China Pakistan Economic Corridor (China-Pakistan Relations)

 China Pakistan Economic Corridor

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (Urdu: پاكستان-چین اقتصادی راہداری‎, English: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor, CPEC) was proposed by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang when he visited Pakistan in May 2013. The original intention is to strengthen exchanges and cooperation in the fields of transportation, energy and ocean between China and Pakistan, strengthen the interconnection between the two countries, and promote the common development of the two countries. The project was launched on April 20, 2015.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, through all-round and multi-field cooperation, will help to further close and strengthen the China-Pakistan all-weather strategic partnership. It is not only a model project and flagship project of China’s “Belt and Road” initiative, it also provides Pakistan’s development Important opportunity. Currently, the construction of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor has achieved initial results, but at the same time it still faces many risks and challenges. Only by fully understanding, fully evaluating, and actively responding to risks can we promote the construction of the corridor to achieve substantial results.

In May 2013, Premier Li formally proposed the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor's long-term plan during his visit to Pakistan, based on assisting Pakistan in the expansion and upgrading of infrastructure, aiming to promote and deepen cooperation between the two countries in the fields of energy, security, and economy. Effective docking of development strategies. In 2015, China-Pakistan relations upgraded from a strategic partnership to an all-weather strategic partnership. Among them, taking the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor as the lead, focusing on Gwadar Port, energy, transportation infrastructure and industrial cooperation, forming a "1+4" economic cooperation layout. This is the key content of China-Pakistan's pragmatic cooperation to jointly build a "community with a shared future."

West Middle East Line

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project is divided into three routes: east, central and west, and the west route is determined as the priority route after coordination by various parties in Pakistan. The west route of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor starts from Gwadar and passes through Turbat, Panjgur, Nag, Basima, and Solaba in Balochistan. Sorab, Qalat, Quetta, Qilla Saifullah, Zhob enter Dra Ismail Khan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (Dera Ismail Khan), Hassan Abdal, and finally reached Islamabad. [6] The Eastern Route program leaves Mansehra on the Karakoram Highway, enters Punjab via Islamabad, passes through Lahore until Multan, and then along the woods Proceed on the M-9 highways from Hyderabad and Karachi, and finally arrive at Gwadar Port along the N-10 coastal highway from Karachi to Gwadar Port in Sindh Province.

Strategic Plannings

The governments of the two countries have preliminarily formulated a long-term plan for the construction of a "four-in-one" channel covering highways, railways, oil and gas pipelines and optical cables from Kashgar City in Xinjiang to Gwadar Port, a southwest port in Pakistan. China and Pakistan will build transportation and power facilities along the route. The total project cost is estimated to reach 45 billion U.S. dollars, and it is planned to be completed in 2030. Experts said that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor plan not only covers the construction and connection of "passages", but more importantly, it drives the two sides to carry out major projects along the corridor, infrastructure, energy resources, agricultural water conservancy, information and communications, etc. Cooperation in multiple fields will create more industrial parks and free trade zones. China and Pakistan will jointly plan the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Whether the planned China-Pakistan Economic Corridor will pass through the Indian-controlled Kashmir is yet to be studied.

China will help Pakistan upgrade the country’s "Route 1" and extend it northward, connecting to Kashgar via the China-Pakistan border port of Khunjerab. Pakistan’s No. 1 railway line runs from Karachi to the north via Lahore, Islamabad and Peshawar, with a total length of 1,726 kilometers. It is the most important north-south railway line in Pakistan. Haweilian Station is the northern end of Pakistan’s railway network. The planned construction will extend northward through the China-Pakistan border port Khunjerab to Kashgar Railway. Haweilian plans to build a dry port mainly for container business. The upgrade of the No. 1 railway trunk line and the construction of the Haweilian dry port are priority projects in the transportation infrastructure field of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor as determined by the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor Joint Cooperation Committee.

There is no railway line in western Pakistan, where Gwadar is located. Upgrading the existing railways in the east is a more convenient and cheaper option. As for whether a railway to Gwadar Port will be built in the future, there is no specific plan for which route the railway will take. On April 20, 2015, during the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Pakistan, Lu Dongfu, Director of the National Railway Administration, and Parvin Agha, Secretary of State of the Ministry of Railways of Pakistan and Chairman of the Railway Committee, signed the "National Railway Administration of the People's Republic of China and Pakistan Framework Agreement of the Ministry of Railways of the Islamic Republic on the Joint Feasibility Study on the Upgrade of Route 1 (ML1) and the Construction of Havilian Dry Port