Guest Column | Horns of a Dilemma

Lt Gen. Vinod Bhatia (retd)

On 14 March 2013 President Xi Jinping took over as the president of People’s Republic of China, and also became a ‘paramount leader’, wearing all three hats simultaneously: the all-powerful general secretary of the Communist Party of China and Chairman, Central Military Commission, in addition to being the President.

Within 24 hours of assuming the office, Xi Jinping cleared the China-Pakistan Gwadar agreement, giving China 40 years of management rights to Pakistan’s Gwadar port. The management and control of the Gwadar port gives China the much needed strategic access to the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. It is open to debate by China watchers, that the immediate clearing of the Gwadar agreement is a deliberate move signalling China’s priority, or just a case of a project being cleared in the normal course wherein all process and formalities had already been completed.

CPEC
The idea of developing China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was first mooted by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang during his visit to Pakistan in May 2013. The idea gained impetus only after China publicly mooted the ambitious plan for an inter-continental Silk Route in March 2013. CPEC is pivotal to China’s ‘One Belt One Road (OBOR)’ as an instrument of China’s global economic reach and grand strategy. OBOR project has two components: first, the land-based ‘New Silk Road’ and second, a ‘21st Century Maritime Silk Road’. The strategic importance and priority of CPEC can be gauged by the fact that 51 agreements were signed amounting to USD 46 billion, during President Xi Jinping’s maiden visit to Pakistan, in April 2015. Chinese officials have called the CPEC a ‘flagship project’ of the OBOR plan, pointing out that the corridor provides a link between the overland Silk Road Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road (through Gwadar Port).

CPEC is a comprehensive development programme worth USD 46 billion. The road network entails the linking of Gwadar Port to Kashgar in China’s restive Xinjiang region through three alignments, the Eastern, Central and Western highways. In addition, this multimodal, multidimensional corridor will comprise railway links, oil and gas pipelines, and an optical fibre link. Infrastructure to be built includes 2,700-kilometre highway from Kashgar to Gwadar through Khunjerab Pass and the Karachi-Lahore motorway. The CPEC will also extend the Karakoram Highway that links Xinjiang with Pakistan’s northern region, Gilgit-Baltistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

The deep sea port of Gwadar is located at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, dominating the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 per cent of the world’s oil is transported. China is likely to invest another USD 1.62 billion on further development of the Gwadar port, constructing an expressway to link the harbour and the coastline, an international airport, as also nine more linked projects which are to be completed in the next five years including a 1,200 metres container and a 300-metre-long cargo terminal. A 1,800 km railway line is also planned to be constructed from Kashgar to Gwadar via Havellian which is already linked with the rest of the rail network in Pakistan. China will lay some 350 km of tracks from Kashgar terminus crossing the 4,730 metre high Khunjerab Pass mostly aligned along the Karakoram Highway, thus linking Pakistan with China’s rail network.

The CPEC project also envisages establishing 29 industrial parks and 21 special economic zones with 11 of these in Balochistan alone, along the corridor. The CPEC also includes power projects with an estimated 21,690 MW power production. Seeing the alignment, CPEC will run through Gilgit-Baltistan, which is an integral part of India by virtue of having been part of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) that acceded to the Indian Union in October 1947.

Fate Changer for Pakistan Pakistani and Chinese geostrategic concerns have historically remained largely congruent and converge around many common areas and bilateral interests. The relationship between the two countries mainly hinges on four shared areas of interest that include ‘economic cooperation, energy security concerns, internal security, and geostrategic interests to balance India.

China is the major beneficiary of the CPEC; however, Pakistan too is an equal partner and stands to benefit both in the economic and strategic domains. Pakistan has received USD 40 billion as military and economic aid from the US since 1950, of which USD 23 billion is post 9/11. China has now promised a package of USD 46 billion, mostly for the CPEC and allied projects spread over si