China's dream of a new Silk Road runs into hurdles at its first stop: Pakistan

[guest11]

Does your high IQ compels you too react without checking facts?

Not the first time either. Hence my reply.

https://defence.pk/threads/isro-sci...hium-ion-batteries.429554/page-2#post-8297953

 

[Hakikat ve Hikmet]

“A moth eaten Pakistan is better than no Pakistan”, Rahmetli Muhammed Ali Jinnah

I now can appreciate why Rahmetli Jinnah, even with lungs ailment at the terminal stage, turned quite fanatical to create Pakistan at any cost. And, how right he was!! If the Hindistanli trolls’ caustic comments with full of animosity and unabashed hatred at the cyber space get on the nerves, how could the Paks ever think of sharing the real space with these Na-Merhem folks, especially when they are the dominating majority? It’d have been like the replay of the situation of Beni Israel under Feraun. This simple realization may be enough to put the Pak folks into “feel good” or “high” mood – it’s otherwise quite expensive – whenever these trolls infest the PDF. And, every time they show up Paks can relive the ecstasy, Helal off course, of “Freedom at Midnight” moment…

As for CPEC, even it were like Pak’s paying 100b bucks from her own coffers to give a free pass to China, IMHO, Pak should go for it without any hesitation to take the sub-continental geopolitical game to the next level…

As for Ehl-i-Iman, our predecessors had to put up with the likes of Nemrut, Feraun or Ebu Jahil – let the trolls be their unworthy substitutes as far as our time and place are concerned…

 

[CriticalThinker02]

“A moth eaten Pakistan is better than no Pakistan”, Rahmetli Muhammed Ali Jinnah

I now can appreciate why Rahmetli Jinnah, even with lungs ailment at the terminal stage, turned quite fanatical to create Pakistan at any cost. And, how right he was!! If the Hindistanli trolls’ caustic comments with full of animosity and unabashed hatred at the cyber space get on the nerves, how could the Paks ever think of sharing the real space with these Na-Merhem folks, especially when they are the dominating majority? It’d have been like the replay of the situation of Beni Israel under Feraun. This simple realization may be enough to put the Pak folks into “feel good” or “high” mood – it’s otherwise quite expensive – whenever these trolls infest the PDF. And, every time they show up Paks can relive the ecstasy, Helal off course, of “Freedom at Midnight” moment…

As for CPEC, even it were like Pak’s paying 100b bucks from her own coffers to give a free pass to China, IMHO, Pak should go for it without any hesitation to take the sub-continental geopolitical game to the next level…

As for Ehl-i-Iman, our predecessors had to put up with the likes of Nemrut, Feraun or Ebu Jahil – let the trolls be their unworthy substitutes as far as our time and place are concerned…

You sir have a way with words that sometimes reminds me of old scholars of the past those who shaped our nation today, the likes of Shah Waliullah, Syed Ahmed Shaheed, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, the Ali brothers, Allama Iqbal, Quaid-e-Azam and many more, if they were alive today I'm sure they would be just like you guiding the nation forward.

I don't know what happened to our people after independence, the zeal and struggle that was so prevalent before has diminished alot after 1947, how could we have forgotten our own history so easily?, where are those nation builders that were so many each one greater than the predecessor a hundred years before the becoming of Pakistan, after Independence I can only think of one Dr Israr Ahmed Rehmatullah alaih, but when he passed away I remember clearly the Pakistani media was rather going crazy over Shoab Maliks marriage to that Indian Sania Mirza and not a single mention of him.

This is very good lecture that was later translated into English, you have to read it whenever you have time sir @HAKIKAT

http://thepenwrote.com/lessons-from-history/

 

[Wolfhound]

China's dream of a new Silk Road runs into hurdles at its first stop: Pakistan

Construction crews are building a metro line in Lahore, Pakistan, one of the first pieces of the new China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. (Shashank Bengali / Los Angeles Times)

Families were still at home when the bulldozers came. Children were returning from school exams. The residents of nearly 80 apartments were given hours to vacate Postal Colony — housing allotted to low-level postal workers — to make way for a new metro train station.
In a chaotic evacuation before the twin tenements were razed, residents pelted stones at police. Witnesses said one woman choked to death when her scarf got caught in the wheels of a moving rickshaw.
The mid-March scene in central Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest city, exemplified a growing outcry over a light-rail project that is being touted as a symbol of Pakistan’s economic development and its friendship with the financier, China.
The $1.6-billion Orange Line is one of the first major overseas infrastructure projects China is financing under President Xi Jinping’s vision of forging a modern Silk Road.
The ambitious plans for an economic conduit from the western Chinese hinterlands through Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe — mirroring the trade route once traversed by Marco Polo — begin in Pakistan, a cash-starved neighbor that has long been one of Beijing’s most reliable allies.
Chinese state-owned banks and industries have begun handing out $46 billion in investments to improve Pakistan’s roads and railways, develop several major power plants, create industrial zones and construct a massive new deepwater port on the Arabian Sea.
NEWSLETTER: Get the day's top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>
The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor represents Beijing’s biggest foreign development initiative and a direct challenge to India, Pakistan’s chief rival and the resident power in South Asia.
In Pakistan, it also has raised concerns over a lack of oversight in projects like the Orange Line, the first such mass transit system in the country.
Activists have filed lawsuits accusing the government of bypassing transparency laws, not fairly compensating evicted residents and ignoring the health and environmental effect of carving a 17-mile train track — nearly all of it above ground — through some of Lahore’s oldest and most densely populated neighborhoods.
Judges have blocked construction near 11 shrines, churches and historical sites. Yet the demolitions of Postal Colony and other adjacent properties continue. The chief minister of Punjab province, Shehbaz Sharif, promises the train will be completed by the end of 2017 — months before his brother, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, faces reelection.
In one closed-door meeting last fall, train opponents say a senior Punjab official accused them of threatening the China-Pakistan friendship, which he described as tantamount to treason.
“No other country in the world would have helped us so much,” Shehbaz Sharif said recently.
As China’s leaders try to manage an economic slowdown that has dimmed domestic demand for its industries, Pakistan presents a rare opportunity: an economically struggling nation of nearly 200 million people that is eager to let Chinese companies come in and build infrastructure.

The port of Gwadar, on Pakistan's southwest coast, shown here in April 2016, is the site of a multimillion-dollar Chinese development. (Sarah Titterto / AFP / Getty Images)

The port at Gwadar — a sleepy desert fishing town that optimistic Pakistani officials imagine as another Dubai — was handed over to a state-owned Chinese company in November. The economic corridor calls for a transportation network linking the western Chinese region of Xinjiang to the port, which would slash shipping times to Europe and could reduce Beijing’s heavy reliance on the sea lanes of Southeast Asia.

At least 14 Chinese-built power plants are slated to start churning out 10,400 megawatts of electricity within the next two years to ease Pakistan’s chronic brownouts. The country currently generates about 24,000 megawatts — less than the tiny South Pacific island of Vanuatu.

The corridor is “a project of mutual importance,” said Mohammed Nadeem Javaid, chief economist in Pakistan’s planning ministry. “It provides us breathing space and helps with our energy requirements. And what we give them is the shortest possible route to transport goods to the rest of the world.”
Pakistani officials have said the corridor will ignite industrialization in underserved areas such as Baluchistan province, where Gwadar is located. But security concerns in the province — home to a long-running separatist movement — and a desire for quick results have prompted both countries to shift more projects to Punjab, already the most developed part of the country and the Sharifs’ political power base.
Experts wonder whether the corridor will create jobs or breed white elephants — mammoth installations disconnected from needy areas.

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“If they don’t improve road connectivity, upgrade towns along the way and find a way to provide technical skills, the local people will do nothing more than repair the punctures on Chinese tires,” said Kaiser Bengali, an economist who has advised the Baluchistan government.
Long beset by corruption, terrorism and political instability, Pakistan has never seen so much foreign investment. And China has a history of over-promising: Of $66 billion in aid it pledged to Pakistan from 2003 to 2011, only 6% ever came, according to a Rand Corp. study.
For now, however, both governments appear enthusiastic about the partnership. In April, Shehbaz Sharif hosted senior officials from China Railway and China North Industries Corp., the state-owned companies leading construction on the Orange Line.

No other country in the world would have helped us so much.— Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif, on Chinese investment in Pakistan​

Billed as a solution to traffic woes in a city of 9 million people with only one other rapid transit system — a bus line — the train was not among the original initiatives for the corridor. It was added to the list after concerted lobbying by Sharif, who described it in April as “another gift from the government for the people” and “a model of transparency.”
He did not mention that China’s Export-Import Bank was financing most of the cost at interest rates that have not been officially disclosed — or that the project has faced serious opposition.

Demolitions began in August, four months before the loan was approved, triggering protests and lawsuits. In hearings before the Lahore High Court, Punjab officials have defended the project but declined to reveal basic details, including loan terms, citing its “sensitivity.”

Judges have at times responded with impatience. At a hearing in April, Judge Shahid Karim said the train “displaces millions of people and affects their vocations and livelihoods, yet their pertinent concerns were simply ignored.”
A judgment in the case is pending.

Analysts say operating the train — which will carry an estimated 250,000 riders daily in its first year — will require huge government subsidies. But its completion is seen as crucial to Prime Minister Sharif’s reelection bid.
“The government wants the train to be physically visible, and they want it to be done before the next election,” said Maryam Hussain, an activist and associate professor at the National College of Arts in Lahore. “But transparency takes a bit longer.”

In the past, China might have been deterred by such local controversies, but in this case, the allies’ goals are aligned, said Andrew Small, author of “The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia’s New Geopolitics.”

“China is pushing extremely hard for these projects to be turned around quickly,” Small said. “The fact that you have some additional political momentum in Pakistan to get some big, demonstrable projects done before the election in 2018 — I’m not sure China minds.”

There are greater concerns next door in India about expanding Chinese influence in the region. The world’s two most populous countries, both with growing economies, are jockeying for supremacy in Asia.

Kanwal Sibal, a former Indian foreign secretary, described the economic corridor as “a political and strategic provocation.”

Indian strategic planners worry that the Chinese navy intends to establish a base at Gwadar, which lies between India and the Persian Gulf. Indian officials were alarmed two years ago when the former government in Sri Lanka allowed a Chinese submarine and warship to dock less than 200 miles from Indian shores.

New Delhi has protested China’s plans to build a highway through the Pakistani-controlled portion of Kashmir, the disputed Himalayan territory that both India and Pakistan claim in its entirety. It also worries about the role of the Pakistani army, which has deployed 2,000 soldiers to protect Chinese workers at Gwadar, and whose intelligence apparatus India accuses of supporting cross-border terrorism.

“There is a concern in India that as China becomes more dependent on the Pakistani military for ensuring the security of these projects, that will give the Pakistani military more sway,” said Tanvi Madan, India project director at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Some view India’s decision to pour $500 million into developing Chabahar, a port in Iran, as partly a response to Gwadar.
A more sanguine reading of China’s role is that it will push Pakistan to promote regional peace and fulfill pledges to crack down on Taliban militants waging war in neighboring Afghanistan.

“The sheer scale of investment means … China will certainly have to care about things like political stability, development and security in general in Pakistan than they ever have before,” Madan said.

Living in the path of the Chinese-built Orange Line, Ali Rashid says, "All I see is destruction everywhere." (Shashank Bengali / Los Angeles Times)
http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-pakistan-china-snap-story.html

Seems to be nothing but a propaganda filled biased article. I live in Lahore and the situation shown here is exaggerated, only a very small amount of those affected have protested unlike the masses imagined here.

Letting yourself become a Chinese colony? Have them use your ports to make the big bucks while you scavenge for scraps? Hope that in case of conflict they will rush to your aid like they have done so in the past? That's your end game strategy?



It's Hindustan, turkroach. I know you muslims like to buddy up and stick up for with each other and that's fine and dandy. But don't be condescending. The average Indian couldn't care less which foreign country wants to set up shop in Pakistan. To even compare the two countries is silly. We look after our own interests, simply as that. So when neighboring countries tend to mend closer ties, it does raise questions.



Try squinting less, you might catch it.

(i)1.Becoming a Chinese colony? Really thats the best you have? Well you have outdone yourself in coming up with a shitty logic, If getting a large amount of investment from another country makes you their colony then every country in the world is a colony of multiple countries simultaneously, including india aswell bhai jan. 2.From the looks of the quality of your post you don't seem very smart, Now read this carefully, the main purpose of seaports is to facilitate ships and their cargo, it doesn't mean the cargo and ships of only the ports home country but for anyone who is allied with it for example india has been begging us to open our seaports to them so they can trade with afganistan. 3.The scarps you mentioned will be worth billions of dollars, the amount of scraps generated just from the use of the seaports alone will be enough to generate your need to use burnol. 4.The reason to why the chines gave us low level assistance was because they knew we could handle your petty military all by ourselves and the fact that our strategic alliance started in 1972 after all major wars with india were finished,so i really don't get your argument. 5.Our end game strategy as you put it is to become economically stable and become a better version of ourselves, whats yours except for crying?

(ii)1.What do you mean us Muslims? Well i must have been wrong the first time, seeing that you have come up with even shittier logic than before. Muslims like all other humans sympathize with people they feel they are somehow connected with, just like any hindu or sikh would come to back up a one of their own followers. Its the same as how you back Nepal and Mauritius both of which are hindu majority. 2.I don't think you fully understand the meaning of condescending as he wasn't being condescending towards indians anywhere in his post. 3.Now you and i both know that this is utter and complete BS "The average Indian couldn't care less which foreign country wants to set up shop in Pakistan". We can clearly see their interest from the simple fact that your media,military,politics and even your comedians are completely obsessed and revolve around Pakistan and its daily affairs, this wouldn't be so if your average indian couldn't care less about us. 4.Yes you do simply look after your own interests but you cant deny that fact that seeing a destabilized Pakistan isn't in your interests? 5. Raising questions isnt the problem your endless crying is.

(iii)Squinting lesser won't help anyone see a figment of your imagination.

 

[Kaniska]

If you can't make room by demolishing the old structures, how can you build new more feasible staffs? When the surgeon opens the chest and starts the bypass surgery it's all mess at the beginning. When he stitches up the chest, it's a remodeled heart beating. InshaAllah entire Pak will be turned into a giant construction site, and when it's all over, a new Pak will emerge. The same scenario has been being played in Turkey for construction means Medeniyet (civilization)...

I can't understand the mentality of Hindistan. Why Pak has to look ugly so that India looks beautiful. India is a civilzational country - she should have enough materials to beautify herself and present to the world irrespective of Pak. I don't think India is in a position to dent Pak-China alliance now - that train is steaming on at full speed...

Spot on...And to be honest it is applicable for both sides..One country's happiness should not be at the expense of others...I am not sure about others..but for me, i hope and expect this China Pakistan corridor to become successful...At least there is some positive development is happening in Pakistan..And it is a good news to bring prosperity in this region...

 

[Thorough Pro]

You just had to boast about indian underground facilities, otherwise your post makes no sense. You can't just dig under existing buildings to build underground transport system and building an underground system is at least 4 to 5 times more expensive and similarly takes at least 2 to 3 times more time to complete

The amount of $$$ that are being pumped into this project, would it not have been better to build the corridor underground obviating the necessity of demolishing buildings and the livelihoods of thousands of people?

To prevent such disruption, France and Britain have underground metro lines just to avoid the problems of overground construction . Many sections of Indian metro lines and stations are underground too. So what was the problem here?

For example, here's an underground metro station at Kashmiri Gate, New Delhi.

And Line 2 is underground for its entire length of 11km length. 14 stations on this line have been built nearly 15m below ground using cut-and-cover methods.

It's strange why this was not done in Lahore? Can anyone throw some light on this?

 

[OrionHunter]

You just had to boast about indian underground facilities, otherwise your post makes no sense. You can't just dig under existing buildings to build underground transport system and building an underground system is at least 4 to 5 times more expensive and similarly takes at least 2 to 3 times more time to complete

So, friend, is money more important than the lives of thousands of Pakistanis who will be displaced and their homes and businesses destroyed? Reflects on your attitude towards your fellow countrymen.

You can't just dig under existing buildings to build underground transport system

Really? Do you even have the faintest idea of what you're talking about? Most parts of London and Paris have an underground Metro System. And it's all under existing buildings!! Is there any special problem in Pakistan that this cannot be done?

 

[Jaam92]

Oh Nawaz and Similar will get more nah tuja kuch milaga Nah Mujaa

you better think yourself we know how to get our right for ourselves