CPEC – A Flagship BRI Project: Challenges and Policy Recommendations by Liu Zongyi

"[We must] strengthen China-Pakistan media cooperation and guide [Pakistani] public opinion in the right way."

Today’s edition begins with a short commentary by Jacob Mardell

At last week’s Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, Pakistan’s caretaker Prime Minister reportedly told Xi Jinping, “we will always stand with China and trust you blindly.” The analysis below from Liu Zongyi casts Pakistani loyalties to China in a more uncertain light, Liu writing that the country’s elites “are not steadfast in their stance towards China.” 

Although the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was technically established two years after Xi Jinping announced the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), CPEC is really a precursor to the BRI, and a special case. However, the frustration Liu expresses with the corridor can be felt across the BRI - for example in Kazakhstan, where Beijing’s grand plans for industrial cooperation also met with the disappointing realities of poor governance, bureaucracy, and corruption.

Liu attributes some of the fault for the headwinds facing CPEC – and for the situation with Pakistani elites – …