{"id":20042193,"date":"2020-10-05T12:30:38","date_gmt":"2020-10-05T07:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thethirdpole.net\/?p=39041"},"modified":"2021-09-28T17:39:21","modified_gmt":"2021-09-28T12:09:21","slug":"pakistani-military-in-charge-provinces-sidelined-in-a-revived-cpec","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/business\/pakistani-military-in-charge-provinces-sidelined-in-a-revived-cpec\/","title":{"rendered":"Pakistani military in charge, provinces sidelined in a revived CPEC"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What was once considered the path to prosperity for Pakistan is now a fraught subject. In the past three years, there has been little progress on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), touted by both Beijing and Islamabad as the cornerstone of friendship between the two countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the landmark visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Pakistan in 2015, China pledged USD 46 billion for a range of energy and infrastructure projects. But the corridor today is nowhere near its goal of boosting industrialisation in Pakistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The slowdown in recent years has been attributed in part to reduced interest in the project from the new government in Islamabad, which has had its share of teething problems in the shape of economic and administrative challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soon after Prime Minister Imran Khan came into power in 2018, Abdul Razzaq Dawood, a top advisor, suggested that all CPEC projects would be reviewed. China had been granted \u201ctoo-favourable terms in many projects\u201d by the former government of Nawaz Sharif, Dawood told the Financial Times<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CPEC projects have also been criticised for fuelling centre-province and inter-province tensions. Under the 18th Amendment legislation passed in 2010, the provinces have financial and legislative autonomy and the federation is bound to accept provincial ownership of natural resources. However, projects under CPEC are between Pakistan and China, giving the federal government control over project negotiation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are good reasons for some CPEC-induced pessimism over the state of inter-provincial political and economic disparity in Pakistan,\u201d said Umair Javed, assistant professor of politics at Lahore University of Management Sciences. \u201cCPEC is a state-to-state cooperation agreement. At Pakistan\u2019s end, multi-party conferences and the occasional chief ministerial-level meeting have no de jure authority over the actual projects. To put this in simpler terms, CPEC is a centralising force in Pakistan\u2019s political system that places a lot of eggs in the federal government\u2019s basket.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CPEC is a centralising force in Pakistan\u2019s political system that places a lot of eggs in the federal government\u2019s basket.<\/blockquote>Umair Javed, assistant professor of politics at Lahore University of Management Sciences<\/cite><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Katherine Adeney, director of the University of Nottingham\u2019s Asia Research Institute, noted that these \u201ccentre-province relations are key to the successful implementation of the investment package from Beijing\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow the projects agreed upon under the CPEC umbrella materialise on the ground will be a potent example of how things will develop in the countries along the new Silk Road,\u201d Adeney wrote in a recent essay<\/a> on the impact of CPEC on Pakistan\u2019s federal system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a near three-year lull, the Pakistani government has once again started to promote CPEC. A flurry of tweets announcing work underway on projects are accompanied by the hashtags #PakistanMovingForward<\/a> and and #CPECMakingProgress<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The narrative is the same: that the corridor will further cement Pakistan-China ties, pull the country out of economic hardship and onto the road to progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to analysts, recent developments signal that the powerful military is at the helm of the renewed push. The military has a serious strategic interest in closer ties with China, which it sees as a strong ally to counter India. There are reports<\/a> that the Pakistani and Chinese governments are expanding Pakistan\u2019s building of Chinese military jets, weaponry and other hardware as part of a confidential plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additionally, a new CPEC Authority (CPECA) \u2013 a government body led by a retired lieutenant general \u2013 is aggressively promoting, and defending, the corridor even as it releases little in the way of details as to what the corridor will actually be. On the official cpec.gov.pk website, the information is superficial, and it is difficult to independently verify the government\u2019s information on projects, as the chairman does not engage with the media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Recommended<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/a>\n\n\n\n

To critically examine how far CPEC has come and what the future looks like, it is essential to look at what has been achieved in the context of what was promised \u2013 and how the power tussle will play out. Post-Covid-19, it is also relevant to see if goalposts will shift as China\u2019s economy bounces back<\/a> after a record slump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More important still are the environmental consequences of the projects committed under the CPEC framework. These increase Pakistan\u2019s dependence on coal and simultaneously pledge to add more infrastructure and high-volume transportation, thus enabling greater emissions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are fears<\/a> that coal power plants will be major contributors to CO2 emissions and smog; that the network of new roads from Kashgar to Gwadar will result in a massive tree-cutting drive; and a recent study<\/a> shows that the addition of 7,000 trucks per day on the Karakoram Highway will release up to 36.5 million tonnes of CO2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The widening of roads has led to the clearing of trees (Image by: Atta Ullah Nasim)<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The plan<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Aside from providing China a platform for stronger influence in the region, the corridor is intended to shorten oil, gas and other trade routes by thousands of kilometres by cutting overland from western China rather than going around South and Southeast Asia by ship. A study<\/a> jointly written by researchers in Islamabad and Beijing found that transport costs for an average 40-foot shipping container between Kashgar and destination ports in the Middle East and Europe would decrease. China would save about USD 1,350 (32.9%) in transport costs per container traded with Europe and USD 1,450 (41.4%) per container to the Middle East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Pakistan there was also the hope is that proposed special economic zones (SEZs) built along the route would create tens of thousands of jobs. Local industries (ranging from textiles to automobile) would absorb Chinese investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The long-term plan<\/a>, approved by both governments in 2017, called for the corridor to take shape by 2020. In total, 23 energy projects, seven major road and rail networks, nine SEZs and an expanded, functional Gwadar port lie at the heart of CPEC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Graphic: The Third Pole<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Five years on, progress has been made on the \u201cearly harvest\u201d energy projects \u2013 largely coal-fired power stations \u2013 and some of the road projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to cpec.gov.pk, of the infrastructure projects, one road project is functional and another is \u201csubstantially complete\u201d. The rest are either \u201cin progress\u201d (with no details on extent of construction) or at the land-acquisition stage. The main USD 7 billion ML-1 project, which involves upgrading and expanding the 1,872 km Peshawar-Karachi railway line, did not move beyond a framework agreement signed in 2016 until June 2020. Only this year has the government begun to prepare to invite bids for tenders for the project. The Pakistani government had previously aimed to upgrade the line by a 2021 deadline<\/a>, which has now been pushed to 2024. Details of the financing arrangement for this multi-billion-dollar project remain unclear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Construction work is yet to begin on the SEZs, which are still either in the feasibility or land-acquisition stages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Gwadar port project \u2013 which under CPEC entails the construction of an expressway, airport, breakwaters and berthing areas among other things \u2013 is also largely incomplete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Post-2017 slowdown<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Khurram Husain is a Karachi-based journalist at the English daily Dawn<\/em> who has tracked CPEC projects since 2015. According to him, the slowdown has been significant. \u201cThe early harvest programme \u2013 under which they [China and Pakistan] were going to construct a network of roads and a handful of power plants \u2013 is pretty much done. Yet, the real CPEC begins after the early harvest programmes have been established. It entails running SEZs, a functional Gwadar port and the relocation of Chinese industry into Pakistan under the SEZ umbrella. This is where the project has been stuck,\u201d said Husain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pakistan hopes CPEC and Gwadar will make it a logistical and trade hub (Image: Moign Khwaja\/Flickr)<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

When asked to touch on the reasons behind the slowdown, he said: \u201cThis government just did not make it a priority to overcome challenges such as land acquisitions, relocation etc. If you ask the government, they will sugarcoat it in happy, pleasant language to indicate there is movement. But on the ground things were stagnant.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andrew Small, a senior transatlantic fellow at the US thinktank the German Marshall Fund and author of the book The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia\u2019s New Geopolitics<\/em>, agreed.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMany potential initiatives that were part of the original USD 46 billion figure are not even being negotiated any more. So it\u2019s a smaller overall package than originally envisaged, though still not a negligible sum \u2013 USD 19 billion plus already \u2013 and plans for President Xi\u2019s upcoming visit have given some more momentum to the CPEC second phase.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, China has pulled back a little.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t just a question of the slowdown \u2013 which has been underway since Pakistan\u2019s economic situation started facing difficulties in 2017 \u2013 but rather that China also grew more cautious themselves for a range of reasons,\u201d said Small.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Small attributed the \u201ccooling down of CPEC\u201d to the wider pushback encountered by the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which he said forced China to adopt a more careful approach. Since 2017 Beijing has tightened restrictions<\/a> on outbound investment, emphasising the need for high-quality projects<\/a>, and a greater degree of party oversight<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere have also been some practical bureaucratic obstacles, as well as objections from various interest groups to deal with, such as Pakistani business concerns about the special economic  zones.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new CPEC Authority<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Much of the way CPEC will develop can be discerned in how CPECA was created, and its mandate. In October 2019 the government created the authority through an ordinance<\/a> that bypassed the National Assembly and Senate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its powers are extensive. CPECA will exercise control over all corridor projects within Pakistan and have the following functions: to interface with China to identify areas of cooperation; ensure consensus building between the provinces and federal government; engage in CPEC \u201cnarrative building\u201d and conduct research. Even though the 18th Amendment gave the provinces autonomy over resources, the new ordinance allows the authority to become something of a \u201cparallel government\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the draft legislation is still not in the public domain, it is unclear how much the CPECA will undercut the role of the provinces. But reports on the draft indicated that the CPECA will have unprecedented powers to control and conceive CPEC projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Umair Javed, \u201cPart of the problem is because of how the civil and now the military leadership have built up the almost heroic status of the corridor, while sacrificing any attempt at transparency. The federal government\u2019s bureaucratic role \u2013 through which the military\u2019s control has been guaranteed \u2013 has further enshrined this centralising aspect of CPEC.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a comment for the South Asia Democratic Forum<\/a>, Siegfried O. Wolf, the director of research at the SADF, noted that the plan for a central CPEC institution is not new. It has long been advocated by the military and related circles, but was rejected by former prime minister Sharif.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wolf wrote that while an overall authority would improve coordination and efficiency, the ways CPECA is being set up reflect the unwillingness by Pakistan\u2019s leadership to carry out fundamental reforms. The military, which wields significant political power in the country, has secured the appointment of one of its own to head the authority and speed things along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asim Saleem Bajwa, the former head of the army\u2019s Southern Command which covers the province of Balochistan, is CPECA\u2019s chairman, yet has avoided engaging with the press, including The Third Pole<\/a>, on CPEC. Last month, Bajwa was embroiled in a corruption scandal<\/a> after a journalist reported on his alleged failure to disclose assets. He has refuted the allegations but both he and the prime minister were clear that his CPEC appointment would be unaffected by the controversy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The CPECA and its chair are immune to prosecution and legal proceedings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On his Twitter account, Bajwa has been vehement in his denials about a slowdown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Some detractors giving false impression of #CPEC<\/a> being slowed.Not only pace of work on projects picked up recently,a great deal ground work done to launch phase-2.Coming soon;$ 7.2 Bn ML-1, two Hydel Power projects investing $3.5 Bns, SEZs,&agriculture.Scope actually enhanced<\/p>— Asim Saleem Bajwa (@AsimSBajwa) June 17, 2020<\/a><\/blockquote>