EDITORIAL: CPEC’s (China Pakistan Economic Corridor’s) 10-year journey has no doubt been one of game-changing infrastructure development opportunities for Pakistan, especially in regions down in the south that seemed doomed, for so many reasons, to be stuck somewhere in the last century as the rest of the country limped on.
This year also marks the 10th anniversary of BRI (Belt and Road Initiative), of which CPEC is the flagship project, designed to connect the Gwadar port on Pakistan’s southwestern edge with Kashgar in China’s northwest Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region; erecting energy, transport and energy infrastructure on both sides of the corridor.
This rush to recreate the fabled Silk Route to trigger development and commerce in the modern era is a godsend for Pakistan. It has already laid the foundation of infrastructure up-gradation and development, energy projects and industrial zones, modernisation of agriculture and development of Gwadar port, along with many other significant achievements.
Most notably, government figures show that the project has already created approximately 200,000 direct jobs in Pakistan, with ILO (International Labour Organisation) expecting that number to double in the coming years. This alone has deep implications.
It’s not only providing fresh employment opportunities for local youth, especially in Balochistan, but also encouraging the younger generation to pursue subjects – from engineering to economics – that will be in demand as CPEC matures further. This will create a vocationally trained workforce, especially in areas with very low literacy levels, and also bring other, wider benefits of a better educated society.
However, it’s also quite natural for mega projects to face their share of pitfalls and roadblocks; and indeed this one has been no different.
CPEC has occasionally suffered from irresponsible and uninformed remarks by government departments, which hurt the confidence the Chinese placed in Pakistan, and prompted senior officials to scramble to control the damage. Pakistan’s economic crisis has also often threatened to derail CPEC.
The historic collapse of the rupee and the unprecedented strain on forex reserves have led to missed payments, causing a lot of embarrassment to Pakistan and forcing revisions of numerous contracts.
Most of all, though, CPEC has suffered on account of security problems. Pakistan’s enemies have long leveraged proxy militias that litter the border areas with Afghanistan to disrupt the county’s economic progress. And by targeting Chinese workers time and again, they were able to freeze a number of projects within CPEC, to the point that the Chinese threatened to withdraw from some of them altogether.
Fortunately, though, the government has been able to work around most of these problems; and the Chinese have so far been very understanding. It was also in the CPEC years that China emerged as the largest foreign investor in Pakistan.
And at a time when the western bloc, headed by the US, is using institutions like the IMF (International Monetary Fund) to put the squeeze on Pakistan, it is extremely important to protect and nurture the game-changing partnership with Beijing; especially, since the Chinese are willing to invest in Pakistan when other foreign, and even local, investors are shying away.
These are also times when the international order is undergoing a profound metamorphosis. China has grown big enough to threaten America’s global financial dominance, and their inevitable confrontation has already begun.
This puts Pakistan in a very difficult position. It has had a long-term transactional relationship with Washington, which has been strained for the last few years. But it is also the most crucial part of the biggest, most expensive and most diverse international initiative that Beijing has ever rolled out.
Therefore, Islamabad will have to chart its way through diplomatic and financial challenges, which are bound to prop up as a result of this great international rivalry, very carefully and intelligently.
And no time better than the 10th anniversary of CPEC to realise that right now, when the country is fighting with a very real threat of sovereign default itself, the best bet is to prioritise Chinese investment – especially taking the corridor to its logical conclusion – above all the birds in the bush.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023