China's growing influence in Asia poses challenge: Narayanan

CHENNAI: China's growing clout in Asia, including its "extremely close lips and teeth relationship" with Pakistan, posed a direct challenge to India's influence in the region, West Bengal Governor M K Narayanan said on Thursday.

"Apart from Pakistan, with which country China has a defence relationship, including an offer from Pakistan of a naval base at Gwadar, China appears to be getting a favourable response to its overtures in India's immediate vicinity, from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Myanmar. These pose a direct challenge to India's influence in this region,'' he said.

Delivering the Sixth Rajaji Memorial Lecture on "China and India: More Rivals than Friends" here, the former National Security Adviser said China had begun to display a great deal of interest now towards countries to its West.

"It already has an extremely close lips and teeth relationship with Pakistan, which includes both military and nuclear cooperation," he said, adding Afghanistan was the new thrust area for China which was prospecting copper and other minerals there.

"China has aggressively moved into central Asia exploiting its economic muscle....As the relatively weaker states across the region come under the Beijing shadow, the challenge before India is how to deal with this situation," Narayanan said.