Report of the Silk Cage-I Webinar on “From Corridors to Control: China’s Long Shadow in South Asia and the Indian Ocean Region”

This webinar, organized by the Stockholm Center for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs (SCSA-IPA) at the Institute for Security and Development Policy (ISDP), was held on February 17, 2026, as the first part of a series on the ‘Silk Cage’. This series seeks to address China’s expanding role in South Asia and the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). It revolves around the central question: where does connectivity end and strategic control begin? The entire webinar is available on YouTube.

This first webinar of the ‘Silk Cage Series’ situates South Asia and the Indian Ocean within China’s evolving strategic architecture. Moving beyond binaries of cooperation versus coercion, it examines how development, security, and narrative frameworks interact, and how China’s long shadow may shape the future order of the South Asian–Indian Ocean space. In fact, this webinar addressed the following questions in general:

• How do Xi Jinping’s Global Development, Security, and Civilization Initiatives shape China’s engagement in South Asia and the IOR?
• At what point does connectivity translate into strategic dependence and indirect control?
• How much agency do South Asian and Indian Ocean states retain amid China’s layered influence architecture?
• What are the implications of China’s land–sea strategy for India’s (and other countries’) continental and maritime security?