China is poised to take over operational control of a strategic deep-water Pakistani seaport that could serve as a vital economic hub for Beijing and perhaps a key military outpost, officials said.
The construction of the port, in the former fishing village of Gwadar in troubled Baluchistan Province, was largely funded by China at a cost of about US$200 million. It has been a commercial failure since it opened in 2007, because Pakistan never completed the road network to link the port to the rest of the country.
Chinese control of the port would give it a foothold in one of the world’s most strategic areas and could unsettle officials in Washington, who have been concerned about Beijing’s expanding regional influence.
The port occupies a strategic location between South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. It lies near the Strait of Hormuz, gateway for about 20 percent of the world’s oil.
China’s interest is driven by concerns about energy security as it seeks to fuel its booming economy. It wants a place to anchor pipelines to secure oil and gas supplies from the Gulf. Beijing also believes that helping develop Pakistan will boost economic activity in its far western province of Xinjiang and dampen a simmering, low-intensity rebellion there.
Some experts view Gwadar as the westernmost link in the “string of pearls,” a line of ports from China to the Gulf that could facilitate expansion of the Chinese navy in the Indian Ocean.
That has sparked concern in both the US and India.
Pakistan’s Cabinet agreed on Wednesday to a proposal for a company owned by the Chinese government, China Overseas Port Holdings Limited, to purchase control of the port from Singapore’s PSA International Pte Ltd (PSA), which won a bid in 2007 to operate the port for 40 years.
Pakistan views China as one of its most important allies and a counterweight to the US, which has given Islamabad billions of US dollars in aid but is often viewed as a fickle taskmaster.
China is expected to pay US$35 million for control of the port to PSA and two other groups that own an interest, said Aqeel Karim Dhedhi, one of the other shareholders.
A senior Pakistani official said that Beijing has agreed to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to finish a 900km road that would link the port with Pakistan’s north-south Indus Highway, facilitating overland transport from Gwadar to China.
It will still be a tough drive, passing along the Karakorum Highway that winds through the rugged mountains of northern Pakistan and then into China’s Xinjiang Province via a border crossing point at an elevation of 4,693m. The path is often blocked by snow in winter.
Even so, the route will cut the overland distance from China’s western provinces to the sea in half, from about 4,000km to China’s east coast, to just 2,000km south to Gwadar.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema