Document reveals unprecedented opening of economy, society to Chinese enterprises, culture
ISLAMABAD: When Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif travelled to China over the weekend to participate in the Belt and Road Forum, the top item on his agenda was finalising the long-term plan for the $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
Details of this plan, kept secret even from Pakistan’s provincial governments, were leaked by the influential Dawn newspaper on Monday, causing many quarters to question the wisdom of the initiative.
According to the details, thousands of acres of agricultural land will be leased to Chinese enterprises to set up “demonstration projects” in areas ranging from seed varieties to irrigation technology, and a system of monitoring and surveillance will be built in cities from Peshawar to Karachi, with 24-hour video recording of roads and busy marketplaces for law and order.
A national fibre-optic backbone will be built for Pakistan, not only for internet traffic but also for terrestrial distribution of broadcast TV, which will cooperate with Chinese media in the “dissemination of Chinese culture”.
The Dawn reported the plan envisages a deep and broad-based penetration of most sectors of Pakistan’s economy and society by Chinese enterprises and culture. Its scope has no precedent in Pakistan’s history, in terms of how far it opens up Pakistan’s economy to participation by foreign enterprises.
The Dawn reported it had acquired exclusive access to the document and that its details were being publicly disclosed for the first time.
The plan lays out in detail what China’s intentions and priorities are in Pakistan for the next decade-and-a-half.
Two versions of the long-term plan are with the government and the full version, running to 231 pages, is the one drawn up by the China Development Bank and the National Development and Reform Commission. The shortened version, dated February 2017, contains only broad descriptions of the various areas of cooperation.
The shorter plan, which has 30 pages, was drawn up for circulation to Pakistan’s provincial governments to obtain their assent. The only province that received the full version was Punjab, where Sharif’s younger brother Shahbaz Sharif is chief minister.
In some areas, the plan seeks to build on a market presence already established by Chinese enterprises such as Haier in household appliances, ChinaMobile and Huawei in telecommunications and China Metallurgical Group Corporation in mining and minerals.
In other cases, such as textiles and garments, cement and building materials, fertilisers and agricultural technologies, it calls for building infrastructure and a supporting policy environment to facilitate fresh entry. A key element in this is the creation of industrial parks, or special economic zones, which “must meet specified conditions, including availability of water…perfect infrastructure, sufficient supply of energy and the capacity of self service power”.
The report said the plan’s main thrust lies in agriculture, contrary to the image of CPEC as a massive industrial and transport undertaking, involving power plants and highways. The plan is most specific on this and lays out the largest number of projects and plans for their facilitation in agriculture.
Understanding the CPEC
The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is the flagship project of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative. The corridor will connect China’s Xinjiang province to Gwadar port in Pakistan, and India has raised many objections to the project — the corridor will pass through vast stretches of Pakistanoccupied Kashmir
