Islamabad and Beijing hold crucial investment meeting, safety of Chinese workers tops agenda
KARACHI: Pakistan and China will hold the 13th virtual meeting of the Joint Cooperation Committee (JCC) on China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) today, Friday, with safety of Chinese organisations and personnel working in the South Asian country expected to top the agenda.
China is Pakistan’s main ally and investor, but separatists and other militants have attacked Chinese projects in recent months, killing Chinese personnel, including five Chinese workers killed in a suicide bomb attack on March 26 on their way to the Das hydroelectric project in northwest Pakistan.
The hydropower project falls under CPEC, a flagship project of China’s Belt and Road Initiative that will see more than $65 billion invested in road, rail and other infrastructure development in the South Asian country of 241 million people. Pakistan says it has completed more than 50 projects worth a total of $25 billion under CPEC since it was launched in 2015.
The 13th JCC meeting formally began on Friday with a minute’s silence in memory of the Chinese nationals killed in a suicide bomb attack in March, whom Pakistan’s Ministry of Planning described as “Pakistani heroes” who contributed to the realization of CPEC.
“China and Pakistan have joined hands and embarked on a journey of common dreams to build quality development projects,” Pakistan’s Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal said in his opening remarks at the meeting. “It is gratifying to see the steady progress of CPEC since its launch in 2013.”
He lauded President Xi Jinping’s vision to create an “upgraded version” of CPEC and transform it into a growth, livelihood-improving, innovation, green and regional connectivity corridor, aligning it with Pakistan’s 5E socio-economic framework approved last year for boosting exports, energy, environment, equity and empowerment.
“We are ready to cooperate with the NDRC. [National Development and Reform Commission of China] The scope and implementation plan of these corridors will be finalised,” Iqbal added.
The minister gave details of a number of projects that have been completed so far under CPEC, including the construction of about 888 km of expressways and highways. He said the 884 MW Suki Kinari hydroelectric project, worth $1.7 billion, is under construction and is expected to be inaugurated later this year.
Iqbal further added that three hydroelectric projects with a generating capacity of 2,100 MW and one coal-fired power project in Gwadar are in the final stages of completion.
China has also been an active provider of financial support for many years to bail out its struggling neighbors, and last July it approved a two-year deferral of a $2.4 billion loan to debt-stricken Pakistan, giving the country some much-needed breathing room as it grapples with a balance of payments crisis.
But in recent years, Chinese projects and interests have also come under increasing attack.
The March Dasu attack was the third major attack in just over a week targeting Chinese interests, following a March 20 attack on a strategic port used by China in the southwestern province of Balochistan, where Beijing is pouring billions of dollars into infrastructure projects including a deep-sea port, and a March 25 attack on a naval air base, also in the southwest.
Both attacks were claimed by the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), the most powerful of several separatist groups in Balochistan.
The city of Dazhen, home to a large dam, has been attacked before, including a bus explosion in 2021 that killed 13 people, nine of them Chinese, though no group has claimed responsibility for the attack as in the March 26 bombing.
Pakistan is facing two insurgencies: a religiously motivated extremist insurgency and an insurgency by ethnic separatists seeking independence in the southwestern province of Balochistan, which they blame for what they say is an unfair distribution of natural resources by the government.
Chinese interests have come under attack primarily by ethnic militants seeking to drive Beijing out of mineral-rich Balochistan, which is far from the site of the March 26 bombing.
Pakistan’s top economic body on Thursday approved $2.5 million in compensation for the families of Chinese workers killed in the March 26 Dasu attack.
