Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Pakistan on Monday to launch $46 billion in projects linking the allies, a figure that would far exceed US spending in Pakistan and underscores China’s economic ambitions in Asia and beyond.
The infrastructure and energy projects are aimed at establishing a Pakistan-China Economic Corridor between Pakistan’s southern Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea and China’s western Xinjiang region.
The plan is part of China’s aim to forge “Silk Road” land and sea ties to markets in the Middle East and Europe and reflects a shift of economic power in the region to China, said Mushahid Hussain Sayed, chairman of the Pakistani parliament’s defence committee.
“Pakistan, for China, is now of pivotal importance. This has to succeed and be seen to succeed,” he said. The corridor, a network of roads, railways and pipelines, will pass through Pakistan’s poor Balochistan province where a long-running separatist insurgency, which the army has again vowed to crush, will raise doubts about the feasibility of the plan.