PRIME Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday affirmed consensus on the upgradation of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and advancing high-quality development of the multibillion-dollar project in the second phase in a meeting at the historic Great Hall of the People in Beijing. PM Shehbaz and President Xi expressed the resolve to further deepen cooperation across diverse domains ranging from political and security to economic, trade and people-to-people exchanges. The two leaders of the friendly countries reaffirmed the time-honoured ‘All-Weather Strategic Cooperative Partnership’.
This is, indeed, a welcome development as vested interests are engaged in wild propaganda against the historic initiative despite continued consensus between the leaderships, government and people of the two countries to take the process forward for mutual benefit. The reiteration of the commitment to upgrade the CPEC and advance high quality development of the project in the second phase would hopefully put all speculations to rest and the relevant ministries and departments of the two countries would work diligently to translate this consensus into concrete results. There is no denying the fact that the initial momentum of the initiative, launched by President Xi Jinping in 2015, was affected in the recent past due to multiple factors but both the Chinese President and Pakistan Prime Minister have vowed not only to accelerate work on all the ongoing projects but also move towards implementation of the second phase, which has the potential to accelerate the pace of socio-economic progress of Pakistan. This is important in the backdrop of rumours that China was not as enthusiastic to pursue CPEC as before because of the inability of Pakistan to pay back as well as the security issues vis-à-vis Chinese nationals working on different projects in Pakistan. In fact, China has, once again, made it clear that it wants to help Pakistan in every way to overcome its economic difficulties as it did before. The remarks of the Chinese President that his country will, as always, firmly support Pakistan and safeguard its national sovereignty and territorial integrity is reassuring for the people of Pakistan. He also strongly advocated that the two countries should focus on “promoting the joint construction of CPEC” and Chinese and Pakistani firms signed 31 Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) covering technology, agriculture, trade, energy, coal and gasification.
Similar sentiments were also expressed by Chinese Prime Minister Li Quang during his meeting with his Pakistani counterpart in which the two leaders expressed their firm commitment to protect CPEC from its detractors and adversaries, a clear reference to attempts being made by some forces to obstruct progress on different aspects of the initiative like terrorist attacks against Chinese manpower working on development projects. PM Shehbaz also reaffirmed Pakistan’s “unflinching resolve” to ensure the safety and security of Chinese personnel and projects in Pakistan. The latest developments on the CPEC front augur well for Pakistan as the project is already contributing significantly to socio-economic progress of the country and the future plans have the potential to create thousands of job opportunities and help realize the dream of Pakistan regarding industrialization and agriculture development. These plans also include projects aimed at creating world quality infrastructure that is critical to economic development. It was in this backdrop that the Prime Minister commended President Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Global Development Initiative underscoring that as the flagship project of BRI, CPEC had significantly contributed to Pakistan’s socio-economic development. The Chinese leader assured that his country would help Pakistan with its economic and social development. The visit of the Prime Minister to China was, indeed, a resounding success, especially in the context of the CPEC. One hopes sincere and concerted efforts would be made to remove hurdles in the way of the smooth completion of various projects which have greater economic significance for Pakistan. We have all along been emphasizing in these columns that, apart from other sectors, Chinese cooperation should be sought for exploitation of hydro-power potential of the country besides IT, agriculture and timely completion of Gwadar-related projects. Allocations and priorities of the next year’s budget would make it clear as to which direction the country wants to proceed.
