India was a decisive force in the development of the regional mechanism in South Asia and had absolute influence on the agenda setting within the regional mechanism [20]. Indian government has gradually realized that SAARC could become an important tool for India’s regional diplomacy. Therefore, Modi has given priority to promoting connectivity cooperation under the SAARC framework. To achieve this goal, India vigorously promoted SAARC countries to reach cooperation agreements in the fields of energy, motor vehicle transportation and railway transportation at the 18th SAARC summit. However, Pakistan chose to withdraw from the SAARC motor vehicle transport agreement at the last moment of the summit, which made the agreement unable to be unanimously agreed by SAARC countries. For this diplomatic failure, Modi said, “the regional integration of South Asia must move forward, either through the SAARC mechanism or through other mechanisms, either the integration of all countries in our region or just some of our countries. [21]” Therefore, when the original regional multilateral cooperation mechanism in South Asia could not meet India’s regional diplomatic goals, Indian government began to develop sub-regional cooperation mechanisms.

At the same time, the involvement of big powers outside the region such as China and Japan in South Asian affairs is another important factor that stimulates India to promote the sub-regional cooperation mechanisms. China is one of the major countries outside the region that participated in South Asian affairs earlier. In recent years, China has been trying to build a stable relationship with regional countries through participating in relevant regional multilateral cooperation mechanisms. China expressed its wish to participate in SAARC to the SAARC Secretariat in 2003 and officially became an observer state of SAARC in 2006. In 2013, China proposed the initiatives of “The Silk Road Economic Belt” and “21st-Century Maritime Silk Road”. Since then, China has actively strengthened cooperation with Sri Lanka, Pakistan and other countries along the Indian Ocean in port infrastructure construction, including the Gwadar port construction project in Pakistan and the China-Sri Lanka Hambantota port construction project. At the same time, China has also actively strengthened cooperation with Myanmar, the country in the Bay of Bengal region. The China-Myanmar oil and gas pipeline has become one of China’s four major international oil and gas transportation channels. In terms of sub-regional mechanisms, China has also been actively promoting the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor. It can be said that China is currently an important participant in the development of the South Asia. However, the above actions have deepened India’s security doubts about China’s involvement in South Asian affairs. India is concerned that China’s “The Belt and Road” initiative in South Asia will intensify the centrifugal tendency of South Asian countries towards India, and believes that China is squeezing India’s geopolitical space. In recent years, India’s annual defense report has repeatedly mentioned China’s military deployment and strategic infrastructure construction in the periphery of India [22]. Therefore, China’s vigorous promotion of cooperation with South Asian countries not only prompts India to pay more attention to actively carry out peripheral diplomacy with South Asian countries and participate in various regional cooperation mechanisms in South Asia, but also promotes India to form a strategic consensus with the United States, Japan and other countries to contain China’s “The Belt and Road” initiative. In recent years, Japan’s active involvement in South Asian affairs is the best proof (Figure 1). In the process of Japan’s active intervention in South Asian affairs, India is also included in various sub-regional cooperation mechanisms in South Asia. India’s strategic importance in Japan’s diplomacy has been rising since Shinzo Abe delivered a speech on “the convergence of the two oceans” during his visit to India in 2006. Since becoming Prime minister for the second time in 2012, Abe has made infrastructure exports a key focus of his economic growth strategy. In 2013 and 2015, Japanese government put forward the strategic concept of “Export of Infrastructure System” and the initiative of “High-quality Infrastructure Partnership”, which strongly supported the expansion of Japanese infrastructure into overseas markets from both domestic and diplomatic aspects. As the important potential market for Japan’s infrastructure exports, India and South Asia have attracted Japan’s attention. At the same time, infrastructure construction is one of the most important projects under BIMSTEC and SASEC. But India is unable to make large-scale investments in other countries within the mechanism due to its huge infrastructure funding gap. Therefore, as the third largest economy in the world, Japan gives full play to its advantages in capital and technology, which also deepens Japan-India cooperation in the South Asian sub-region. After the relationship between Japan and India was upgraded to the “Special Global Strategic Partnership”, Japanese government acquired India’s first high-speed rail project contract with a low interest loan of more than 1trillion yen in 2015. In addition, the Japanese international aid agency, Japan Poverty Reduction Fund and Asian Development Bank have also provided loans or economic assistance for the infrastructure construction to the countries within the SASEC for many years. Japan has also created a favorable regional political environment for Japanese enterprises to strive for infrastructure construction projects in other South Asian countries by choosing to actively support various sub-regional mechanisms led by India.

Figure1: Project Allocation of SASEC (2002-2019)

Source: Official Website of SASEC

The New Development of the Sub-Regional Cooperation Mechanisms in South Asia

In the above context, the South Asia sub-regional cooperation mechanisms have made new changes and developments. New progress has also been made in SASEC and BIMSTEC and BBIN sub-regional cooperation has been activated by India. It can be said that sub-regional cooperation mechanisms in South Asia is undergoing a renaissance (Figure 1).

Due to the slow progress of SAGQ, and in response to the diplomatic policy of “Neighbors First”, India decided to start to develop new sub-regional cooperation initiatives. As a result, the cooperation mechanism of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal (BBIN) began to take shape. In 2013, Singh government of India set up a joint working group with Bangladesh and Bhutan to discuss cooperation in the two areas of “water resources/electricity and Hydro-power” and “connectivity/transport”. On this basis, Nepal joined the second meeting of the Joint Working Group in 2015, and the BBIN cooperation mechanism was formally formed. On June 15 of the same year, the four countries formally signed the BBIN Motor Vehicles Agreement [23]. Although the agreement was rejected by the upper house of the Bhutan parliament in November 2016, it has been adopted by all three other countries. The agreement was controversial in Bhutan, where the main concern was that trucks from other countries would bring more motor vehicle pollution and environmental damage if they entered Bhutan. In April, 2017, Bhutan government said that the BBIN Motor Vehicles Agreement would not be approved, asking the other countries to proceed without waiting for Bhutan [24]. In response to this, the four countries discussed a draft memorandum at the meeting in February 2020, so that Bangladesh, India and Nepal could implement the relevant motor vehicle agreement without Bhutan’s accession [25]. By 2020, the BBIN sub-regional cooperation had held three joint working group meetings, in which the four countries agreed to work together to explore the utilization of water resources [26].

Figure 2: Number of Projects and Total Project Costs of SASEC (by August 2020)

Source: Official Website of SASEC

SASEC has shown a trend of rapid development since 2012. In terms of membership expansion, Maldives and Sri Lanka became the project members in 2014, and Myanmar became the first Southeast Asian country member of the project in 2017. In addition to the increase in membership, there has been a significant increase in the scale of investment in transport and all sector cumulative investment under the framework of the initiative (see Figure 1). In 2011, the mechanism only raised $108 million for member countries, and by 2020, this amount increased to $1.33 billion [27]. By August 2020, SASEC has run 67 projects with a total cost of $15.1 billion (Figure 2). In addition, in an international conference held in August 2020, important international financial institutions such as Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Japan international aid agency, New Development Bank, The World Bank, and Asian Development Bank all sent personnel to participate in the conference. The action plan of SASEC from 2021 to 2023 and the further mechanism construction of the initiative were discussed at the meeting [28]. From the current trend, SASEC has become another sub-regional cooperation mechanism with significant development prospects in the region.

In addition to the above mechanism mainly aimed at countries in South Asia, Indian government has also begun to renew its political support for BIMSTEC, which is also in line with the needs of its “Act East” policy. First of all, Modi expressed his attention and support for the initiative with his own actions. In 2014, Modi immediately participated in the third summit of BIMSTEC. At this summit, Modi vigorously promoted the conclusion of the “agreement on trade in goods” among member states by the end of that year, and promised to strengthen cooperation among member states in the fields of science and technology, energy, transportation, tourism, fisheries, agriculture, environmental governance and health [29]. Second, the Modi government has actively promoted exchanges and cooperation between BIMSTEC and other major international multilateral mechanisms. At the eighth BRICS summit in 2006, Modi specially arranged a dialogue between the member states of BIMSTEC and the leaders of the BRICS countries, trying to push BIMSTEC to the international political stage. In 2018, at the Kathmandu summit, BIMSTEC took an important step in institutional reform. It not only decided to draft the organizational charter and submit it to the next summit for deliberation and approval, but also decided to establish a standing working committee and a development fund to enhance the administrative and financial efficiency of the Secretariat and other institutions [30]. In promoting the interconnection between South Asia and Southeast Asia, member states jointly signed a memorandum of understanding on the establishment of the power grid of BIMSTEC [31]. In addition, as a leading country in the field of combating terrorism and cross-border crime under BIMSTEC, India also has been promoting the transformation of BIMSTEC from a regional economic cooperation mechanism to a regional comprehensive governance mechanism including security issues [32]. In September, 2018, the first BIMSTEC military exercise was held in Puna, India. The Indian military stressed that the focus of this exercise was to strengthen the mutual cooperation between the armies of member states and exchange relevant experience in curbing and combating terrorist activities [33]. To sum up, the twists and turns in the development and evolution of the sub-regional cooperation mechanisms in South Asia show the new characteristics of the development of regionalism in South Asia. In this stage, the various sub-regional multilateral mechanisms led by India have made great progress in terms of the number of cooperation achievements, as well as the depth and breadth of cooperation. This is not only due to the attention and efforts of India, but also the involvement of many extraterritorial powers, making India directly or indirectly become a key role in guiding the revitalization of the sub-regional cooperation mechanisms in South Asia. In this process, India is making use of the sub-regional cooperation mechanisms to become a core leading country in South Asia, including the entire Bay of Bengal region.

The Prospects of Sub-Regional Cooperation Mechanisms in South Asia

Opportunities and Challenges: At present, the impact of the revival of the South Asia sub-regional cooperation mechanisms on the region seems more complex. The revival of the South Asia sub-regional cooperation mechanisms can not only promote the prosperity and development of countries in the region, but also aggravate the geopolitical game between countries inside and outside the region and bring about the division between countries in the region.

First of all, the cooperation among countries under the sub-regional cooperation mechanisms has a positive side for promoting the economic development of countries in South Asia. At present, South Asia is one of the major underdeveloped regions in the world. According to the data released by The World Bank, the GDP of South Asia in 2019 was only $3.592 trillion, while that of neighboring East Asia reached $26.988 trillion, a gap of nearly 8 times. Therefore, economic development is undoubtedly one of the most urgent goals of South Asian countries.

According to the relevant report released by World Economic Forum in 2014, among the seven countries in South Asia, except India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, the infrastructure level of the other four countries is ranked outside the top 100. Tariffs and high costs and delays from transport are among the top 10 major factors in an analysis of the impact on the countries’ foreign trade [34]. Therefore, strengthening the construction of regional transportation infrastructure, reducing mutual trade tariffs through regional mechanisms, strengthening interconnection between countries, and establishing free trade zones will bring great benefits to the economic development of regional countries. For example, in terms of strengthening the construction of transportation facilities, SASEC attracts major international financial institutions through its own platform to strengthen relevant investment in member states. In 2020, the mechanism raised nearly $6 million from various sources, including Asian Development Fund and Asian Development Bank, to support the improvement of transport infrastructure in Nepal, Bangladesh and the region. According to statistics, in the 18 years from 2002 to 2020, the mechanism has received a total of $14.35 billion in related loans and free donations for regional countries. From 2015 to 2019, $7.035 billion of investment was injected into the region, which was $1.542 billion higher than the total investment from 2002 to 2014, indicating a significant increase in investment in the region [35]. Meanwhile, in 2020, the member countries of SASEC implemented a number of reforms to improve the ease of doing business in the region. At present, India is the highest ranked economy in South Asia, ranking 63rd in ease of doing business, followed by Bhutan (89) and Nepal (94). Bhutan ranks 30th in cross-border trading, making it the highest ranked South Asian country in this category (Figure 3). In addition, an important agenda in BIMSTEC is to establish a free trade area, and negotiations on the draft agreement are also continuing [36]. It can be seen that the sub-regional mechanisms, with the support of member states, continue to play a positive practical role.

However, it cannot be ignored that the complexity of the political game between major countries inside and outside the region hidden behind the mechanism will affect the different perceptions of major countries on the development of regional mechanisms. In South Asia, China 

Figure 3: Ease of Doing Business of SASEC

Data Source: Official Website of SASEC

hopes to establish a sharing mechanism in which all parties can effectively and equally participate in regional governance. For example, China’s initiatives of “Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic corridor” and “Maritime Silk Road” are not aimed at gaining regional hegemony, but at building a regional multilateral mechanism with equal participation and effective governance in which relevant stakeholders promote regional economic development and political stability. As for India, its core goal is to establish its dominant leadership in the region through institutions. In the current regional institutional competition in South Asia, India has always regarded China as its main competitor. In order to undermine China’s growing economic influence in South Asia, India, on the one hand, responds negatively to China’s initiatives of “Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor” and “The Belt and Road”, on the other hand, continues to use various sub-regional mechanisms to exclude China, so that China’s investment in the region has been subjected to various negative political influences. In the Mechanism of BIMSTEC led by India, China’s participation is obviously excluded. Therefore, China’s diplomatic strategy for South Asia should concentrate more on maintaining overall regional stability [37].

In addition, the South Asia sub-regional cooperation mechanisms may also aggravate the old division and confrontation among South Asian countries. Historically, the political and military confrontations between regional countries, especially between India and Pakistan, have been the main obstacle to the development of regionalism in South Asia, and it has also been an inducement for the emergence and revival of sub-regional cooperation mechanisms. At present, Pakistan is excluded from the sub-regional multilateral mechanisms led by India, which undoubtedly has a negative impact on the future development of the sub-regional cooperation mechanisms in South Asia. It is pointed out that one of the purposes of India’s push for BIMSTEC is to isolate Pakistan within the region [38]. For example, on the issue of counter-terrorism, the 2016 leaders’ meeting of BIMSTEC condemned the terrorist attacks on the India-Pakistan border [39]. However, Indian government has previously accused Pakistani government of supporting the relevant attacks. In addition, after Indian government announced that it would boycott the 19th SAARC summit originally scheduled to be held in Pakistan in 2016 due to terrorist attacks, Bangladesh, Bhutan and other member countries of BIMSTEC also joined the boycott. India’s isolation of Pakistan through the use of relevant sub-regional mechanisms is not conducive to regional peace and stability in the long run and will only aggravate the confrontation between the two countries, and fail to fundamentally solve the complex terrorism problem between India and Pakistan. In addition, the competition of sub-regional cooperation mechanisms may also weaken the awareness of South Asian countries to establish a unified regional identity and hinder the development of regional integration. From the development history of EU and ASEAN, regional mechanism is an important platform for building the overall identity of regional countries. In South Asia, due to the mechanism competition, regional countries are facing the challenge of building different regional identities. Taking BIMSTEC as an example, Pakistan, Maldives and Afghanistan are excluded, which makes the countries under the original SAARC mechanism have to face a new regional identity boundary: countries around the Bay of Bengal and non-countries around the Bay of Bengal. This undoubtedly greatly weaken the overall identity of South Asian countries.

After the Modi government came to power, India is taking advantage of the revival and development of the South Asia Sub-regional cooperation mechanisms to make itself the core leading country in the South Asian region, including the entire Bay of Bengal region. However, at present, the development of the sub-regional cooperation mechanisms in South Asia has a complex impact on South Asia, and their prospects are full of opportunities and challenges. If the sub-regional cooperation mechanisms in South Asia can bring enough economic cooperation opportunities to countries in the region and realize stable cooperative relations among major countries, they will undoubtedly be extremely beneficial to the exchanges and cooperation in the region and as well as in South and East Asia. However, the complexity of the development of regionalism in South Asia lies in the existence of various security conflicts between countries within the region, and various complex competition and cooperation relations between countries within and outside the region, which will not only weaken the existing regional mechanisms in South Asia, but also increase the construction cost of other multilateral cooperation mechanisms in the region.

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