The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor agreement has made China the infrastructure provider of Asia. Also it has given an advantage of needling India and riling the one neighbour it has little hope of getting along with
Peter the Great, emperor and founder of modern Russia, died in 1725. The apocryphal legend goes that as he lay dying he whispered to his successors that they must persevere in their quest for a warm-water port, especially Istanbul. Russia is an enormous but largely land-locked country. It has only one warm-water port, Vladivostok. Since the days of Peter the Great, the search for a warm-water port has become a totemic motivation for Russian grand strategy. It has led it to overreach itself and fight in various theatres, from the Pacific to the Indian Oceans, even to the Mediterranean Sea.
Russia’s obsession with a warm-water port was a reflection of its sense of insecurity, given its geographical setting in the Eurasian plains, far from the great sea routes of the world. In Peter the Great’s case, it was also a realisation that Britain, the emerging European power of the age, was the master of the seas and oceans. Russia envied its maritime superiority. In the years and centuries to come, this led to much conflict and was a principal factor behind the Great Game. When the Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan in 1979, there was a perception that its final goal was to annex southern Pakistan and carve out access to the Arabian Sea. It proved an expensive gamble; the Afghan venture contributed to the decline and fall of the Soviet Union.
As history evolves, it sometimes tends to repeat itself. The epoch of empires has long gone, but imperial tendencies — or at least an urging for empire building by extending land and sea frontiers — remains a factor in contemporary international politics. For China, a non-status quoist power that believes its moment has arrived and it has the economic and military space to expand its strategic geography, this is even more marked. As such, what President Xi Jinping has done with the signing of the $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor agreement is answer to a call that Peter the Great would have entirely understood. He too is in search of a warm-water port.
The Corridor will run from Kashgar, the ancient city in the western Chinese Province of Xinjiang, to Gwadar, the Arabian Sea port in Balochistan that has been built by Chinese companies. It will travel through the length of Pakistan, including Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (earlier known as the North-West Frontier Province) and the heartland of Punjab. It will also encompass Gilgit-Baltistan, a part of Maharaja Hari Singh’s kingdom in 1947 and as such what India would consider its territory, occupied by Pakistan.
What are the triggers for such large-scale investment in Pakistan, the biggest foreign direct investment infusion in its historyIJ Anticipating roads and highways, energy and infrastructure projects, the CPEC is an ambitious initiative. Pakistani economic planners have long dreamt of an economic highway from Gwadar to Multan, the Punjabi city in central Pakistan. Their hopes are of Chinese investment building ancillary units and incubating manufacturing and technological innovation in the Multan-Gwadar stretch at least, if not the entire CPEC.
These hopes, legitimate as they are, may not be easy to achieve. They may not be what the Chinese have in mind in the first place. The low-end manufacturing boom of Asia, driven by exports to the West, has plateaued. The West is not as robust a market as it was even 10 years ago. That aside South Asia and the Indian subcontinent have lost the low-end manufacturing race to South-East Asia and China.
If India is finding it hard to achieve its Make in India goals and become a manufacturing economy of some consequence, the idea that this can be done in rural western Punjab and the North-West Frontier in the coming decade or so is downright unreal. The business risks of transporting goods and resources through troubled Balochistan, where Pakistan has faced insurgency for decades now, is another factor.
It is more likely that the Pakistani establishment, particularly the military generals and the political elites of Punjab, is looking at the Chinese inflow as the new gravy train, to supplement or supplant declining American interest and possible short-term anger in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates following Pakistan’s refusal to send troops to the Yemen conflict.
What do the Chinese seek from this CorridorIJ China is now the infrastructure provider of Asia, flush with cash and excess infrastructure building capacity. It has used these for political ends in various parts of the world, including several countries bordering India. Sri lanka, the Maldives, Bangladesh and Nepal have all either seen Chinese infrastructure investment or been tantalised by it. In Myanmar and Bangladesh, China has sought access to the Bay of Bengal. In Sri lanka and the Maldives, it has sought a route to the Indian Ocean. Pakistan and Gwadar offer a lifeline to the Arabian Sea.
There is the additional advantage of needling India and building up the one neighbour it has little hope of getting along with in the near future. This is especially important because India has managed to score over China in Bangladesh and Sri lanka in recent months. What is special about Gwadar’s locationIJ There are several answers. For one, any ingress to the sea that gives China an alternative to the Straits of Malacca would be a blessing for Beijing. Second, China’s Western Development Programme, inaugurated some 20 years ago, involves the use of economic muscle and the spread of Chinese prosperity and capital to neighbouring countries to either quieten Islamist tendencies or curb support to Uyghur militants in Xinjiang or both. The Uyghurs are a Turkic people ethnically indigenous to Xinjiang. Their demand for an independent East Turkestan goes back a century.
The Economic Corridor in Pakistan is an expansion of the WDP idea. like Peter the Great, China wants an outlet to the sea for its land-locked Central Asian frontier. Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, has the geographical reputation of being the city that is furthest from the sea. China’s growing two-way trade with the Arab world and with West Asia — buying crude oil and selling engineering and manufactured goods — too would be greatly facilitated by a port in Gwadar.
Should this concern IndiaIJ No doubt it will. Yet, it’s not as if others don’t have their issues. The prospect of a thriving commercial port in Gwadar is a direct threat to business in Dubai port. UAE authorities have often said so, albeit privately — but that is another story, for another day.
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