In a park outside Islamabad, fountains tinkle beneath the huge glass façade of the new Pakistan-China Friendship Centre. “Pakistan China friendship is as high as the Himalayas, as deep as the ocean and sweet as honey,” declares a hoarding above an escalator, which grinds to a halt intermittently due to the country’s chronic power shortages.
Next month, China’s President Xi Jinping will arrive here to finalise plans to turn this gushing propaganda into reality by building a 1,800km railway that would, for the first time, directly link Beijing to Islamabad via its eastern province of Xinjiang. Stretching to Pakistan’s biggest city of Karachi, and beyond to a Chinese-built deep-sea port at Gwadar on the Gulf of Oman, the railway would bore through some of the world’s highest peaks in the Karakoram sub-range of the Himalayas.
“China has a new focus on this region,” beams Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed, the chairman of the Pakistan China Institute, who says the railway will be a “game changer” and the most ambitious part of a Chinese plan to reboot the area’s troubled economy and open up its own western flank to development. After years of war and terrorism, Pakistan has suffered an exodus of foreign cash and expertise, but with Beijing now splashing out $32 billion on more than 120 projects in Pakistan over the next seven years, the number of Chinese living and working in the country has leapt to from 3,000 in 2008 to nearly 15,000.
Chinese workers are dredging Karachi’s port complex, and building a giant hydroelectric dam at Bunji on the Indus River, a highway linking Lahore to Karachi, and nuclear and coal-fired power stations, solar power plants and ports.
With Pakistan’s reputation for violence, terrorism and corruption, some westerners are privately raising their eyebrows at the scale of China’s spending spree. However, for China’s former ambassador to India and Pakistan, Zhou Gang, the attractions are clear. “It will promote the economic development of all Asian countries,” he said, pointing out that to reach the Gulf of Oman from Shanghai, Chinese goods must currently travel 15,858km by ship through the Strait of Malacca. A railway, road or pipeline through Pakistan would slash that journey to 4,712km.
Despite the hype, however, tensions exist. India disapproves of the railway, which would run through territory it claims as its own. China also frets about the safety of its citizens in Pakistan, several of whom have been killed. One Pakistani official warned: “If they can’t sort out the terrorism and security then it won’t happen.”
via China builds friendship railway to link Pakistan | The Times.
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