Prime Minister (PM) Nawaz Sharif, during a consultative meeting, decided to form a steering committee to oversee the implementation of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor(CPEC). The committee will be headed by the PM while all four chief ministers, along with some key federal ministers, will be members of the committee that will meet every three months to review the progress. The meeting was convened to address the concerns and fears of the smaller provinces and, during the meeting, the details of the project, its route and the setting up of economic zones were the main subjects that were discussed. A consensus was reached to decide the setting up of the economic zones along the CPEC in consultation with the provinces and a new cell will be formed in the planning ministry for coordination and information sharing with the provinces. The PM assured the political leaderships of the smaller provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan that their concerns would be addressed.
It is pertinent to see what the CPEC will bring to Pakistan and what the fears of the provinces are. The CPEC is part of the six corridors that China plans to construct as part of its One Belt One Road initiative. It is an initiative of regional connectivity put forward by the visionary Chinese leadership to connect central China with the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean and, ultimately, the Atlantic. The six corridors include China-Mongolia-Russia, China-Central and West Asia, the New Eurasian Land Bridge, the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Corridor and China-Indo-China Peninsula Corridor and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
The CPEC is one of the first corridors whose construction has already started. The CPEC is a 3,000 km long corridor comprising of networks of roads, rails, railways and pipelines to transport oil and gas from Gwadar to Kashgar in northwestern China. The CPEC was proposed by the Chinese premier during his visit to Pakistan in May 2013 but an official agreement was signed between the two countries in May 2015 during President Xi Jinping’s visit to Pakistan. The CPEC intends to revive the ancient Silk Road with a focus on infrastructure development projects linking the regions of Asia, Africa and Europe.
The corridor presents huge economic prospects for China as well as Pakistan. It would provide China with opportunities to develop its western region by using the shortest and the cheapest route through Pakistan. While Pakistan will not only be able to develop the Gwadar port into our largest deep sea port but building rail and road networks, energy projects and foreign investment present huge future economic dividends for the state, which has been facing serious economic problems.
There have been technical as well as security related problems in the materialising of the CPEC. Building new infrastructure and realignment of the previous road network, especially of the Karakoram Highway, is a challenging task. Likewise, security concerns are also there and to tackle the issue of security a separate force has been allocated for the purpose.
Apart from these issues, the reservations of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa regarding the CPEC are mainly over its route. The work on the shorter and more desired western route passing mostly through Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa could not gain momentum while the eastern route, mostly passing through Punjab, has raised concerns of the province whose representatives also objected to the unfair distribution of economic projects that may contribute to sustaining the economy of the war-ravaged province. This issue has been addressed by the PM by establishing a steering committee that will consult the provinces for the establishment of economic zones and other related economic activities.
The concerns of Balochistan are different as it already has reservations over the distribution of resources among the federating units even prior to the CPEC project and a fear about change in the demographic structure of the province regarding the development of mega projects such as Gwadar, the main project in the CPEC. These concerns have been constantly there and are being highlighted again and again.
These issues can be resolved amicably as a consensus is already there to build the economic corridor and it has been further reinforced by the PM’s proposals to build an institutional mechanism to allay the concerns of the smaller provinces. There is a need to build a strong narrative regarding economic benefits that can be accrued given the completion of the economic corridor. These internal controversies will give rise to uncertainties about the lack of political will and shake the confidence of foreign investors. China and Pakistan both have high stakes in the completion of the project. For China, the CPEC is part of the largest One Belt One Road initiative while, for Pakistan, it is an important milestone to achieve economic prosperity.
The writer works at the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI) and can be reached at [email protected]