Aamir Ali
Contemplate Pakistan without the unwavering support of China at times when we are confronted with harsh economic challenges. Think about our country without Chinese prominent project, namely CPEC. Just envisage a phenomenon when china shuns helping us at our tough times. Visualize a situation when china ceases to receive our exports. Mull over an occurrence when our neighbour insists to repay its loans we owe to it. By all means, we are surrounded by this neighbour to whom we approach when we grapple with our economy to be in doldrums. Our beloved neighbour has always opened up its hands for unequivocal fiscal support to our country. We therefore owe thankfulness to China, for it has always remained with us and has advocated on many platforms for our better cause. However, let’s delve into details into the ground realities behind the ardent support of China. The foremost reason behind Chin’s kindness is because of viability of CPEC, a flagship project of china’s belt and road initiative (BRI), CPEC on this front is a project providing china a land route to access Arabian sea, Middle East, Gulf Regions, Central Asia, Caucasian region and Africa. It would actually take china a month to carry and reach its commodities, travelling from south China sea to strait of Malacca to Indian occean and then to Arabian sea. But time, efforts and energy has been saved now and china can leverage these ingredients for doing something better. A distance that would earlier take approximately a month to China has been curtailed to days. That’s why, the country has pooled all of its resources to forge amiable relations with Pakistan just for materializing its coveted dream of attaining global hegemony. Though china is pursuing its ulterior motives under the umbrella of bonhomie with our country, it has undoubtedly turned out to be beneficial to us too, as we have been receiving whopping investment for the viability of CPEC since 2013. Under the garb of this initiative, China has immensely helped us in uplifting our transport and power sector in its first phase. It has constructed highways, motorways and railway tracks for transportation purpose and also have scaled up our solar system. So far, CPEC has proved quite helpful for both the countries in consolidating their economic realms. Few days ago, our caretaker Prime minister Anwar ul Haq Kakkar departed for china to expand the scope of CPEC and take it to new heights. There, he met Chinese president Xi Jingping and his counterpart to exhibit strong resolve in broadening the CPEC horizos. Chinese authorities also expressed their great desire to move on the next phase of the landmark Chinese initiative, namely CPEC. Under this phase, Pakistan will closely join its hand with its neighbour in boosting education, agriculture, communication, mining and many of similar sectors that are lagged behind. With the advent of such innumerable projects under the umbrella of the new phase, Pakistan will receive hefty sum of investment, thereby opening vista of opportunities for employment and other growth-oriented projects. To me, china is not less than a saviour that has overwhelmedly steered Pakistan towards growth. However, the most daunting challenge for those in power reins is that of ensuring the safety of Chinese personnel working in Pakistan, streamlining CPEC to a smooth and bump-free road. China has too reiterated the same as it has insisted upon Pakistani power-mongers to consider safety of Chinese workers their utmost priority. Pakistan on this front has vowed to translate this into reality at any cost. Interestingly, our surrounded neighbour urged Pakistan to keep an eye on its workers whether or not they are safe living peaceful life since some left-wing elements have attempted to put lives of those workers at risk of death in order to derail CPEC. These elements are doing so to stunt Pakistan’s peaceful growth and want us to estrange us in the comity of nations. We have therefore established SPU force only for the safety of Chinese employees. Well, that’s a nice move, a drop in the occean, thereby winning hearts of Chinese administration. To cut short, CPEC is a life-changing initiative. If it is optimised with great care, it can usher us in an era of utopia where prosperity is inevitable. The project therefore can take us to new heights of success, growth and development we haven’t ever experienced. Truly speaking, if we are successful enough in materializing CPEC in high spirits, we can be enumerated among the highest economies of the world. For all this to happen, we must shun our short-sightedness in ensuring safety of lives of Chinese workers, completion of projects on time and providing china a congenial environment whereby we can win its trust.
