Pakistan could not have chosen a worse time to escalate issues with India. It is a measure of the lack of authority in the hands of the civilian Pakistan government that crucial decisions such as pressing the accelerator on fuelling terror in Jammu and Kashmir are taken by the military rather than the government of the day.
The Chinese are at this point of time itching to get on with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) which would not only give their economy a big boost but also give them a huge strategic advantage in establishing their hegemony in the region. The 3,218 kilometre route will connect Kashgar in China’s western Xinjiang region to the port of Gwadar in Pakistan.
Currently, nearly 80 per cent of China’s oil is transported by ship from the Strait of Malacca to Shanghai, a distance of more than 16,000 km, with the journey taking between two and three months. But once Gwadar begins operating, the distance would be reduced to less than 5,000 km.
To make the corridor a reality the Chinese needed peace but the Pakistanis have upset their calculations. The Balochis have been seething in anger at the unfair treatment they get at the hands of the Punjabi-dominated government and the army in Pakistan. That a section of them have made common cause with the Indian government in a bid to eventually break away from an overbearing and persecuting Pakistan is bad news for the Chinese who were looking for a hassle-free climate in the areas forming part of the proposed economic corridor.
A free Balochistan may not become a reality in the foreseeable future but a province seething with unrest and anger can hardly provide a congenial atmosphere for the Chinese to set up facilities and use the area for transit to the sea. The Gwadar port that China is hoping to use as a pathway to the sea is in Balochistan province and the Pathans of the area are no pushovers. They are excellent fighters and have a history of independent-mindedness. There is indeed no guarantee that disgruntled Balochis will not put roadblocks in the way of the project.
At a recent New York meeting Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang had with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on the sidelines of Sharif’s address to the UN General Assembly, Li said he hoped that Pakistan would continue to provide safety protection to the programme construction and to Chinese personnel in Pakistan.
There was concern in India over reports in Pakistani media claiming Beijing’s support for the country in the event of any aggression and backing it on the Kashmir issue. But the Chinese foreign ministry has ridiculed those reports which were attributed to the Chinese consul-general in Lahore.
In what was clearly a conciliatory tone the spokesman said, “As a neighbour and friend, China once again appealed to India and Pakistan to engage in dialogue to ‘properly’ resolve disputes, including the Kashmir issue which it said was left over from history, and jointly work towards regional peace and stability.
Evidently, it is in China’s interest to de-escalate the Indo-Pak tension in the endeavour to make the economic corridor functional.
The Chinese are known to strategically take two steps forward, so it is entirely possible that they are indulging in double-speak but it is equally possible that the Pakistan media deliberately misquoted the consul-general or that the latter exceeded his brief.
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had raised the issue of the economic corridor again with Chinese president Xi Jinping during their bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Hangzhou in eastern China. Modi is learnt to have told Xi that terrorism was being exported to India from the same region through which the CPEC passes.
The ambitious China-Pakistan Economic Corridor programme has two main components. First, it plans to develop a new trade and transport route from Kashgar in China to Gwadar Port in Pakistan’s western province of Baluchistan. Second, it envisages developing special economic zones along the route, including power projects.
The first-phase projects will receive $45.69bn in concessionary and commercial loans, for which financial facilitation to the Chinese companies is being arranged by the Silk Road Fund. These include $33.79bn for energy projects, $5.9bn for roads, $3.69bn for railway network, $1.6bn for Lahore Mass Transit, $66m for Gwadar Port and $4m for a fibre optic project. The Pakistanis are indeed salivating at the prospect.
Controversy has stemmed over allocation of funds/projects based on population density. According to this formula, Baluchistan, the least populated and least developed province would get the smallest share in terms of investment and benefits in the overall project, leading to a vicious cycle of poverty there.
While Balochistan is Pakistan’s least developed province and its Gwadar port is going to play a central role in the CPEC by providing China a shorter trade route, the province itself has been allocated a mere eight projects as against Punjab getting 176 and Sind 103. Naturally, nationalist forces in Balochistan are up in arms against this step-motherly treatment.
What has added fuel to this controversy is the absence of clear information about CPEC, which is a deliberate decision. There is little public information and disclosure as to what will be built, how it will be financed — how much through loans and how much through grants and on what terms and from whom — and who will implement the various parts of the corridor, which includes roads, railway lines, pipelines and other infrastructure.
It goes without saying, then, that all this does not bode well for the take-off of the ambitious project.
