China's overland Silk Road and Maritime Silk Road Thread
- Thread starter SampanViking
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Brigadier
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How mega transport project will be a game-changer for Pakistan
he $56 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is one of the most important parts of the China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative for a stronger trade connectivity in the world.
OBOR is China’s ambitious project to revive the ancient Silk route for trade connecting China, Central Asia and Europe by developing three main corridors via southern, northern and central Xinjiang, which links China with Pakistan, Russia, India and Europe.
The mega investment project that connects Pakistan with China is called CPEC — and it is the most significant part of the "One Belt, One Road" initiative.
China has made commitments to invest around $56 billion (Dh205.5 billion) in CPEC involving development deals, which is equivalent to roughly 20 per cent of Pakistan’s annual GDP.
CPEC is believed to be China’s biggest ever investment overseas to build a 3,218km route by 2030, consisting of highways, railways and pipelines that will connect Pakistan’s Gwadar Port to Xinjiang province of China.
In total, the economic corridor project aims to add some 17,000 megawatts of electricity generation at a cost of around $34 billion. The rest of the money will be spent on transport infrastructure, including upgrading the railway line between the port of Karachi and the northwest city of Peshawar.
Key corridor
Development of Gwadar port, which would provide Beijing a firm and long-term foothold in the Indian Ocean, is an important part of the CPEC as this economic corridor will behave as a channel for the novel Maritime Silk Route that imagines connecting three billion people in Asia, Africa and Europe.
CPEC aims to revive the earliest Silk Road with an emphasis on infrastructure, and establishes the strategic structure of bilateral cooperation.
The project associates China’s strategy to improve its western constituencies with Pakistan’s concentration on enhancing its economy, comprising the infrastructure construction of Gwadar Port.
However, Pakistan will benefit more from CPEC. China has become the second largest trade partner of Pakistan and biggest investor in infrastructure, telecommunications, ports, energy sectors.
Furthermore, Chinese government and private companies from China have guaranteed to spend $20 billion in the energy sector and massive amount of above $30 billion in other sectors as a foreign direct investment in Pakistan, which will help promote trade between the two countries.
The recent development in Pakistan-China corridor makes Pakistan the first transit hub for the world’s second largest economy among South Asian countries.
Irrespective of the political and military consequences of this project, it has numerous benefits for the people of the constituency.
Pakistan, which suffers from continuous energy shortages and low trade with its neighbours, will be better-linked and will have sufficient energy.
From East to West
A Pakistan-aligned road network will enable contacts among its neighbours in the west and east. India and Iran require this corridor for closer cooperation with each other’s economy.
Even though the CPEC simplifies movement of goods and services in the region, China’s contribution in the region’s economy turns rivals into stakeholders in preserving peace and stability in the region.
The CPEC is not only a game-changer in the region but will also be a ‘fate-changer’ for the people of Pakistan.The CPEC will serve as a gateway for trade not only for China and Pakistan, but for the whole region.
Connectivity
Better connectivity in the region will improve trade among Pakistan, China, Iran, India, Afghanistan and the Central Asian Republics.
Pakistan envisages the CPEC as a peace enabler because when connectivity and trade increases between countries, they tend to avoid conflicts. Through CPEC, Pakistan’s Vision 2025 seeks to position itself from a lower middle income country to high middle income country by achieving the target per capita GDP of $4,200.
Through this project Pakistan will become the hub of business and trade in Asia, and western China will be able to penetrate Asian and European markets. It will cater to the needs of all federal units of Pakistan through proper rail and road network and multiple projects on energy within the next three years.
Pakistan is expected to be totally transformed this year. The CPEC also attracts foreign and local investors in the fields of high-capacity industrial units, factory–market road transportation and distribution services, rail-supported bulk transit of goods, dry ports along the CPEC routes, storage facilities for transit food and goods.
Pakistan and China are to soon conclude agreements for financing and construction of the Gwadar International Airport and East-Bay Expressway.
Impact on the job market
Nine economic zones have been identified to be set up in different parts of the country. Currently feasibility studies are being undertaken and financial agreements are expected to be concluded by the next Joint Cooperation Committee meeting later this year.
Based on the profile of workforce engaged on projects in progress, officials insist that over 80 per cent direct new jobs will be filled by locals in the initial years.
However, if the multiplier effect over the next 10 years is taken into account the ratio would be no less than 1: 150 i.e. for each Chinese national inducted in a job, 150 Pakistanis will be employed.
The best of all is that CPEC enjoys the support and backing of all political parties and segments of the establishment in Pakistan. Its popularity among the public is also set to grow when they will start benefiting from the project.
For Pakistan, it will release huge development dividends benefiting all aspects of people’s lives.
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Brigadier
Indian frustration with
by Yousaf Rafiq
If it weren’t apparent before, it’s quite in-your-face now. Not only will India not be part of CPEC, but it will oppose it. One could make a rational argument out of one of New Delhi concerns — that the entire project could put untenable debt burdens on the countries involved. True, investment is always a double-edged sword. Just ask the entrepreneurs who were going long and investing big just before the great recession of ’08. Their investments didn’t quite pan out, but that does not diminish the argument, nor practice, of progressive debt based investment. That was, after all, how the entire western market, not to mention western culture, was built.
But the other objection, which really rattles New Delhi, is its core concern, which can also be broken down into two parts. One, it involves Pakistan as the main constituent, of course. And two, CPEC stretch will pass right through the Kashmir region. That, in part, also explains the unprecedented violence erupting in Indian Occupied Kashmir for the better part of the last year. The use of pellet guns, constant curfew, forced disappearances, etc, all bear the hallmarks of a government in overreach, determined to have its way by force but unable to keep up the aggression in face of admirable rebellion on the part of the local people.
And all the while India whines — ironically to itself in the Lok Sabah since not many other parties are interested — a good 29 heads of state just congregated in Beijing under the One Belt One Road umbrella, of which CPEC is the cornerstone. While everybody from Putin to Xi to Sharif shook hands on the future of the region, India alone sulked, pushing itself further into a dark corner ever since it began trying to isolate Pakistan.
It will be interesting to see Delhi’s rhetoric as the project gets past the first few years and gets into the actual take off stage. For starters, in Pakistan it envisages streamlining agriculture, right from the seeding process to improved and enhanced market outreach — contributing directly to exports in the first phase. And, of course, it looks to completely revolutionise industry, improving output and, again, exports. The chronic problem with the budget always in the red might not last too long now.
CPEC is perhaps the last chance to turn things around, quite remarkably and in one stroke, for Pakistan and India
Then this infrastructural novelty will connect with similar up gradation around Central Asia, China, all the way to Russia. The long-term outlook focuses on trade, of course. In the momentum of the mammoth project few people are noticing that, should this program roll out unhindered and according to schedule, it is going to alter the regional commercial calculus beyond recognition. That is when a lot of those loans taken from sovereigns and financial institutions — that India so sincerely fears will choke all countries involved in CPEC — will be repaid most likely ahead of time. A loan is a bad loan only when it doesn’t trigger enough economic/commercial activity to meet scheduled repayments. Since CPEC is connecting countries into trade in ways not heard of since the days of the ancient silk route, and since so many countries and such large investments are involved, there is little likelihood of this project realising Indian fears and going belly up.
There’s another point that India is overlooking; or preventing. For much of the twentieth century, constantly bickering countries were encouraged to engage in long-term, mutually beneficial economic programs. The idea was that once mutual gains were seen rolling in, both sides had extra incentive to keep things from getting too hot. The ideal example of this remains the European Union, despite the hiccups it has been running into lately. Europe, ruined by the second world war — which was only the culmination of centuries of war between the continent’s great and small powers — was bound together in an economic alliance, which later took on foreign policy dimensions as well. There has been no war in Europe since the Union came into being.
The effort to tie Pakistan and India in the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline had similar ideals. The pipeline would have brought unprecedented dividends to both countries, giving them both a stake in a mutually manageable future. Sadly first India dropped out and then Islamabad too just did not have the guts to withstand international sanctions by partnering with Iran at that point.
CPEC is perhaps the last chance to turn things around, quite remarkably and in one stroke, for Pakistan and India. One reason India is so bitter could be Pakistan’s centrality to the project. But that owes to Pakistan’s geographical placement, and in no way amounts to a political favour by China. Yet even if Pakistan gets more glare there is plenty in the project for India and its hundreds of millions languishing in absolute poverty.
If anyone is guilty of playing politics at such a sensitive time, it is clearly India. And they have been at it since the day the present government took over in Delhi. First they insulted sincere Pakistani advances towards peace. Then they went about the whole world badmouthing Pakistan. And then they took up the ‘isolate Pakistan’ policy. And when that didn’t work they started finding faults with CPEC, even though they were very graciously invited by both Pakistan and China.
One would have thought that the world’s largest democracy was simply too diverse a polity to allow the extreme-right kind of irrationality that Modi has brought to Delhi. Yet things continue to go from bad to worse across Pakistan’s eastern border. Unprecedented violence in Kashmir, violence across the working boundary and LoC, and international anti-Pakistan campaign, silly crackdown on minorities, especially Muslim, etc, in fact show that the Indian government is clueless. The sooner Indians realise as much, the better, for themselves and the whole region.
Published in Daily Times, July 3rd, 2017.
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Brigadier
FATA Central Trade Corridor: Waziristan Central Trade Route at Pak Afghan Qila Ghulam Khan border open today.
: Pakistan will link Central Asia and Russia through One Belt One Road and CPEC . Signboard show Russia distance 4798 KM at Ghulam Khan Pak Afghan Border.
Equation
Lieutenant General
India can study how to "sabotage" CPEC all they want, the fact remains that they don't have what it takes to try to disrupt the growing economic corridor between China and Pakistan. Just a bunch of Indian sour grapes hyper ventilating.
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Brigadier
Next new LNG Mega project 1230 MW Haveli Bahadur Shah RLNG-based power plant ready for inauguration power plant will be inaugurated on trial production from Last week of this month.
The plant will be able to produce 750MW power in next week.1230 MW RLNG-based power plant installed at Haveli Bahadur Shah (HBS) near District Jhang has started test operation.
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Brigadier
Fifth nuclear power plant at Chashma Unit-4 (C-4) with 340 Megawatt (MW) power generation capacity has been successfully connected to the national grid
Unit 4 at the Chashma nuclear power plant in Pakistan was connected to the grid on 29 June. The Chinese-supplied pressurised water reactor (PWR) - the country's fifth power reactor - is expected to start up by the end of August.
A ceremony was held on 1 July to mark the unit's grid connection, China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) announced today. The ceremony was attended by representatives from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and CNNC.
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Brigadier
Patrind Dam Hydropower Project Completed !
This Project Patrind Dam in Azad Kashmir near is complete and ready for inauguration. The Dam will supply several hundred mega watts to Pakistan's central Grid and help reduce Load shedding.