By Chathushka Perera
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CWBN)_ A spokesperson of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that the government is confident about the development of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), and it hopes to achieve complete success with the support of the international community, given its beneficial implications to regional economies and connectivity.
The CPEC project, carried forward under the Belt and Road Initiative (2013), is a vast scale infrastructural development project, reaching from Kashgar to Gwadar, to facilitate China’s access to the Indian Ocean and western markets, circumventing the longer maritime routes of the South China Sea.
The Belt and Road Initiative has been widely criticized as a “debt-trap” that has enabled forced encroachment of Chinese political and economic influence into regional states, as a means of contesting western influence.
In the case of Pakistan, the state has undergone significant periods of turmoil over the past decades, resulting severe political and economic instability. To this day, the levels of conflict between the political opposition and the military, which have a long history of manifesting its authority over local governments, has continued to escalate.
Moreover, much maybe said regarding the influences of its neighbours to the east and west, in terms of its political alignment with China, particularly given that Pakistan issued a dossier with evidence of India’s involvement in harbouring, training, and financing terrorist networks in a bid to destabilize the development initiative, owing to India’s claims over the disputed Kashmir territory, which would have immediate advantages to both China and Pakistan.
Edited by Elishya Perera
