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By Akhilesh Pillalamarri
The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) raises several questions in the domestic Pakistani context.
China has recently extended Pakistan a much-needed economic lifeline, announcing infrastructure projects that could boost trade and investment. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) will connect the western Chinese city of Kashgar with the Pakistani port of Gwadar, in the province of Balochistan, near the Iran-Pakistan border. The project would give Pakistan’s poorest province an economic boast and China access to another route to the Indian Ocean and the Middle East, while connecting many Pakistani cities in between.
Many in Pakistan have hailed the corridor as proof of the eternal and amazing friendship between China and Pakistan, though obviously realpolitik is more likely at work here than anything. After all, a recent article notes that while China has proved a reliable and steady partner for Pakistan, many Chinese do not think highly of Pakistan. China has also proposed economic corridors the Indian Ocean through India and Myanmar.
International relations aside, one of the largest controversies surrounding the CPEC has been a domestic one in Pakistan. The controversy has arisen over the route of the corridor, and the only points of agreement are that it should go from Kashgar to Gwadar. Although politicians from Pakistan’s western and poorer provinces of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Balochistan expected the route to pass through their provinces, the final route actually ended up shifted east, passing mostly through the more prosperous and politically dominant Punjab (and to a lesser extent, Sindh) provinces.
Read the full story at The Diplomat