#China Pakistan clash over Gwadar port

[airoasis]

China's trillion dollar plan to dominate global trade

New Post has been published on https://hititem.kr/chinas-trillion-dollar-plan-to-dominate-global-trade/

China's trillion dollar plan to dominate global trade

Theres a brand new highway in Pakistan. And a new rail terminal in Kazakhstan. A sea port in Sri Lanka just lately opened. As well as this bridge in rural Laos. Whats fascinating is that theyre all part of one countrys assignment that spans three continents and touches over 60% of the worlds population. In the event you connect the dots, its not tough to see which country that is. That is China’s Belt and avenue Initiative — the most ambitious infrastructure task in ultra-modern historical past that is designed to reroute world alternate. It is how China plans to end up the worlds next superpower. Its 2013 and chinese president, Xi Jinping is giving a speech in Kazakhstan the place he mentions the ancient Silk avenue: A network of exchange routes that spread goods, strategies, and tradition throughout Europe, the middle East, and China as far back as 200 BC. He then says: "we will have to take an progressive procedure and collectively construct an economic belt along the Silk street" A month later, Xi is in Indonesia: "the 2 aspects will have to work collectively to build a maritime silk street for the twenty first century" These two phrases have been the primary mentions of Xis legacy assignment, the multi-trillion greenback Belt and road Initiative, or BRI.Theyre additionally the 2 add-ons of the plan. Theres an overland financial Belt of 6 corridors that serves as new routes to get goods inside and out of China. Like this railroad connecting China to London. And these gas pipelines from the Caspian sea to China And a high-speed instruct community in South East Asia. Then theres the maritime silk road — a sequence of seaports stretching from the South China Sea to Africa that also directs exchange to and from China. The BRI additionally involves oil refineries, industrial parks, vigor vegetation, mines, and fiber-optic networks – all designed to make it less complicated for the arena to alternate with China. Thus far, over 60 international locations have reportedly signed agreements for these initiatives.And the list is growing, on account that China promotes it as a win-win for everyone. Take, for instance, the BRIs flagship project: Pakistan. Pause for Pakistan Like many countries in valuable and South Asia, Pakistan has a stagnant financial system, and a corruption challenge. It wasnt a general situation for international investment, that is unless China got here alongside. In 2001, China offered to build a company new port in the small fishing town of Gwadar. By means of 2018, the port as well as highway and railway networks grew to be a $sixty two billion buck corridor inside the BRI. Its the place the fiscal Belt meets the Maritime Silk road. And it looked as if it would benefit each countries. Pakistan saw its highest GDP progress in eight years and solid a good relationship with a primary world energy. China, on the other hand, secured a brand new replacement route for items, specifically, oil and gasoline from the center East. Via tasks like these, it also observed a way to raise its economy. Chinese language building firms that had fewer possibilities within their own country noticed a giant increase from BRI contracts 7 out of the 10 greatest building firms on this planet are now chinese language.What pointers the balance in Chinas desire much more is a requirement that it be involved in constructing these tasks. In Pakistan for example, chinese language workers have directly developed tasks, like this freeway right here, and a chinese language firm has worked with locals on a railway right here in Serbia. Chinas involvement is considered one of its only a few demands and thats set these deals apart so far. See, regularly, to get funding from the West, countries have to meet strict ethical requirements. But Chinas furnished billions of bucks on the whole in loans with far fewer stipulations. So, its no surprise the BRI has been a enormous hit with the much less-democratic nations within the neighborhood. China has signed agreements with Authoritarian governments navy regimes. And probably the most most corrupt nations on the planet. Its even affiliated with, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Yemen, and Iraq; all presently splintered by clash. For the reason that of China’s willingness to mortgage money to unreliable nations, many experts have called the BRI a dicy plan. Finally, these nations will have to pay China back — however corruption and clash make that payback not likely. A latest report located that many international locations indebted to China are inclined, including eight which might be at high danger of being unable to pay.So why does China hold lending? On account that theres more to the BRI than just economics: In Sri Lanka, China loaned about 1.5 billion dollars for a brand new deep-water port. It was once a key discontinue on the Maritime Silk road. However by way of 2017 it was clear Sri Lanka couldnt pay back the loan, so rather, they gave China manipulate of the port as a part of a ninety nine-yr hire. China additionally controls the strategic port in Pakistan – where it has a 40-yr rent, Its pushing for a similar contract in Myanmar, and it simply opened an genuine chinese language naval base in Djibouti. These are all indicators of whats referred to as the String of Pearls theory. It predicts that China is attempting to establish a string of naval bases in the Indian Ocean with a purpose to allow it to station ships and preserve shipping routes that transfer via the vicinity.So while Chinas not getting its a reimbursement, its nonetheless attaining some very foremost strategic objectives. Chinas growing impact challenges the fame of the united states, which has been the worlds lone tremendous-vigor for the final several decades. Isolation is trending in the united states that means its investing less and accordingly shedding affect around the world. The BRI is China’s manner of leveraging vigour to turn out to be a world leader.Via building relationships and taking manage of global alternate, China is good on its way. .

[batterymonster2021]

China's trillion dollar plan to dominate global trade

New Post has been published on https://hititem.kr/chinas-trillion-dollar-plan-to-dominate-global-trade/

China's trillion dollar plan to dominate global trade

Theres a brand new highway in Pakistan. And a new rail terminal in Kazakhstan. A sea port in Sri Lanka just lately opened. As well as this bridge in rural Laos. Whats fascinating is that theyre all part of one countrys assignment that spans three continents and touches over 60% of the worlds population. In the event you connect the dots, its not tough to see which country that is. That is China’s Belt and avenue Initiative — the most ambitious infrastructure task in ultra-modern historical past that is designed to reroute world alternate. It is how China plans to end up the worlds next superpower. Its 2013 and chinese president, Xi Jinping is giving a speech in Kazakhstan the place he mentions the ancient Silk avenue: A network of exchange routes that spread goods, strategies, and tradition throughout Europe, the middle East, and China as far back as 200 BC. He then says: "we will have to take an progressive procedure and collectively construct an economic belt along the Silk street" A month later, Xi is in Indonesia: "the 2 aspects will have to work collectively to build a maritime silk street for the twenty first century" These two phrases have been the primary mentions of Xis legacy assignment, the multi-trillion greenback Belt and road Initiative, or BRI.Theyre additionally the 2 add-ons of the plan. Theres an overland financial Belt of 6 corridors that serves as new routes to get goods inside and out of China. Like this railroad connecting China to London. And these gas pipelines from the Caspian sea to China And a high-speed instruct community in South East Asia. Then theres the maritime silk road — a sequence of seaports stretching from the South China Sea to Africa that also directs exchange to and from China. The BRI additionally involves oil refineries, industrial parks, vigor vegetation, mines, and fiber-optic networks – all designed to make it less complicated for the arena to alternate with China. Thus far, over 60 international locations have reportedly signed agreements for these initiatives.And the list is growing, on account that China promotes it as a win-win for everyone. Take, for instance, the BRIs flagship project: Pakistan. Pause for Pakistan Like many countries in valuable and South Asia, Pakistan has a stagnant financial system, and a corruption challenge. It wasnt a general situation for international investment, that is unless China got here alongside. In 2001, China offered to build a company new port in the small fishing town of Gwadar. By means of 2018, the port as well as highway and railway networks grew to be a $sixty two billion buck corridor inside the BRI. Its the place the fiscal Belt meets the Maritime Silk road. And it looked as if it would benefit each countries. Pakistan saw its highest GDP progress in eight years and solid a good relationship with a primary world energy. China, on the other hand, secured a brand new replacement route for items, specifically, oil and gasoline from the center East. Via tasks like these, it also observed a way to raise its economy. Chinese language building firms that had fewer possibilities within their own country noticed a giant increase from BRI contracts 7 out of the 10 greatest building firms on this planet are now chinese language.What pointers the balance in Chinas desire much more is a requirement that it be involved in constructing these tasks. In Pakistan for example, chinese language workers have directly developed tasks, like this freeway right here, and a chinese language firm has worked with locals on a railway right here in Serbia. Chinas involvement is considered one of its only a few demands and thats set these deals apart so far. See, regularly, to get funding from the West, countries have to meet strict ethical requirements. But Chinas furnished billions of bucks on the whole in loans with far fewer stipulations. So, its no surprise the BRI has been a enormous hit with the much less-democratic nations within the neighborhood. China has signed agreements with Authoritarian governments navy regimes. And probably the most most corrupt nations on the planet. Its even affiliated with, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Yemen, and Iraq; all presently splintered by clash. For the reason that of China’s willingness to mortgage money to unreliable nations, many experts have called the BRI a dicy plan. Finally, these nations will have to pay China back — however corruption and clash make that payback not likely. A latest report located that many international locations indebted to China are inclined, including eight which might be at high danger of being unable to pay.So why does China hold lending? On account that theres more to the BRI than just economics: In Sri Lanka, China loaned about 1.5 billion dollars for a brand new deep-water port. It was once a key discontinue on the Maritime Silk road. However by way of 2017 it was clear Sri Lanka couldnt pay back the loan, so rather, they gave China manipulate of the port as a part of a ninety nine-yr hire. China additionally controls the strategic port in Pakistan – where it has a 40-yr rent, Its pushing for a similar contract in Myanmar, and it simply opened an genuine chinese language naval base in Djibouti. These are all indicators of whats referred to as the String of Pearls theory. It predicts that China is attempting to establish a string of naval bases in the Indian Ocean with a purpose to allow it to station ships and preserve shipping routes that transfer via the vicinity.So while Chinas not getting its a reimbursement, its nonetheless attaining some very foremost strategic objectives. Chinas growing impact challenges the fame of the united states, which has been the worlds lone tremendous-vigor for the final several decades. Isolation is trending in the united states that means its investing less and accordingly shedding affect around the world. The BRI is China’s manner of leveraging vigour to turn out to be a world leader.Via building relationships and taking manage of global alternate, China is good on its way. .

[itsfinancethings]

The coronavirus pandemic may have brought the world to a halt, but not a decades-old rivalry between India and China at their remote Himalayan border, where a clash has led to the deaths of at least 20 Indian soldiers and, according to unconfirmed reports, even more on the Chinese side.

A series of standoffs had broken out over recent weeks between troops of both nuclear powers along the disputed demarcation in the Galwan Valley. On Monday, a huge brawl erupted over the construction of a Chinese installation within the Line of Actual Control (LAC), which has marked the frontier between the world’s two most populous nations since a war in 1962.

No shots were fired, the Indian army says, but the two sides set upon each other with rocks and clubs, according to reports, with combatants savagely beaten and tossed into the freezing waters of a nearby river. While India says that it lost 20 troops in the skirmish, Beijing has so far refused to release any details, causing murmurs of anger on Chinese social media. Unconfirmed reports from Indian media and U.S. intelligence sources suggest China suffered 43 casualties, including 35 deaths.

Col. Zhang Shuili, a Chinese military spokesman, said in a statement reported by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV that India “deliberately launched a provocative assault” and “broke their promises and once again crossed the [LAC] to engage in illegal activities.”

Some Indian soldiers were reportedly also captured by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). In India, posters of Chinese President Xi Jinping were burnt in the street. Extra police were seen posted outside the Indian Embassy in Beijing on Wednesday.

The clashes are particularly worrisome considering high-level deliberations were already taking place after earlier disturbances.

“Both governments want to dampen down the hostilities,” Prof. Bharat Karnada of the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi tells TIME. “But something has been set in motion, certainly in India, in terms of a popular demand for retributory action.”

In a statement, the U.S. State Department said it was “closely monitoring” the flare-up. “Both India and China have expressed a desire to de-escalate, and we support a peaceful resolution of the current situation.”

Tensions boiling over

China’s more aggressive posture in the region is in line with a doubling down on territorial claims since Xi came to power in 2013. The strongman has made the goal of forging an army able to “fight and win wars” a central tenet of his military strategy.

From mid-February to mid-March, China extracted a record quantity of natural gas from the South China Sea, where a Chinese Coast Guard vessel also rammed and sank a Vietnamese fishing trawler in early April. The military has engaged in airspace incursions and aggressive naval maneuvers against Taiwan—a self-governing island that Beijing regards as a breakaway province.

China also appears to be taking advantage of the fumbled U.S. handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Recent drills showed China “is capable of driving intruders and unfriendly priers away” as “COVID-19 has significantly lowered the U.S. Navy’s warship deployment capability in the Asia-Pacific region,” Wei Dongxu, a Beijing-based military expert, told the state-run Global Times.

Prof. Tai Ming Cheung, an expert on China’s military at UC San Diego, says that while the PLA has become more assertive, it has been careful not to get into any shooting wars that might quickly escalate into full blown conflict. “So this clash with India raises the question whether the PLA has changed its calculus.”

The desolate border—which stretches for 2,100-miles—has proved a trouble spot for decades, more recently during a 72-day standoff in the Doklam region in 2017. But tensions now seem to have boiled over due to India’s construction of a new road to an airbase. The Chinese installation appears to have been overlooking it.

China has eight nations on its frontiers—including four nuclear-armed states—and is no stranger to border disputes. However, Beijing has settled those of note over recent years with the exception of the dispute with India.

“Negotiations over defining the border haven’t progressed for the past 40 years,” says Prof. Jingdong Yuan, an Asian security specialist at the University of Sydney. “In the meantime, both sides have continued to strengthen their positions in order to increase their bargaining chips.”

Yuan adds that Monday’s death toll could have been much higher were it not for a convention designed to deescalate tensions that says both sides typically patrol the LAC without firearms.

Beijing’s dollar diplomacy has increased its South Asian sway in recent years, particularly with large investments plowed into Sri Lanka and Nepal though Xi’s signature Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a $1 trillion transcontinental trade and infrastructure network.

And while Xi and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have ostensibly maintained a cordial relationship, with face-to-face meetings in both 2018 and 2019, most galling for New Delhi is Beijing’s aggressive courting of India’s old enemy, Pakistan. “Pakistan is turning more and more into a client state with China pulling the strings,” says Karnad.

A cornerstone of the BRI is the so-called China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which consists of $87 billion of dams, power plants, roads and railways winding from China’s restive westernmost province of Xinjiang through disputed Kashmir and south to Pakistan’s Gwadar Port. The project has contributed to the geo-strategic importance of the area around Galwan, heightening tensions.

The latest clash may well inflame matters further.

“This looks to be the first time Chinese soldiers have been sacrificed in conflict over the past two decades,” posted Global Times editor Hu Xijin’s on China’s Twitter-like networking platform Weibo. “We should act instead of being bound by the so-called big picture.”

[newstechreviews]

The coronavirus pandemic may have brought the world to a halt, but not a decades-old rivalry between India and China at their remote Himalayan border, where a clash has led to the deaths of at least 20 Indian soldiers and, according to unconfirmed reports, even more on the Chinese side.

A series of standoffs had broken out over recent weeks between troops of both nuclear powers along the disputed demarcation in the Galwan Valley. On Monday, a huge brawl erupted over the construction of a Chinese installation within the Line of Actual Control (LAC), which has marked the frontier between the world’s two most populous nations since a war in 1962.

No shots were fired, the Indian army says, but the two sides set upon each other with rocks and clubs, according to reports, with combatants savagely beaten and tossed into the freezing waters of a nearby river. While India says that it lost 20 troops in the skirmish, Beijing has so far refused to release any details, causing murmurs of anger on Chinese social media. Unconfirmed reports from Indian media and U.S. intelligence sources suggest China suffered 43 casualties, including 35 deaths.

Col. Zhang Shuili, a Chinese military spokesman, said in a statement reported by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV that India “deliberately launched a provocative assault” and “broke their promises and once again crossed the [LAC] to engage in illegal activities.”

Some Indian soldiers were reportedly also captured by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). In India, posters of Chinese President Xi Jinping were burnt in the street. Extra police were seen posted outside the Indian Embassy in Beijing on Wednesday.

The clashes are particularly worrisome considering high-level deliberations were already taking place after earlier disturbances.

“Both governments want to dampen down the hostilities,” Prof. Bharat Karnada of the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi tells TIME. “But something has been set in motion, certainly in India, in terms of a popular demand for retributory action.”

In a statement, the U.S. State Department said it was “closely monitoring” the flare-up. “Both India and China have expressed a desire to de-escalate, and we support a peaceful resolution of the current situation.”

Tensions boiling over

China’s more aggressive posture in the region is in line with a doubling down on territorial claims since Xi came to power in 2013. The strongman has made the goal of forging an army able to “fight and win wars” a central tenet of his military strategy.

From mid-February to mid-March, China extracted a record quantity of natural gas from the South China Sea, where a Chinese Coast Guard vessel also rammed and sank a Vietnamese fishing trawler in early April. The military has engaged in airspace incursions and aggressive naval maneuvers against Taiwan—a self-governing island that Beijing regards as a breakaway province.

China also appears to be taking advantage of the fumbled U.S. handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Recent drills showed China “is capable of driving intruders and unfriendly priers away” as “COVID-19 has significantly lowered the U.S. Navy’s warship deployment capability in the Asia-Pacific region,” Wei Dongxu, a Beijing-based military expert, told the state-run Global Times.

Prof. Tai Ming Cheung, an expert on China’s military at UC San Diego, says that while the PLA has become more assertive, it has been careful not to get into any shooting wars that might quickly escalate into full blown conflict. “So this clash with India raises the question whether the PLA has changed its calculus.”

The desolate border—which stretches for 2,100-miles—has proved a trouble spot for decades, more recently during a 72-day standoff in the Doklam region in 2017. But tensions now seem to have boiled over due to India’s construction of a new road to an airbase. The Chinese installation appears to have been overlooking it.

China has eight nations on its frontiers—including four nuclear-armed states—and is no stranger to border disputes. However, Beijing has settled those of note over recent years with the exception of the dispute with India.

“Negotiations over defining the border haven’t progressed for the past 40 years,” says Prof. Jingdong Yuan, an Asian security specialist at the University of Sydney. “In the meantime, both sides have continued to strengthen their positions in order to increase their bargaining chips.”

Yuan adds that Monday’s death toll could have been much higher were it not for a convention designed to deescalate tensions that says both sides typically patrol the LAC without firearms.

Beijing’s dollar diplomacy has increased its South Asian sway in recent years, particularly with large investments plowed into Sri Lanka and Nepal though Xi’s signature Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a $1 trillion transcontinental trade and infrastructure network.

And while Xi and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have ostensibly maintained a cordial relationship, with face-to-face meetings in both 2018 and 2019, most galling for New Delhi is Beijing’s aggressive courting of India’s old enemy, Pakistan. “Pakistan is turning more and more into a client state with China pulling the strings,” says Karnad.

A cornerstone of the BRI is the so-called China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which consists of $87 billion of dams, power plants, roads and railways winding from China’s restive westernmost province of Xinjiang through disputed Kashmir and south to Pakistan’s Gwadar Port. The project has contributed to the geo-strategic importance of the area around Galwan, heightening tensions.

The latest clash may well inflame matters further.

“This looks to be the first time Chinese soldiers have been sacrificed in conflict over the past two decades,” posted Global Times editor Hu Xijin’s on China’s Twitter-like networking platform Weibo. “We should act instead of being bound by the so-called big picture.”

[brajeshupadhyay]

As tensions rise in Kashmir again, why the continued conflict between India, Pak and China is unlikely to resolve any issues

Joining the Dots is a weekly column by author and journalist Samrat in which he connects events to ideas, often through analysis, but occasionally through satire

***

The fighting has escalated again in Kashmir. Last Saturday night, two officers and two jawans of the Indian Army and a police sub-inspector were killed in militant violence in Handwara in Kashmir. A day later, three men of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) died in another attack in the same area.

Is it just another summer of discontent in the valley, where the annual melting of snows from mountain passes coincides with an uptick in the temperature of militancy? Perhaps, but this summer is also different for the wider region and world from the previous ones. It is, after all, a summer when the whole world is in the grip of a pandemic-induced lockdown. It is also a summer when, almost forgotten in the midst of all this, the American government is trying to implement an agreement it signed with the Taliban in February for the withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan after 18 years of war.

Across the border in Pakistan, mainstream political tensions involving a crackdown on opposition leaders Nawaz and Shehbaz Sharif are rising. There are also worrying signs of shadowy actions underway. Last Friday, the leader of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, Arif Wazir, was shot outside his home and subsequently died. The PTM have a slogan, “Ye jo dehshatgardi hai, iske peeche wardi hai" (This terrorism, the uniform is behind it). Unlike the Pakistani Taliban, they are in the bad books of the powerful Pak military.

Representational image. AP

In faraway Sweden the same day, police confirmed that a body found in a river a week earlier was that of Sajid Hussain, exiled Editor of the Balochistan Times. In Karachi, a court ordered the release of Omar Saeed Shaikh, the terrorist convicted for the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was one of three released by the Indian government in 1999 following the hijacking of IC-814 to Kandahar. He has been detained for a further three months, for now.

The clash over Kashmir between India and Pakistan is heating up against this wider background. The usual focus of the dispute is the Kashmir Valley, but this time, the region of Gilgit-Baltistan made an early appearance in the arguments between the two sides. India protested a ruling of the Pakistan Supreme Court to enable holding of elections in that area. “India completely rejects such actions and continued attempts to bring material changes in Pakistan occupied areas of the Indian territory of Jammu & Kashmir. Instead, Pakistan should immediately vacate all areas under its illegal occupation,” India’s Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement.

How the mountainous tracts of Gilgit-Baltistan with their predominantly Shina and Balti populations came to be part of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir is a fascinating cloak and dagger tale played out in the later years of the 19th Century. It involved local chieftains such as the Mir of Hunza and the Mehtar of Chitral, the Dogra Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, and the prime players of what subsequently became famed as the Great Game – the Russian and British empires. Almost forgotten in the tale of their exploits was another party, which occupied the lands just north of the borders of Gilgit-Baltistan: the Chinese empire. It was to Yarkand in Sinkiang, now Xinjiang, in China, that the Mir of Hunza fled after defeat to British and Dogra forces in 1891-92.

The flow of people and cultures between India, Persia and western China over the Pamir, Karakoram and Hindukush mountains is ancient, going back at least as far as the Guishangs, known in India as Kushans, who founded an empire in that part of the world in the second century BC. Signs of and references to the old connectedness of those seemingly distant spaces pop up in our lives to this day, even in popular culture.

Among the many wonderful songs on Coke Studio, there’s one called Bibi Sanam Janam, by the Pakistani singers Zeb and Haniya. It is a beautiful song in the Dari language that likens the sanam (beloved) to the pomegranate of Sistan and talks of her home by the doors of Tashkorgan. Dari is the Persian spoken in Afghanistan. Sistan is a trans-border region of eastern Iran and southern Afghanistan bordering Balochistan. Tashkorgan is in Xinjiang in China. The sweet song is a tale that spans many borders and territories.

Such connectedness is as contemporary as it is ancient. Tashkorgan today is the first stop on the Chinese side of the border on the Karakoram Highway, which leads on to the Silk Road oasis of Kashgar. It is a vital part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor whose terminus is the Arabian Sea port of Gwadar near Sistan. The prospects of Pakistan heeding India’s demand to vacate these areas are about as bright as the prospects of India vacating the state of Jammu and Kashmir on Pakistan’s asking.

India, as everyone probably remembers, has been tightening its grip on Jammu and Kashmir since last October. Article 370 is gone, and Ladakh, which is bigger in area than what remains of Jammu and Kashmir, is now a separate union territory. The map of the old princely state has been formally redrawn. That, the abrogation of Article 370, and the tighter integration of Gilgit-Baltistan into Pakistan, suggest that the Kashmir issue is being resolved by India and Pakistan one step at a time through the formalisation of the status quo, partly along the contours of what is known as the Dixon Plan.

The occupation of Kashmir and its integration into the Indian subcontinent is part of a historical process that began when Mughal emperor Akbar conquered the kingdom in 1586. It picked up pace in colonial times as concerns over the defence of the northern frontiers of India against possible Chinese and Russian expansionism prompted British expansion into the region. The Russian empire eventually left neighbouring Afghanistan in 1988. The Chinese empire is now the one expanding its influence in the wider region.

Back in the 19th Century when the Russian, British and Chinese empires were jockeying for influence in the remote mountain fastnesses where the Himalayas, Hindukush and Pamirs meet, the friction of distance was still a hard, physical reality. Today the difficulty for borderlands everywhere is that distance is largely dead. State cores are filling out, expanding into their peripheries. The actions of both India and Pakistan in their parts of Kashmir have to be viewed in that context.

The ability of India to unilaterally change the realities on the ground in Gilgit-Baltistan, with near-certainty of Chinese involvement, is remote. The ability of terrorism to shake India’s grip on Kashmir is negligible. The ability of Pakistan to do so has also been found wanting in all the wars that the countries have fought since 1947, and that is not about to change now that both countries openly wield nuclear weapons.

There are powerful emotions and genuine grievances all around, but it seems unlikely that continued conflict would achieve anything beyond a satisfaction of bloodlust.

via Blogger https://ift.tt/3b7YOTY

[shivshankarannairmalta-blog]

Shiv Shankaran Nair - Ten Facts You Never Knew About China’s OBOR And The Pakistan China Corridor

Shiv Shankaran Nair - One Belt One Road; China’s Model of Economic DevelopmentUnder President Xi Jinping, China has become increasingly ambitious in carving out a new role for itself in global politics. Barely 1 year into his office, Xi Jinping introduced the concept of Silk Road Economic Belt in September 2013. Ever since, China has diligently pursued implementation of the project — called as One Belt One Road (OBOR) or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) — which the president recently dubbed as ‘the project of the century’ The project is envisaged to connect Asia, Europe and Africa through network of multiple corridors and seaports. At the centre of BRI lies six economic corridors: the China–Mongolia–Russia Corridor; the New Eurasian Land Bridge Corridor; the China–Central Asia–West Asia Corridor; the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC); Bangladesh–China–Myanmar–India Corridor; and the China–IndoChina Peninsula Corridor. In all, OBOR will connect 65 countries, covering one‐third of global output, 40 per cent of global trade and 62 per cent of the world population.The drive for this newfound position has in return impelled China towards an enhanced role in global development politics. To finance these projects, China has established the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank with registered capital of $100 billion and the Silk Road Fund with $40 billion of initial capital. Similarly, during the recent Belt and Road Forum summit, Xi Jinping pledged at least $113 billion for the initiative .Some analysts even raised the question whether China is on the way to challenge the United States‐led economic order. The United States, out of the fear of losing ground to China, not only balked at the creation of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank but dissuaded its close allies, such as the United Kingdom, Australia and South Korea, from joining this China‐led institution. Regardless of the American scepticism of OBOR, China has insisted that its intentions are benign and that its efforts are complimenting the existing world order.Xi has asserted that OBOR is not meant ‘to replace the existing mechanism or initiatives for regional cooperation’. Perhaps, he is aware of concerns that China‐led development model might overshadow domestic or regional approaches of the relevant countries. That is why he reassured that China ‘will build on the existing basis to help countries align their development strategies and form complementarities’. Similarly, the action plan of BRI states that this project should be jointly built through consultation to meet the interests of all and efforts should be made to integrate the development strategies of the countries along the belt and road.China’s development model has some promising aspects for the underdeveloped or developing economies, but it is not free from dilemmas of self‐centred motivations, economic predominance, cultural or systemic clashes and economic and environmental issues. In fact, OBOR seems to be an ambitious strategy to employ globalisation to service Chinese economy. The distinctive authoritarian system of rule by one party, that is, the Chinese Communist Party, rests upon the promise of sustained economic growth, rendering legitimacy to political authority. If the export‐oriented development runs its course, domestic economy suffers from industrial overcapacity. Hence, BRI is important for China as ‘it provides an answer of sorts to some of its economic problems’.But path to China’s vision of ‘win–win development’ has got some inherent limitations. Given the wide array of countries covered by OBOR (some 65 countries), a question arises: How can China coordinate its development model to the peculiar conditions of each country in a way that these beneficiaries are least exposed to the latent perils of OBOR in long term. After all, the countries covered by OBOR model are not necessarily governed by the same institutional framework as China. This inference becomes more pertinent in the case of those countries that are more western in orientation but still vulnerable to the influence of China’s development model. A closer look at the case study of how Pakistan’s domestic settings, in terms of economy, institutions and socio‐political environment, have been impacted by the development model of ‘all‐weather’ friend China under the CPEC scheme can be an indicator of the innate challenges posed by the OBOR initiative to the member countries.One Belt One Road to China–Pakistan Economic Corridor, a microcosm of potential fault linesWith more than $50 billion of investment plans by -030, CPEC is also called the ‘pilot project’ or ‘flagship project’ of OBOR. Accordingly, $35 billion is earmarked for energy projects, and $15 billion is to be invested in infrastructure, Gwadar port, special economic zones and mass transit schemes. On the one hand, major sectors of Pakistan’s economy, for example, energy, industrial and transit routes, will be boosted by construction of new projects, and on the other, the country will play the role of a conduit for China’s access to Arabian Sea. The north‐western Chinese city of Kashgar in Xinjiang autonomous region will be connected with Gwadar port in the western Pakistan through 3,000‐kilometre network of roads and railways. In many ways, CPEC is a boon for Pakistan’s economy that has been suffering from law and order crisis, export stagnation, under‐investment, chronic energy shortages and flailing state institutions.China’s investment accounted for the largest chunk of foreign direct investment in Pakistan or almost half of the total foreign direct investment inflows in 2016–17 .In combination with other factors, in 2016, CPEC funding helped foster the country’s economic growth to highest level in 8 years. Investment in energy sector, if implemented successfully, will end the chronic power shortages that cost around two per cent of annual gross domestic product. In addition, the improved infrastructure and business environment might attract foreign investors that have shunned the country at large. China also has a lot at stake in the CPEC.For one, the corridor provides remote north‐western region of Xinjiang (which is home to intermittent violence and has largely missed the economic growth that the southern part of the country has attained) an opening to new markets of South Asia, Middle East and Africa. The government unveiled plans to invest $25 billion in roads construction to better facilitate the region as a trade hub on the Silk Road Economic Belt.Secondly, Gwadar port has strategic significance as well. The warm‐water deep seaport sits close to the Strait of Hormuz (one of the few global oil chokepoints) and has the potential to be used both as an alternative route to Malacca Strait and a military base by China.The China–Pakistan Economic Corridor is remarkable for the reason that the two countries, despite enjoying close relationship for decades, have paid lesser attention to the economic aspect of ties. For all historic bonhomie with China, when it comes to political system, Pakistan is predisposed towards Western concepts and institutions of constitutional democracy, electoral government, multiparty system, civil society and freedom of speech, etc. In fact, soon after independence, Pakistan opted for a closer relationship with the West and were founder members of CENTO and SEATO. Over the course of decades, it has received billions of dollars in economic and financial aid from the United States, World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other countries. But this aid — in addition to other political stipulations and circumstances — has been generally conditioned to at least some terms and conditions related to institutional, governance and macroeconomic reforms. In other words, Western economic assistance has been supportive of institutional reforms even if at minimal.But China’s model of OBOR is distinctive in this sense as it comes with no strings attached. Because of this reason, the initiative has received warm reception from many of the third world countries with poor governance performance. The very language of official ‘action plan’ for OBOR is reflection of this policy). Even though the document makes a passing reference to adherence to ‘market rules and international norms’, the indifference to internal affairs under the so‐called ‘Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence’ stands in stark contrast. China’s drive for economic investment in Pakistan is guided by this principle.By doing away with the norm of preconditions, China forestalls the possibility of clash of interests with the incumbent government or divergence emanating from systemic differences between the donor and recipient countries. But this approach is not without its latent costs and complications. China’s efforts are driven by its ambition to carve out a new type of order wherein its political position and economic interests are at the centre. Concomitantly, the institutional laxities (corruption, inefficient institutions, flawed policy‐making, mismanagement of public funds and resource, etc.) of the recipient countries are an area open to the adverse impacts of foreign aid. The combination of these factors, that is, China’s inordinate preference for its geoeconomic goals, disregard for how its aid might alter domestic politics of recipient country and susceptibility of beneficiary to undesirable implications of massive funding, is an area worth‐probing.All its manifest and prospective dividends aside, some unhealthy trends at institutional, socio‐political and economic levels have surfaced during the course of China’s multibillion dollars investment in Pakistan.Pakistani officials have repeatedly portrayed the CPEC as ‘a game‐changer’, not only for the country but also for the entire region. The fact that China’s vision under the OBOR has the potential to uplift Pakistan economically is amply clear. However, the prospective gains of this venture cannot obscure the challenges and risks posed to the institutional and socio‐politico matrix of the country. Because the systemic dynamics (centralised authority and planning) and strategic ambitions (China‐centric interests) behind this corridor are distinct form largely democratic polity of Pakistan, certain limitations of this interaction at domestic level are inevitable. CPEC‐related issues and challenges can be broadly classified under three categories: institutional, socio‐political and economic.InstitutionalAs a democratically elected institution, the government of Pakistan is required to share the details of deals signed with the Chinese counterparts related to the CPEC in a transparent manner. However, the factor of transparency is clearly missing from this whole affair. In fact, a small group of state officials (including Prime Minister, few of his cabinet ministers and some bureaucrats) exclusively calls all the major shots in finalising the deals on behalf of whole country. In the process, the true nature of CPEC funding (how much is based on commercial loan, soft loan, grants and private equity investment) and terms and conditions attached to these are kept beyond the public scrutiny. Despite all the media and public insistence, the government has yet to reveal the most significant dimensions of the project: the details of CPEC Master Plan and the nature of special economic zones. Apart from media and public, state institutions are kept in the dark.Some of the major state institutions — including the opposition, Senate Standing Committee on Planning and Development, the State Bank of Pakistan and the media at large — have lamented this fact and insisted on the central government that CPEC deals should be made public. Likewise, the government at top, in order to give to demands of Chinese firms, has at times forced the concerned authorities to modify their regulations. For example, the incumbent government has time and again squabbled with National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) over the pricing of tariffs for various energy projects of the CPEC undertaken by Chinese firms. This prolonged controversy has led to acrimony between institutions and attracted much media attention.Amidst all this opacity surrounding the CPEC, media in Pakistan have presented a somewhat candid analysis and perspective. In return, it has earned the wrath of both its own and also the Chinese government. Freedom of opinion that is the hallmark of democracy is questioned and labelled as ‘unjust’ and baseless ‘propaganda’. When the English daily Dawn brought the details of CPEC Master Plan to the light, the minister concerned lashed out at story as ‘one‐sided and factually incorrect’. Even if the two governments formally released the long‐term plan recently, the fundamental question of transparency stays unanswered.First, the document falls short on details and specifics of the actual plan. Second, ironically, the official version of long‐term plan talks about the same areas of cooperation as the Dawn report had revealed earlier. The Chinese who by the very nature of their political system have lesser appetite for criticism find it as a limitation of Pakistan’s democratic system. Hence, their diplomats in Islamabad have gone way farther in targeting the freedom of speech as ‘enemies of Pakistan’ and promotion of ‘hidden agenda’ etc. This trend is not encouraging for a nascent democracy like that of Pakistan.Then, there is the issue of divisions and struggle for power between the civilian (democratically elected) and military institutions. Although CPEC is not the fundamental reason of this divide, it has in some way opened a new space for competition. Historically, policy‐makers in Beijing have shown greater inclination for military regimes while dealing with Islamabad. The very essence of this bilateral relationship is military and strategic rather than economic or cultural. Disenchanted with the involvement of multiple institutions that hampered the smooth implementation of projects, the Chinese side suggested that military should be formally taken on board in the process. The matter became a bone of contention between the military and civilian governments when the latter dithered. Similarly, the elected government is worried that the military, under the guise of providing security to the CPEC projects and workers, is trying to encroach upon the civilian jurisdiction over the projectSocio‐politicalCPEC‐related politics have shaped the socio‐political milieu of Pakistan in two ways. At one level, the domestic security threats and military activism, in combination with regional geostrategic competition, have led to the securitisation of a trade corridor. Pakistan has been fighting a homegrown insurgency for more than a decade. The Chinese workers in Pakistan have also been targeted by extremist elements. Beijing has made it amply clear to Islamabad that security of its nationals is the top priority. Concomitantly, Pakistan has maintained that regional countries (India and Afghanistan) are engaged in subversive activities against the CPEC. Conspiracy theories of one sort or the other have gained popular currency and even the democratically elected government has voiced the same views. Under these circumstances, security of the CPEC has become one of the top national security agendas. The central and all the four provincial governments have raised their own forces for this purpose. As a matter of fact, the discourse on CPEC has become highly sensitive and securitised. A domestic opposition or dissent can also be labelled as a conspiracy against the CPEC.Second, CPEC has revived divisions between the provinces across ethnic lines. Historically, the three major ethnicities — after Punjabis — of Pakistan, that is, Pakhtuns, Sindhis and Baloch, have harboured strong resentments that Punjabis (or Punjab province) have usurped the national resources and power to their own advantage. With Punjab‐based party of Pakistan Muslim League‐Nawaz controlling the central government, politicians from the three provinces had accused the centre of prioritising Punjab disproportionately in allocation of the CPEC projects. At the heart of dispute was the construction of western route of the corridor (originating at Gwadar and passing through Kyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province) that according to KP government is unfairly ignored. The issue has dogged the CPEC for a long and further deepened ethnic differences. Recently, the new government — on the insistence of Chinese side — has addressed the reservations of other provinces, and therefore, KP and Sindh seem to be reassured for now. However, with ethnic resentments and political differences simmering in the background, such harmony can be fleeting rather than enduring.EconomicThe economic aspect of the CPEC is perhaps the most contentious and debatable facet. As the deals of CPEC project are signed between the Chinese stakeholders and a small circle of Pakistani government officials — without proper feedback from other concerned institutions — the Chinese side has procured deals at terms less sustainable and favourable for Pakistan’s economy. First of all, the questions of transparency and methods of deal procurement go against the logic of healthy economic practice and norms. The Pakistani side is said to be bound by the framework of the CPEC to award the projects to Chinese stakeholders at the price of latter’s desire and in some cases even if higher than offered by other bidders. Second, financial incentives of the deals lopsidedly favour Chinese contractors. For example, tax breaks and exemptions for CPEC‐related imports (from China), Chinese‐run projects and their income (which according to one estimate will cost Rs150 billion in revenues) put the local investors at disadvantage. And finally, there is a palpable lack of both long‐term and short‐term planning and institutional groundwork regarding the CPEC. Instead, the two governments — for their own reasons — are focused on materialising the project in the shortest possible time even if it is not advisable. The soaring CPEC‐related imports (in combination with other structural drawbacks) have pushed the trade deficit to historic level of $30 billion. IMF’s warning that CPEC‐related capital outflows (that is, loans repayments, profit repatriation and imports of input fuel, peaking at about $3.5–$4.5 billion by 2025) will strain current account bill has fallen on deaf ears. Consequently, Pakistan runs the risk of undoing economic reforms and macroeconomic stability that it has gained over the last few years. Additionally, billions of dollars (roughly 60 per cent of the CPEC investment) are poured into a sector already affected by crises of circular debt, uncollected bills and power losses and thefts. Lately, there is a realisation that energy produced by projects under the CPEC might be too expensive to be afforded by consumers hence evincing other problems consequently In fact, it reveals the lack of proper economic feasibility studies for warranting the implementation of various projects.To make sure that these ventures translate into economically sustainable and profitable projects, certain institutional reforms in energy sector must be undertaken before it is too late.ConclusionAs one of the top drivers of world economy, China’s OBOR venture has the potential to contribute to the global development process. For one reason, majority of the countries covered by this ambitious project are those that have lagged behind in development race mainly (though not solely) because of the poor economic infrastructure. However beneficial, this multibillion dollars model bears some structural limitations. China seems to be more concerned about its own goals rather than accommodating the peculiar dynamics and needs of the OBOR countries. This dilemma is nowhere more acute than in the case of countries, like Pakistan, which require Chinese investments but are liable to undesirable repercussions of such massive financing. There is an increasing evidence that CPEC — the ‘flagship project’ of OBOR — carries the risk of straining Pakistan’s institutions and economy in the long run. Making OBOR a truly win–win and sustainable arrangement, therefore, requires certain precautionary measures to be adopted. Transparency in economic dealings, concern for the impacts (both positive and negative) of massive fundings on local economies and institutions and compliance with ‘governance‐related conditionalities’ even if at minimal level are some of the essential prerequisites that China should consider while pursuing OBOR project.Shiv Shankaran Nair

[brajeshupadhyay]

Joining the Dots is a weekly column by author and journalist Samrat in which he connects events to ideas, often through analysis, but occasionally through satire *** The fighting has escalated again in Kashmir. Last Saturday night, two officers and two jawans of the Indian Army and a police sub-inspector were killed in militant violence in Handwara in Kashmir. A day later, three men of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) died in another attack in the same area. Is it just another summer of discontent in the valley, where the annual melting of snows from mountain passes coincides with an uptick in the temperature of militancy? Perhaps, but this summer is also different for the wider region and world from the previous ones. It is, after all, a summer when the whole world is in the grip of a pandemic-induced lockdown. It is also a summer when, almost forgotten in the midst of all this, the American government is trying to implement an agreement it signed with the Taliban in February for the withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan after 18 years of war. Across the border in Pakistan, mainstream political tensions involving a crackdown on opposition leaders Nawaz and Shehbaz Sharif are rising. There are also worrying signs of shadowy actions underway. Last Friday, the leader of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, Arif Wazir, was shot outside his home and subsequently died. The PTM have a slogan, “Ye jo dehshatgardi hai, iske peeche wardi hai" (This terrorism, the uniform is behind it). Unlike the Pakistani Taliban, they are in the bad books of the powerful Pak military. Representational image. AP In faraway Sweden the same day, police confirmed that a body found in a river a week earlier was that of Sajid Hussain, exiled Editor of the Balochistan Times. In Karachi, a court ordered the release of Omar Saeed Shaikh, the terrorist convicted for the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was one of three released by the Indian government in 1999 following the hijacking of IC-814 to Kandahar. He has been detained for a further three months, for now. The clash over Kashmir between India and Pakistan is heating up against this wider background. The usual focus of the dispute is the Kashmir Valley, but this time, the region of Gilgit-Baltistan made an early appearance in the arguments between the two sides. India protested a ruling of the Pakistan Supreme Court to enable holding of elections in that area. “India completely rejects such actions and continued attempts to bring material changes in Pakistan occupied areas of the Indian territory of Jammu & Kashmir. Instead, Pakistan should immediately vacate all areas under its illegal occupation,” India’s Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement. How the mountainous tracts of Gilgit-Baltistan with their predominantly Shina and Balti populations came to be part of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir is a fascinating cloak and dagger tale played out in the later years of the 19th Century. It involved local chieftains such as the Mir of Hunza and the Mehtar of Chitral, the Dogra Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, and the prime players of what subsequently became famed as the Great Game – the Russian and British empires. Almost forgotten in the tale of their exploits was another party, which occupied the lands just north of the borders of Gilgit-Baltistan: the Chinese empire. It was to Yarkand in Sinkiang, now Xinjiang, in China, that the Mir of Hunza fled after defeat to British and Dogra forces in 1891-92. The flow of people and cultures between India, Persia and western China over the Pamir, Karakoram and Hindukush mountains is ancient, going back at least as far as the Guishangs, known in India as Kushans, who founded an empire in that part of the world in the second century BC. Signs of and references to the old connectedness of those seemingly distant spaces pop up in our lives to this day, even in popular culture. Among the many wonderful songs on Coke Studio, there’s one called Bibi Sanam Janam, by the Pakistani singers Zeb and Haniya. It is a beautiful song in the Dari language that likens the sanam (beloved) to the pomegranate of Sistan and talks of her home by the doors of Tashkorgan. Dari is the Persian spoken in Afghanistan. Sistan is a trans-border region of eastern Iran and southern Afghanistan bordering Balochistan. Tashkorgan is in Xinjiang in China. The sweet song is a tale that spans many borders and territories. Such connectedness is as contemporary as it is ancient. Tashkorgan today is the first stop on the Chinese side of the border on the Karakoram Highway, which leads on to the Silk Road oasis of Kashgar. It is a vital part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor whose terminus is the Arabian Sea port of Gwadar near Sistan. The prospects of Pakistan heeding India’s demand to vacate these areas are about as bright as the prospects of India vacating the state of Jammu and Kashmir on Pakistan’s asking. India, as everyone probably remembers, has been tightening its grip on Jammu and Kashmir since last October. Article 370 is gone, and Ladakh, which is bigger in area than what remains of Jammu and Kashmir, is now a separate union territory. The map of the old princely state has been formally redrawn. That, the abrogation of Article 370, and the tighter integration of Gilgit-Baltistan into Pakistan, suggest that the Kashmir issue is being resolved by India and Pakistan one step at a time through the formalisation of the status quo, partly along the contours of what is known as the Dixon Plan. The occupation of Kashmir and its integration into the Indian subcontinent is part of a historical process that began when Mughal emperor Akbar conquered the kingdom in 1586. It picked up pace in colonial times as concerns over the defence of the northern frontiers of India against possible Chinese and Russian expansionism prompted British expansion into the region. The Russian empire eventually left neighbouring Afghanistan in 1988. The Chinese empire is now the one expanding its influence in the wider region. Back in the 19th Century when the Russian, British and Chinese empires were jockeying for influence in the remote mountain fastnesses where the Himalayas, Hindukush and Pamirs meet, the friction of distance was still a hard, physical reality. Today the difficulty for borderlands everywhere is that distance is largely dead. State cores are filling out, expanding into their peripheries. The actions of both India and Pakistan in their parts of Kashmir have to be viewed in that context. The ability of India to unilaterally change the realities on the ground in Gilgit-Baltistan, with near-certainty of Chinese involvement, is remote. The ability of terrorism to shake India’s grip on Kashmir is negligible. The ability of Pakistan to do so has also been found wanting in all the wars that the countries have fought since 1947, and that is not about to change now that both countries openly wield nuclear weapons. There are powerful emotions and genuine grievances all around, but it seems unlikely that continued conflict would achieve anything beyond a satisfaction of bloodlust.

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