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The real value of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor
The real value of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor
“China would give up gold but never its friendship with Pakistan,” Hu Jintao, the former president of the people’s republic, once said. Xi Jinping, his successor, took this to the next level with the establishment of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) connecting Xinjiang to the north Arabian Sea, at a cost of more than $50 billion.
The Pakistani port of Gwadar provides China with a unique — and short — route for trade and commerce. Besides the array of huge infrastructure projects across Pakistan, Beijing has set higher goals. China seems well on its course to achieving its dream of becoming a powerful country — shang shan ruo shui, which means “highest good like water," water being a symbol of benevolent power in the Chinese language — by 2050.
To Bertrand Russell, the idiom “xin ping qi he,” which means calmly and without stress, depicted peacefulness as the finest characteristic of the Chinese nation. As much as Beijing has tried to avoid full-scale wars or occupations, relying on resolving disputes through diplomacy, the compulsions of geoeconomics and geopolitics require certain adjustments.
For any economic power, and more so for an aspiring superpower, the safety of shipping lanes is a matter of national security. With increasing US interference in Southeast Asia, and Indian aspirants to do Washington’s bidding, China cannot afford to wait and see what happens. In the past decade, rival navies in the Pacific and the Indian oceans have been expanding and modernizing at an unusually high pace. While Japan has armed itself with helicopter carriers, India has rented Russian nuclear-powered submarines.
China has so far added two aircraft carriers to an assortment of offensive and defensive military craft.
When its ships sail to the Makran coast, the vessels need freedom of navigation, especially when India operates a nearby port, Chahbahar, in Iran. To the calm shores of Pakistan, it meant dealing with its share of trouble from the South China Sea.
Beijing’s ability to conduct trade and ensure the safety of its maritime lanes is increasingly worrying for its rivals. Was the Gwadar port deal and CPEC worth the headache? The answer is undoubtedly yes, a conclusion backed by decades of history.
Though never tied by a defense treaty, Pakistan and China have stood shoulder-to-shoulder since the former’s independence. Soon after addressing boundary-demarcation issues, the Indo-Sino war of 1962 and the Pakistan-India war of 1965 reiterated the mutual need for stronger defense ties.
After bagging the honor of becoming the first non-communist airline to fly to China, Pakistan International Airlines pulled off another coup when it carried US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to Peking in July 1971. The secret flight led to a normalization of Sino-America relations. Decades later, Washington is snubbing Islamabad for a deepening of ties with Beijing.
By 2025, Gwadar port will be operating at full capacity for cargo containers as well as oil tankers. Just a few nautical miles from the Iranian border, and in close proximity to the India-run Chahbahar port in Iran, there is an air and naval base in Jiwani from which China will keep watch, alongside Pakistan’s armed forces.
Naveed Ahmad
With the US firmly by its side, India has cemented multifaceted ties with Iran, following up on a security pact signed in January 2003 and revised and upgraded last month. Even though Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javed Zarif downplayed the Chinese accord with Pakistan, it was impossible to hide the elephant in the room. Last week, a Chinese official uncharacteristically confirmed to The South China Morning Post (SCMP) the sale by Beijing to Pakistan of a “highly sophisticated large-scale optical tracking and measurement system” that not only guides missile defense system but also enhances the performance of ballistic missiles.
The SCMP reported: “It (the system) usually comes with a pair of high-performance telescopes equipped with a laser ranger, high-speed camera, infrared detector and a centralized computer system that automatically captures and follows moving targets. The device records high-resolution images of a missile's departure from its launcher, stage separation, tail flame and, after the missile re-enters the atmosphere, the trajectory of the warheads it releases.”
Such technology transfers between the two countries have a deep and long history. During the mid-1980s, the US reportedly complained to Pakistan about the sharing with China of vital technological details of F-16 jets. Islamabad denied the allegation, deflecting the blame toward Israel. In the 1990s, Tel Aviv’s abandoned US-assisted development of a IAI Lavi jet allegedly led to the creation of China’s J-10 fighter jet. The Pakistan Air Force’s close cooperation is seen as offering real value to its Chinese counterpart in terms of warfare tactics against technologically superior fighter jets.
Though officials deny it, academics and physicists believe Pakistan’s know-how in uranium enrichment might also have helped China significantly. Understandably, their strategic ties are shrouded in secrecy, thus becoming more susceptible to conjecture.
Thanks to the failed US Operation Infinite Reach in August 2008, Pakistan and China were able to get their hands on intact Tomahawk cruise missiles in Kharan and Khost, respectively. The know-how gained from them helped the allies refine their own missile programs. CIA drones that crashed in Afghanistan and tribal areas of Pakistan’s tribal areas also were of enormous technological worth.
Even amid the humiliating discovery and assassination of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad by US Navy SEALs on May 2, 2011, there was a precious prize for Pakistan: The crash of a secretly developed stealth helicopter, a highly modified H-60 Blackhawk sharing some features with the non-export V-22s Osprey aircraft. Though Islamabad handed over the wreckage to Washington, it first gathered invaluable information from the parts, including the radar-evasion system. No legal rules prevent one country from sharing information with others about a military asset that intrudes on it its land.
As much as it is plausible that Indian submarines and other naval assets will be present around the southern Iranian coastline, it is no less likely that Chinese submarines or Liaoning-class aircraft carriers will appear in Pakistan’s maritime frontiers for joint drills.
Whenever tensions rise in the South China Sea, there is therefore a greater likelihood of turbulence in north Arabian Sea as well. By 2025, Gwadar port will be operating at full capacity for cargo containers as well as oil tankers. Just a few nautical miles from the Iranian border, and in close proximity to the India-run Chahbahar port in Iran, there is an air and naval base in Jiwani from which China will keep watch, alongside Pakistan’s armed forces.
Refreshingly, President Xi's recent meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un points to China's adherence to “xin ping qi he” that so impressed Russell back in the day.
— Naveed Ahmad is an investigative journalist and academic with a career in writing on diplomacy, security and governance. Besides other honors, he won the Jefferson Fellowship in 2000 and UNAOC Cross-Cultural Reporting Award 2010.
Twitter: @naveed360http://www.arabnews.pk/node/1276811
The real value of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor
“China would give up gold but never its friendship with Pakistan,” Hu Jintao, the former president of the people’s republic, once said. Xi Jinping, his successor, took this to the next level with the establishment of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) connecting Xinjiang to the north Arabian Sea, at a cost of more than $50 billion.
The Pakistani port of Gwadar provides China with a unique — and short — route for trade and commerce. Besides the array of huge infrastructure projects across Pakistan, Beijing has set higher goals. China seems well on its course to achieving its dream of becoming a powerful country — shang shan ruo shui, which means “highest good like water," water being a symbol of benevolent power in the Chinese language — by 2050.
To Bertrand Russell, the idiom “xin ping qi he,” which means calmly and without stress, depicted peacefulness as the finest characteristic of the Chinese nation. As much as Beijing has tried to avoid full-scale wars or occupations, relying on resolving disputes through diplomacy, the compulsions of geoeconomics and geopolitics require certain adjustments.
For any economic power, and more so for an aspiring superpower, the safety of shipping lanes is a matter of national security. With increasing US interference in Southeast Asia, and Indian aspirants to do Washington’s bidding, China cannot afford to wait and see what happens. In the past decade, rival navies in the Pacific and the Indian oceans have been expanding and modernizing at an unusually high pace. While Japan has armed itself with helicopter carriers, India has rented Russian nuclear-powered submarines.
China has so far added two aircraft carriers to an assortment of offensive and defensive military craft.
When its ships sail to the Makran coast, the vessels need freedom of navigation, especially when India operates a nearby port, Chahbahar, in Iran. To the calm shores of Pakistan, it meant dealing with its share of trouble from the South China Sea.
Beijing’s ability to conduct trade and ensure the safety of its maritime lanes is increasingly worrying for its rivals. Was the Gwadar port deal and CPEC worth the headache? The answer is undoubtedly yes, a conclusion backed by decades of history.
Though never tied by a defense treaty, Pakistan and China have stood shoulder-to-shoulder since the former’s independence. Soon after addressing boundary-demarcation issues, the Indo-Sino war of 1962 and the Pakistan-India war of 1965 reiterated the mutual need for stronger defense ties.
After bagging the honor of becoming the first non-communist airline to fly to China, Pakistan International Airlines pulled off another coup when it carried US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to Peking in July 1971. The secret flight led to a normalization of Sino-America relations. Decades later, Washington is snubbing Islamabad for a deepening of ties with Beijing.
By 2025, Gwadar port will be operating at full capacity for cargo containers as well as oil tankers. Just a few nautical miles from the Iranian border, and in close proximity to the India-run Chahbahar port in Iran, there is an air and naval base in Jiwani from which China will keep watch, alongside Pakistan’s armed forces.
Naveed Ahmad
With the US firmly by its side, India has cemented multifaceted ties with Iran, following up on a security pact signed in January 2003 and revised and upgraded last month. Even though Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javed Zarif downplayed the Chinese accord with Pakistan, it was impossible to hide the elephant in the room. Last week, a Chinese official uncharacteristically confirmed to The South China Morning Post (SCMP) the sale by Beijing to Pakistan of a “highly sophisticated large-scale optical tracking and measurement system” that not only guides missile defense system but also enhances the performance of ballistic missiles.
The SCMP reported: “It (the system) usually comes with a pair of high-performance telescopes equipped with a laser ranger, high-speed camera, infrared detector and a centralized computer system that automatically captures and follows moving targets. The device records high-resolution images of a missile's departure from its launcher, stage separation, tail flame and, after the missile re-enters the atmosphere, the trajectory of the warheads it releases.”
Such technology transfers between the two countries have a deep and long history. During the mid-1980s, the US reportedly complained to Pakistan about the sharing with China of vital technological details of F-16 jets. Islamabad denied the allegation, deflecting the blame toward Israel. In the 1990s, Tel Aviv’s abandoned US-assisted development of a IAI Lavi jet allegedly led to the creation of China’s J-10 fighter jet. The Pakistan Air Force’s close cooperation is seen as offering real value to its Chinese counterpart in terms of warfare tactics against technologically superior fighter jets.
Though officials deny it, academics and physicists believe Pakistan’s know-how in uranium enrichment might also have helped China significantly. Understandably, their strategic ties are shrouded in secrecy, thus becoming more susceptible to conjecture.
Thanks to the failed US Operation Infinite Reach in August 2008, Pakistan and China were able to get their hands on intact Tomahawk cruise missiles in Kharan and Khost, respectively. The know-how gained from them helped the allies refine their own missile programs. CIA drones that crashed in Afghanistan and tribal areas of Pakistan’s tribal areas also were of enormous technological worth.
Even amid the humiliating discovery and assassination of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad by US Navy SEALs on May 2, 2011, there was a precious prize for Pakistan: The crash of a secretly developed stealth helicopter, a highly modified H-60 Blackhawk sharing some features with the non-export V-22s Osprey aircraft. Though Islamabad handed over the wreckage to Washington, it first gathered invaluable information from the parts, including the radar-evasion system. No legal rules prevent one country from sharing information with others about a military asset that intrudes on it its land.
As much as it is plausible that Indian submarines and other naval assets will be present around the southern Iranian coastline, it is no less likely that Chinese submarines or Liaoning-class aircraft carriers will appear in Pakistan’s maritime frontiers for joint drills.
Whenever tensions rise in the South China Sea, there is therefore a greater likelihood of turbulence in north Arabian Sea as well. By 2025, Gwadar port will be operating at full capacity for cargo containers as well as oil tankers. Just a few nautical miles from the Iranian border, and in close proximity to the India-run Chahbahar port in Iran, there is an air and naval base in Jiwani from which China will keep watch, alongside Pakistan’s armed forces.
Refreshingly, President Xi's recent meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un points to China's adherence to “xin ping qi he” that so impressed Russell back in the day.
— Naveed Ahmad is an investigative journalist and academic with a career in writing on diplomacy, security and governance. Besides other honors, he won the Jefferson Fellowship in 2000 and UNAOC Cross-Cultural Reporting Award 2010.
Twitter: @naveed360http://www.arabnews.pk/node/1276811
