*ISLAMABAD:* China has strongly refuted suggestions its multibillion-dollareconomic corridor now under construction with Pakistan has ‘hidden’military designs as well.
“I want to make it very clear: BRI initiative and with CPEC under it, it’spurely a commercial development project. We don’t have any kind of militaryor strategic design for that,” said Chinese ambassador to Islamabad YaoJing.
Beijing has pledged to invest about $63 billion in Pakistan by 2030 todevelop ports, highways, motorways, railways, airports, power plants andother infrastructure in the neighboring country, traditionally a strongally.
The Chinese have also expanded and operationalized the Pakistani deep waterport of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea, which is at the heart of the massivebilateral cooperation, known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor(CPEC). The strategically located port is currently being operated by aChinese state-run company.
China has positioned CPEC as the flagship project of its $1-trillion globalBelt and Road Initiative (BRI) championed by President Xi Jinping.
The ambassador said within five years of finalizing and launching CPEC, 22‘early harvest’ projects out of the 43 total projects under CPEC have beencompleted or are under construction, with a total investment of around $19billion, the largest influx of foreign investment in Pakistan’s 70-year-oldhistory. The projects have already brought 60,000 local jobs andeffectively addressed the country’s once crippling energy crisis.
Power plants built under the joint venture, officials say, will have addedmore than 10,000 megawatts of electricity to the national grid by June,leading to a surplus of power.
The Chinese diplomat urged the United States and India to ‘come to the CPECproject’ and ‘witness the progress on the ground’ for themselves, saying itwill enable them overcome misunderstandings vis-a-vis CPEC. “There are somekind of doubts that may be there are some things hidden in it. I think thatwhen you have an objective lens to look at this project and to come to theground to find this progress on the ground then you may have a betterunderstanding of what we are doing here,” he said, while speaking to theVOA.
The ambassador explained that a state-to-state defense-related cooperationhas for decades existed between the two allied nations and China through‘normal channels’ is determined to contribute to ‘military and strategicability’ of Pakistan. “We don’t want to make the CPEC as such a kind ofplatform,” he emphasized. However, he added, it is ‘natural andunderstandable’ that the project’s massive size and design has raiseddoubts and suspicions about its aims.
“Basically, it is for China and Pakistan to make this project a successfuleconomic project, then we can make it clear our intention here,” Jing said.
CPEC aims to link the western Chinese region of Xinjiang to Gwadar,allowing ships carrying China’s oil imports and other goods from thePersian Gulf to use a much shorter and secure route and avoid the existingtroubled route through the Strait of Malacca.
There are currently up to 10,000 Chinese nationals working on CPEC-relatedprojects in Pakistan. Ambassador Jing said that 21 new mega projects,including the establishment of Special Economic Zones across the country,are ready to be launched in the next stage with particular emphasis onencouraging private engagement.
In the next five to seven years, officials estimate, CPEC will have createdemployment for half-a-million Pakistanis. The country’s troubled economy,lately impacted by insecurity and energy crisis, has grown 5.4 percent inthe previous financial year, the fastest rate in a decade, and officialsforecast the expected growth in the year ending June 2018 will be sixpercent.
“China will never leave Pakistan. I shall say we have confidence in thefuture of Pakistan,” said Ambassador Jing, when asked whetherterrorism-related concerns might also push Beijing away from Islamabad.