PAGE Blog Business Weekly Magazine
The Chinese president’s Pakistan visit is water shed in bilateral relations, calculated to trigger collaboration at a level substantially more meaningful than Pak-US partnership spanning over a decade. President Xi Jinping of China during his two-day visit to Pakistan pledged $46 billion worth of energy and infrastructure projects. This amount is three times the entire foreign direct investment the country has received since the last seven years’ time. Though many say that the investment is aimed at China’s increasing need to control maritime trade routes but it is also a fact that it would bring the prosperity in the country and the proposed trade corridor would pull off an economic miracle in Pakistan.
If one looks at the fields in which Chinese are going to invest it comes to light that maximum money is going to be spent in the energy sector— some $15.5 billion worth of coal, wind, solar and hydro energy projects—those would be completed by 2017 resulting into adding 10,400 megawatts of energy to Pakistan’s national grid that would certainly lessen the miseries of Pak people suffering from the load shedding and giving relief to industry.
About US $44 million optical fiber cable between the two countries is also due to be built while the most important is improvement in the military relationship of the two country as a $4 to 5 billion defense agreement has also been signed helping providing eight latest submarines to Pakistan Naval forces.
Contrary to this look into the ‘US blessings’ on Pakistan — the country remained a strong ally of the America since long and there is no doubt in it that the US win in Afghanistan against the USSR is purely because of Pakistan and she has paid a lot because of it as the Kalashnikov and heroine culture is a gift of that war.
Pakistan was also a front line soldier in American war on terror after 9/11. The American announced to give US$7.5 billion in five years under KLB (Kerry-Lugar-Berman Act) — an amount that was not fully given to Pakistan. According to a report only US$ 3.3 billion has been given. Pertinent to mention here is that about an amount of US$3 billion had been spent by USAID contractors meaning thereby mistrust on Pakistan. Noteworthy point is that Pakistan had to suffer a loss of US$ 80 billion in war on terrorism.
Chinese government has lent a helping hand without conditions. The opponent of the two nations’ agreement find nothing bad in it but claim that implementation on the project is difficult because of “…chronic problems with militancy, separatism, political volatility and official corruption.
China is worried about violence from ethnic Uighurs in its mostly Muslim north-western Xinjiang region and fears hardline separatists could team up with Uighur militants fighting alongside members of Pakistan’s Taliban.
In Pakistan, a decade-old separatist insurgency in Balochistan province, where the economic corridor starts, makes that area extremely volatile. Many observers believe, however, that the incentive of an economic miracle may make Islamabad work harder to stabilize the situation.
Despite these fears the US media is forced to admit that it is the biggest help from China to Pakistan that will result into lessen the American influence in Pakistan.
Jane Perlez of New York Times wrote from Beijing: “China’s President, Xi Jinping, travels to Pakistan laden with tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure and energy assistance on a scale the United States has never offered in the past decade of a close relationship, a gesture likely to confirm the decline of American influence in that nation.”
She quoted a Pakistani politician saying, “The Chinese are stepping in, in a much, much bigger way than the United States ever contemplated,” said Jahangir Tareen, a Pakistani businessman, and the secretary general of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party. “The assistance is far, far more than the United States government offered under the United States Agency for International Development.”
It is a fact that the US considers herself a superior nation and thinks the Pakistan is an inferior nation but the Chinese proved that they are friends, not masters.
