How China could benefit from Pakistan's 'dream corridor'

My article How China could benefit from Pakistan's 'dream corridor' appeared in Mail Today/Daily Mail

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For Pakistan, it was a dream come true.
When President Xi Jinping visited Islamabad in April 2015, he pledged an eye-popping 46 billion dollars for the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). While for Beijing the mega project was a vital element of the One Belt, One Road (OBOR), it was a ‘game-changer’ for Pakistan which would bring prosperity to the entire region.
It is true that Xi brought with him munificent gifts for Pakistan: the Chinese billions would boost Pakistan’s flagging economy with massive energy and infrastructure projects. This included an additional 12,000 megawatts to Pakistan’s national grid through coal, hydro and renewable energy projects.
The Corridor would have railways, roads, optical fiber cables, dams, pipelines, you name it! Observers the marveled at Beijing generosity (and wealth), but lately, the ‘beneficiaries’ have started realizing that the project may first and foremost benefit Beijing!
The architects of CPEC plan to build a 2,700-kilometre corridor stretching from Kashgar to Gwadar, which will link Central Asia (via Xinjiang) to Europe and Africa (via the maritime route).
Is it a boon for Islamabad?
Not everyone agrees, even in Pakistan. Salman Rafi Sheikh, a research analyst wrote in Asia Times: “The CPEC continues to look like a mystery, wrapped in an enigma. In the absence of agreements stipulating and documenting both countries’ interests, the CPEC is creating problems that would strip Pakistan of whatever benefits the multi-billion-dollar project promises.”
He continued: “Claims about CPEC’s ability to change Pakistan’s economic outlook appear hollow and unreal. …The question remains: what’s the game changer for the region when CPEC is changing nothing in Pakistan?”
The author certainly has a point.

Security
It is true that the Corridor faces several serious issues, security for example. Now, suppose the scheme becomes ‘unstable’ due to terrorism (presently localised in Pakistan, but which can be easily exported to Xinjiang), the cost of the project could tremendously shoot up. This deeply worries Beijing.
Last month, The Dawn reported that Pakistan has deployed 15,000 military personnel, “as part of the Special Security Division (SSD) and Maritime Security Force (MSF) to protect projects under the CPEC”.
Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed, chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on CPEC, noted: “Both forces will work under the interior ministry, in coordination with the provinces.”
The question is who is going to pay the bill?
Quoting military sources, The South China Morning Post affirms that the PLA would soon increase its fighting force to 100,000 personnel, “allowing for deployment in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa and Gwadar in southwest Pakistan.” Chinese troops in Gwadar, the main entry to the CPEC, is worrisome, to say the least.

The economy of the corridor
Recently Pakistan’s Public Accounts Committee asked for the details of rate of interest for the loans obtained from China.
The secretary of the Ministry of Water and Power gave some figures: there were 19 power projects under the CPEC with the capacity of 12,114 MW; out of which 3,960 MW from coal, 2,714 MW from hydro projects, 900 MW from solar projects and 4,260 MW from imported coal.
The amazing part is that after the COP21 accords, the planet is abandoning coal, but China is financing new coal projects in Pakistan ….with Chinese coal!
Beijing has agreed to provide a $ 6 billion loan for road infrastructure and Rs 2.8 billion for Railways ‘on lowest interest rate’. While these loans are at a reasonable 1.6% interest, in some other cases, they can be as high as 6 or 7%. Will Pakistan be able to repay these loans?
By including the cost of insurance, also paid to a Chinese insurance company, the cost of borrowings could surge to 13%: “Adding insult to injury, the government has already exempted income of Chinese financial institutions from dividend income tax,” said The Pakistan Herald.
Another issue is regional disparity: on February 28, Sardar Akhtar Jan Mengal, president of the Balochistan National Party-Mengal (BNP-M), accused Islamabad of getting funds for the project in the name of Gwadar while using them in one province only, Punjab. Mengal argued that the people of Balochistan, a province through which a major portion of the Corridor passes, have neither been consulted nor taken into confidence on CPEC projects. Other provinces, particularly Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (for the western route of CPEC) and Gilgit-Baltistan have similar views.

India’s position
As the project crosses Indian territory in PoK, the CPEC is unacceptable for India. Delhi cannot pretend that nothing is happening and forget about the legality of the accession of Jammu & Kashmir State to India.
Beijing has hinted that India should join the ‘global’ project, but China does not seem to be ready to implement what it is preaching.
After Tibet was invaded by China in October 1950, the traditional Himalayan trade routes were progressively closed down. An effort was done in 1954 to regulate the flow of people and goods through the 'Agreement on Trade and Intercourse between the Tibet region of China and India', i.e. the Panchsheel Agreement; however China was not ready to implement the letter or the spirit of the Agreement which eventually lapsed in 1962.
While China is adamant to not reopen the Himalayan land ports between India and Tibet, why ‘invite’ Delhi to join the CPEC bandwagon? There is no logic.
In any case, the Corridor is first and foremost a vital investment for Beijing, which is slowly ‘buying’ the strategic corridor; Beijing will soon control its new dominion, Pakistan. For India, it will be a game changer as it will then face China on two fronts, the northern and the western ones.
Modi Sarkar should ponder about this.

China playing with fire on terrorism issues

My article China playing with fire on terrorism issues appeared in the Edit Page of The Pioneer.

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Ambiguity on what constitutes ‘terrorism’ can have serious implications for the future of the Middle Kingdom, not only for its restive Provinces, but also for Xi's ‘dream' project of a China-Pakistan Economic Corridor

China is gambling. In this dangerous pursuit, Beijing can lose its stakes and more. It believes that Masood Azhar, the Jaish-e-Mohammed chief and Pathankot terror attack mastermind, does not qualify to be listed as a ‘terrorist’ by the UN; his case “does not meet the Security Council’s requirements”, says Beijing. At the same time, when convenient for the communist leadership, the peace-loving Dalai Lama is branded as a ‘terrorist’.
When asked the reason for China’s decision in the UN Sanctions Committee to place Azhar’s name on ‘technical hold’, Liu Jieyi, China’s Permanent Representative to the UN explained: “Any listing would have to meet the requirements for blacklisting. It is the responsibility of all members of the council to make sure that these requirements are followed.”
Beijing probably believes that it is its responsibility to block Azhar’s name, and this, at a time when China, one of the five permanent members of the 15-nation Council, assumed the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council (for April).
Hong Lei, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ spokesman supported his colleague in New York: Such issues should be based on facts and rules in an “objective and just manner.”
Though the UN banned the JeM in 2001, Azhar who masterminded the 2008 Mumbai terror attack has always been ‘protected’ by China’s veto power. In the long run however, it is doubtful if the gamble of defending terrorism will pay for Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Moreover, ambiguity on what constitutes ‘terrorism’ could only bring serious troubles to China, which has not hesitated to put the Dalai Lama on the ‘terrorist’ list in the past.
In December 2015, Zhu Weiqun, the Chairman of the Chinese Ethnic and Religious Affairs Committee told The Global Times that the Dalai Lama “exposed in his very bones, his sympathy or endorsement for Islamic State.” In an interview, the Tibetan leader had merely said that one should listen to the youth joining the IS to understand their motivations.
Zhu went on to say that the Dalai Lama has “never given up violence in his political way of life”. According to Zhu, he has been inciting Buddhist Tibetans to self-immolate. Ironically the Tibetan monk had told La Stampa, that Islam was a ‘religion of peace’. Today, for China, the Dalai Lama is a terrorist and Masood Azhar is not. In what kind of world are we living?
In March, after the Dalai Lama met some other Nobel Peace prize laureates in Geneva, Zhu affirmed that after receiving the prize, the Dalai Lama has been ‘increasingly rampant’ [sic] and has pursued “Tibetan Independence and violent terrorism, leading to the deadly riot in Lhasa on March 14, 2008.”
Reuters commented: “The attempt to identify the Dalai Lama as an Islamic State sympathiser also follows weeks of taunting on the part of IS, beginning in earnest with a full-page spread in the jihadi organisation’s magazine, Dabiq, announcing the beheading of Chinese hostage Fan Jinghui.” The IS had then released its first Mandarin-language jihadi ‘song’, urging Chinese nationals to join them in Syria and Iraq.
To club the Dalai Lama with jihad may not help Beijing to combat true terrorism. But, if Beijing is blind enough to equate the Dalai Lama and Masood Azhar, this could have serious implications for the future of the Middle Kingdom, not only for its restive provinces of Tibet and Xinjiang, but also for Xi’s mega ‘dream’ project of a China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
In April 2015, as President Xi arrived in Pakistan, The Washington Post remarked: “Xi arrived in Islamabad bearing real gifts: An eye-popping $46 billion worth of planned energy and infrastructure investment to boost Pakistan’s flagging economy.” A Chinese dream for Islamabad?
Billboards in Chinese and English were euphoric in Islamabad, the friendship between China and Pakistan was ‘higher than mountains, deeper than oceans, sweeter than honey, and stronger than steel.’
The CPEC will eventually link up Xi’s two pet projects, the New Silk Roads (one road one belt); the Chinese-sponsored port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea will be connected through the Karakoram Highway, to the Xinjiang Province in China’s Far West and Central Asia… and later Middle East, Africa and Europe. The ‘corridor’ will have railways, roads, optical fiber cables, dams (to produce the necessary electricity), pipelines, etc.
Observers are aware that Beijing’s kindness and generosity will ultimately and primarily benefit Beijing. Pakistan, China’s ‘eternal friend’, is the perfect ‘partner’ (or vassal?); it is geographically ideally positioned with an access to the sea in the south and to Central Asia in the north.
By buying Pakistan’s allegiance, Beijing believes that after linking the belt and the road, it will be able to control and dominate Asia.
Before he arrived in Islamabad, Xi wrote that the bilateral relationship ‘has flourished like a tree growing tall and strong’. It is very touching, but China should realise that it may not get only ‘good things’ from the project. For the terrorist groups, the doors to Xinjiang, already prone to Islamic fundamentalism (fired by Han chauvinism), will be wide open.
It is not only goods which will circulate faster on the dream corridor, Azhar and his friends are bound to open new recruitment centres in the ‘fertile’ land of Xinjiang. In February, an excellent article on Gwadar in The Guardian mentioned: “Ensuring security on long stretches of road in a Province wracked by a persistent, low-level insurgency is the biggest challenge to the CPEC. Fear of being outnumbered by outsiders from the rest of Pakistan is fuelling a violent rebellion in Balochistan.”
The populations around some of the CPEC’s nodes are already resentful of the Chinese; this could rapidly fuel more terrorism. For Pakistan, the value of the planned projects, if implemented, would be equivalent to 17 per cent of Pakistan’s 2015 gross domestic product. But has Islamabad (or Beijing) taken into account the gross domestic terrorism? By refusing to list Massood Azhar, Beijing has already lost a battle.
And it is really foolish for China to think that it can ‘purchase’ some of the terror leaders, like the CIA did with the Taliban decades ago. Everyone knows what happened to the US schemes.
During his recent visit abroad, Prime Minister Narendra Modi highlighted the dangers posed by terrorism to the world; if the UN is unable to address such crucial challenges, “the global body could be rendered irrelevant,” said Modi who rightly added: “The world was jolted by 9/11. Till then the world powers did not understand what India was going through.”
He further said that it was unfortunate that the UN was still unable to define terrorism. If it wants to play a significant role on the world scene, it is time for China to learn the definition of ‘terrorism’.
Perhaps, during his forthcoming visit to Beijing, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar could explain this to the Chinese leadership.