Mortgaged itself to a foreign power, Pakistan is the perfect example of a colony in a post-colonial world that is playing in the lap of the US and China. Its rough character and directionless policies forced it into a state of decay. Every state’s machinery is failing. Its industry, polity, economy, society, or trade everything seems to be on the god’s mercy. Moreover, its flagship infrastructure project, CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) which was supposed to be changing the industrial & infrastructural face of the country, crashed before taking off.
Darkness in CPEC
According to the recently released news report, about 25 representatives from Chinese Independent Power Producers (IPPs) have raised the issue of dues and have threatened to completely shut the power off in the CPEC projects. The IPPs said that “the authorities were pressuring them to maximize generation to meet peak summer needs, but this is impossible for us given serious liquidity issues”.
After the change of government in Pakistan, a review meeting was called by Pakistan’s Minister for Planning and Development with more than 30 Chinese companies working under the CPEC in various sectors like energy, communication, railways, and others, reported the dawn.
Further raising concern over the financial difficulties, the Chinese IPPs said that “while payments against power already supplied were not forthcoming and they had been financially handicapped due to Covid-19 pandemic, the tax authorities had started taxing them at higher rates”.
Read More: Ilhan Omar and Pakistan: 3As of US-Pakistan nexus is back again
CPEC – A Broken Dream
Pakistan’s new government under Shehbaz Sharif had recently ordered to scrap the CPEC Authority, established in 2019 to boost the projects decided under the CPEC cooperation. In a process to abolish the CPEC Authority, the planning minister had said that it was a redundant organization that wasted resources and thwarted the speedy implementation of the ambitious regional connectivity program.
Moreover, the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) is constantly targeting the Pakistani army as well as Chinese workers engaged in the CPEC project. The BLA claim that they are being forced out of their ancestral land due to this project without proper rehabilitation. It is further important to note that the BLA is an organization of freedom groups that seek to liberate the Balochistan province of Pakistan from the federation.
Increasing financial, political and security concerns have started to raise the very question. Will the $60 billion infrastructure network linking the CPEC project be a broken dream of Chinese President Xi Jinping? Will the Chinese dream of reviving the old Silk Route be the dream only? Well, the formal announcement of the failed project will take time but combining all the facts and circumstances around suggest that before the CPEC linking project reaches the Gwadar port in the Arabian Sea, Xi Jinping’s dream has already reached the deep trenches of the sea.
