China's overland Silk Road and Maritime Silk Road Thread
- Thread starter SampanViking
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antiterror13
Brigadier
Good stuffs and progress, very very good for Pakistan.
I am wondering how Pakistan would pay the loan (I assume from China?) ?
I am wondering how Pakistan would pay the loan (I assume from China?) ?
timepass
Brigadier
The overall Investment cross > $100 Billions.... However, +90% investment is on private partnership basis of companies from both sides & responsible for there on businesses.
Only around $ 10 billion is the direct investment on Road/Rail communication network.
timepass
Brigadier
**** termed the fastest BRI project****
President Xi Jinping launched the mega China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as part of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2015, and due to the high spead at which the projects are completed China has termed CPEC has the fasted BRI project. The project is worth approximately $ 60 million which incorporates roads and rail network, fiber optic cables, energy projects and establishment of Special Economic Zones (SEZs). Pakistan army has deployed thousands of personnel for the security of CPEC and government officials have vowed to take Pakistan amongst the developed nations.
says its large economic collaboration program with Pakistan has entered “the stage of early harvest", making it the “fastest and most effective" among all projects in Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI.
President Xi Jinping launched the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC, two years ago, during his landmark visit to Islamabad. Cooperation has since cemented decades-old relations between the traditionally close allies.
China is investing about $60 billion on a network of roads, railways, fiber optic cables, energy pipelines, industrial clusters and special economic zones in Pakistan.
The corridor will link China's western region of Xinjiang to the Pakistani port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea, giving the Chinese region the shortest trade route to international markets.
China's acting ambassador to Islamabad, Lijian Zhao, says that 19 CPEC projects worth about $19 billion are either completed or in progress.
“CPEC, as a pilot and major project of BRI, is now the fastest and most effective project among all the projects under the BRI,” he told a seminar in Islamabad.
He described the cooperation as an “unprecedented undertaking” in the history of China-Pakistan relations.
Economic cooperation connected to CPEC has employed thousands of Pakistanis and officials anticipate tens of thousands more will be hired in the next few years.
Gwadar is in Pakistan's Baluchistan province, where deadly attacks on CPEC workers have taken place in recent months.
Some critics in Pakistan have raised concerns about the viability of CPEC, while others have questioned its implications for the country. But officials dismiss the skepticism as unfounded.
“Despite (the fact) there is this criticism and noises here and there, after this four years of hard work and joint efforts of both countries, the CPEC has not been affected by those noises. I can report to you that CPEC is going on very well on the ground,” said the Chinese envoy. He did not elaborate further.
Most of the CPEC projects are in Baluchistan. Pakistani officials allege rival India’s intelligence agency is behind the militant attacks in the province in an attempt to sabotage the Chinese investment.
New Delhi denies the charge, but officials there have voiced concerns over the corridor because it passes through the Pakistan-controlled portion of Kashmir, which is divided between India and Pakistan and both claim the Himalayan region in its entirety.
Pakistan’s foreign secretary, Tehmina Janjua, while addressing the conference, explained security challenges facing her country’s project with China.
“May I point out, unfortunately, our eastern neighbor (India) has publicly announced its opposition to CPEC. The grounds they give for their opposition are baseless,” Janjua noted.
She went on to denounce India’s opposition as “appalling” for a project that she said would bring development and prosperity to the people of Kashmir.
“China and Pakistan stand shoulder to shoulder in developing CPEC on the agreed time lines. We will continue to march ahead with complete determination, ignoring the negative voices and forcefully responding to any threat to CPEC,” said Janjua.
The Pakistani military has deployed thousands of security personnel to guard the projects and protect Chinese experts and workers.
China has also rejected reported U.S. concerns China plans to turn Gwadar into a Chinese naval base.
Major infrastructure projects being established in the Chinese-funded port of Gwadar include a Free Zone and a new international airport that will be operational by next year, officials say.
While new highways are being built and existing roads upgraded to link areas under CPEC, a coal fired power plant in the central city of Sahiwal has recently been completed, adding 1,320-megawatts of electricity to Pakistan's national grid.
A second 1,320-megawatt coal fired power plant in the southern port city of Karachi is expected to be inaugurated by November at an estimated cast of about $2 billion.
China is also focusing on upgrading Pakistan's railways, increasing average speeds to about 180 kilometers an hour from the current average of 80 kilometers an hour, said Chinese envoy Zhao.
timepass
Brigadier
A Sour Grape Report: China makes Pakistan an offer it cannot refuse
MOVE OVER, DUBAI. Some day soon, cruise ships will disgorge frolicking pensioners not by the palm-fringed Persian Gulf but on the balmy Pakistan Riviera. From the muddy delta of the Indus to the barren Baloch coast, a twinkling constellation of attractions is set to rise: luxury hotels, water parks, golf courses, health spas, yacht harbours, night clubs, the works. To top it all, this “vacation product” will be developed in such a way that “Islamic culture, historical culture, folk culture and marine culture shall all be integrated.”
Or so promises a prospectus, drafted for the Chinese government by the China Development Bank, that sets out a detailed vision of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Billed as a flagship of China’s $900bn One Belt, One Road initiative to build an Asia-wide infrastructure system tying China more firmly to its markets, CPEC promises to inject some $60bn of Chinese investment into Pakistan. More than half is earmarked for power generation, but there is plenty left over for roads, seaports, airports, fibre-optic cables, cement factories, agro-industry and tourism.
For a country that has struggled to nudge its capital-investment ratio to 15% of GDP—compared with around 30% for India and 28% for Bangladesh in recent years—this gush of Chinese money comes as a godsend. Not only does it promise to energise the economy and fix such problems as chronic power shortages; it represents a strategic insurance policy against India. China has long been Pakistan’s chief arms supplier, and has quietly provided diplomatic cover and technical aid for its nuclear programme. As Chinese officials are fond of saying, China is an “all-weather friend”—unlike America, which has lavished some $78bn in economic and military aid on Pakistan since independence, but periodically gets stingy when Islamabad fails to curb terrorists.
Yet when Dawn, a Karachi daily, published excerpts from the CPEC plan in May, many Pakistanis were perturbed by what they read. Among other things, the plan envisages a big role in Pakistan’s agriculture for the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), an arm of China’s defence ministry that since the 1950s has spearheaded the settlement of Han Chinese in the western border region. It is administratively autonomous, running whole cities as well as giant farms and industries, and is responsible for about 3m people, organised in army-style units. Military training comes in handy when Xinjiang’s Muslim Turkic-speaking Uighur natives grow restless. “There is a hue and cry here when some town in Switzerland limits the size of minarets, but not a peep when China bans Muslim names, or limits the length of beards in Xinjiang,” notes a Pakistani journalist.
Mega megawatts
With solar power now cheaper than coal and gas, questions have been raised about China’s gung-ho investment in traditional thermal plants. Two 1,100MW nuclear reactors that Chinese engineers are building west of Karachi have raised environmental concerns. The giant seaside complex is just 30km from the centre of one of the world’s biggest and most densely populated cities. This particular reactor design has never been built on such a scale, and the power plants happen to sit atop the Makran Trench, a major faultline prone to severe earthquakes. In November 1945 a tsunami struck the coast nearby, washing away 4,000 people.
Factory owners are already complaining that a free-trade deal with China signed in 2007 has made their goods uncompetitive, and now economists fear that Pakistan may be mortgaging its future to Chinese finance. Other recipients of Chinese aid, such as Sri Lanka, have found themselves struggling to service their debts. “Whether those billions come in loans or FDI, the outflow will start within four or five years of the inflow,” says Kaiser Bengali, a Karachi-based development economist. “It’s a blueprint as clear as can be for colonisation.”
Pakistani officials scoff at such qualms. The document leaked by Dawn dates from 2015 and has since been revised, says Ahsan Iqbal, the planning minister; and the Karachi nuclear power station is being built to stringent safety standards. “Those clubs and casinos are not happening,” says Miftah Ismail, the investment minister. “And we are not just going to hand over land to the Chinese.”
India views China’s spreading footprints next door with dismay. Officials put on a brave face. The Chinese are naive, say some, and will end up getting stung by Pakistan’s generals just as the Americans did. Others hope that once China discovers how far Pakistan’s deep state is entwined with Islamist radical groups, it will show less patience than the Americans.
Privately, however, Indian officials worry that Pakistan’s new patron may play the same role as America once inadvertently did, or as Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent still does: to allow Pakistan to sustain the awkward status quo. “Indian leaders have always calculated that sooner or later Pakistan would have to seek a normal relationship with us,” says Ashok Malik of the Observer Research Foundation, a Delhi think-tank. “CPEC gives them a new narrative: it puts them in China’s sphere.”
Diplomatically, India has taken a tough line on China’s regional initiatives. The CPEC road, it claims, runs through disputed territory in Pakistan-held Kashmir. India has also sharply criticised China’s broader, pan-Asian Belt and Road Initiative as a boondoggle that will trap smaller countries in debt.
To Be Continued
MOVE OVER, DUBAI. Some day soon, cruise ships will disgorge frolicking pensioners not by the palm-fringed Persian Gulf but on the balmy Pakistan Riviera. From the muddy delta of the Indus to the barren Baloch coast, a twinkling constellation of attractions is set to rise: luxury hotels, water parks, golf courses, health spas, yacht harbours, night clubs, the works. To top it all, this “vacation product” will be developed in such a way that “Islamic culture, historical culture, folk culture and marine culture shall all be integrated.”
Or so promises a prospectus, drafted for the Chinese government by the China Development Bank, that sets out a detailed vision of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Billed as a flagship of China’s $900bn One Belt, One Road initiative to build an Asia-wide infrastructure system tying China more firmly to its markets, CPEC promises to inject some $60bn of Chinese investment into Pakistan. More than half is earmarked for power generation, but there is plenty left over for roads, seaports, airports, fibre-optic cables, cement factories, agro-industry and tourism.
For a country that has struggled to nudge its capital-investment ratio to 15% of GDP—compared with around 30% for India and 28% for Bangladesh in recent years—this gush of Chinese money comes as a godsend. Not only does it promise to energise the economy and fix such problems as chronic power shortages; it represents a strategic insurance policy against India. China has long been Pakistan’s chief arms supplier, and has quietly provided diplomatic cover and technical aid for its nuclear programme. As Chinese officials are fond of saying, China is an “all-weather friend”—unlike America, which has lavished some $78bn in economic and military aid on Pakistan since independence, but periodically gets stingy when Islamabad fails to curb terrorists.
Yet when Dawn, a Karachi daily, published excerpts from the CPEC plan in May, many Pakistanis were perturbed by what they read. Among other things, the plan envisages a big role in Pakistan’s agriculture for the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), an arm of China’s defence ministry that since the 1950s has spearheaded the settlement of Han Chinese in the western border region. It is administratively autonomous, running whole cities as well as giant farms and industries, and is responsible for about 3m people, organised in army-style units. Military training comes in handy when Xinjiang’s Muslim Turkic-speaking Uighur natives grow restless. “There is a hue and cry here when some town in Switzerland limits the size of minarets, but not a peep when China bans Muslim names, or limits the length of beards in Xinjiang,” notes a Pakistani journalist.
Mega megawatts
With solar power now cheaper than coal and gas, questions have been raised about China’s gung-ho investment in traditional thermal plants. Two 1,100MW nuclear reactors that Chinese engineers are building west of Karachi have raised environmental concerns. The giant seaside complex is just 30km from the centre of one of the world’s biggest and most densely populated cities. This particular reactor design has never been built on such a scale, and the power plants happen to sit atop the Makran Trench, a major faultline prone to severe earthquakes. In November 1945 a tsunami struck the coast nearby, washing away 4,000 people.
Factory owners are already complaining that a free-trade deal with China signed in 2007 has made their goods uncompetitive, and now economists fear that Pakistan may be mortgaging its future to Chinese finance. Other recipients of Chinese aid, such as Sri Lanka, have found themselves struggling to service their debts. “Whether those billions come in loans or FDI, the outflow will start within four or five years of the inflow,” says Kaiser Bengali, a Karachi-based development economist. “It’s a blueprint as clear as can be for colonisation.”
Pakistani officials scoff at such qualms. The document leaked by Dawn dates from 2015 and has since been revised, says Ahsan Iqbal, the planning minister; and the Karachi nuclear power station is being built to stringent safety standards. “Those clubs and casinos are not happening,” says Miftah Ismail, the investment minister. “And we are not just going to hand over land to the Chinese.”
India views China’s spreading footprints next door with dismay. Officials put on a brave face. The Chinese are naive, say some, and will end up getting stung by Pakistan’s generals just as the Americans did. Others hope that once China discovers how far Pakistan’s deep state is entwined with Islamist radical groups, it will show less patience than the Americans.
Privately, however, Indian officials worry that Pakistan’s new patron may play the same role as America once inadvertently did, or as Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent still does: to allow Pakistan to sustain the awkward status quo. “Indian leaders have always calculated that sooner or later Pakistan would have to seek a normal relationship with us,” says Ashok Malik of the Observer Research Foundation, a Delhi think-tank. “CPEC gives them a new narrative: it puts them in China’s sphere.”
Diplomatically, India has taken a tough line on China’s regional initiatives. The CPEC road, it claims, runs through disputed territory in Pakistan-held Kashmir. India has also sharply criticised China’s broader, pan-Asian Belt and Road Initiative as a boondoggle that will trap smaller countries in debt.
To Be Continued
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Continued
India and China have had cool but calm relations since their brief border war in 1962. Each country claims territory the other holds. India’s continued hosting of the Dalai Lama, who fled into exile in 1959, riles Beijing. For its part, India objects to China’s occasional use of its diplomatic clout, bolstered by a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, to block its ambitions. “Our economy is growing faster and our population is about to overtake theirs,” says an Indian diplomat, “But they still treat us like some poor, skinny appendage to Asia.”
Even so, the virtually impenetrable barrier of the Himalayas has generally allowed the rivals to agree to disagree. Bilateral trade is around $80bn a year, five times as much as China’s trade with Pakistan; China is India’s leading trade partner.
India is trying to preserve its own sphere of influence in South Asia through projects such as building roads and bridges in Bangladesh, hydroelectric plants in Nepal and ports and railways in Sri Lanka. But it struggles to match the largesse of China, which not only has a GDP five times India’s but also a leadership that does not have to answer to voters. Last October Xi Jinping, on the first visit to Bangladesh by a Chinese president in 30 years, pledged $24bn in loans, credits and infrastructure projects. India responded with a generous new aid package of its own.
In its effort to remain a strong, independent player, India is trying to perform a fine balancing act. But Dhruva Jaishankar of the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, reckons China may not be taking much notice: “When they talk about how America has declined and this has become a multipolar world, what they actually mean is, China is the new pole.”
This article appeared in the Special report section of the print edition under the headline "One Lifebelt, One Road"
India and China have had cool but calm relations since their brief border war in 1962. Each country claims territory the other holds. India’s continued hosting of the Dalai Lama, who fled into exile in 1959, riles Beijing. For its part, India objects to China’s occasional use of its diplomatic clout, bolstered by a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, to block its ambitions. “Our economy is growing faster and our population is about to overtake theirs,” says an Indian diplomat, “But they still treat us like some poor, skinny appendage to Asia.”
Even so, the virtually impenetrable barrier of the Himalayas has generally allowed the rivals to agree to disagree. Bilateral trade is around $80bn a year, five times as much as China’s trade with Pakistan; China is India’s leading trade partner.
India is trying to preserve its own sphere of influence in South Asia through projects such as building roads and bridges in Bangladesh, hydroelectric plants in Nepal and ports and railways in Sri Lanka. But it struggles to match the largesse of China, which not only has a GDP five times India’s but also a leadership that does not have to answer to voters. Last October Xi Jinping, on the first visit to Bangladesh by a Chinese president in 30 years, pledged $24bn in loans, credits and infrastructure projects. India responded with a generous new aid package of its own.
In its effort to remain a strong, independent player, India is trying to perform a fine balancing act. But Dhruva Jaishankar of the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, reckons China may not be taking much notice: “When they talk about how America has declined and this has become a multipolar world, what they actually mean is, China is the new pole.”
This article appeared in the Special report section of the print edition under the headline "One Lifebelt, One Road"