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China's 'Belt and Road' Plan in Pakistan Takes a Military Turn
When President Trump started the new year by suspending billions of dollars of security aid to Pakistan, one theory was that it would scare the Pakistani military into cooperating better with its American allies.
The reality was that Pakistan already had a replacement sponsor lined up.
Just two weeks later, the Pakistani Air Force and Chinese officials were putting the final touches on a secret proposal to expand Pakistan's building of Chinese military jets, weaponry and other hardware. The confidential plan, reviewed by The New York Times, would also deepen the cooperation between China and Pakistan in space, a frontier the Pentagon recently said Beijing was trying to militarize after decades of playing catch-up.
All those military projects were designated as part of China's Belt and Road Initiative, a $1 trillion chain of infrastructure development programs stretching across some 70 countries, built and financed by Beijing.
Chinese officials have repeatedly said the Belt and Road is purely an economic project with peaceful intent. But with its plan for Pakistan, China is for the first time explicitly tying a Belt and Road proposal to its military ambitions — and confirming the concerns of a host of nations who suspect the infrastructure initiative is really about helping China project armed might.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 28 2018, @09:02PM (1 child)
Actually China's Belt & Road stuff seems slightly more positive than what the US does.
China is lending countries money and building ports and infra for them.
Stuff could go wrong and the ROI could be crap but China shares the risk. For example with Sri Lanka stuff didn't go well. So 70% of the port was leased and port operations were handed over to China for 99 years. China gets to control stuff for 99 years, stuff that they spent a lot of money to build. Sri Lanka gets that stuff after 99 years while using part of the port. And how much money did Sri Lanka spend for that?
China isn't trying to force Pakistan, Sri Lanka or others to sell their banks and other companies to China. Or "harmonize" their laws (100+ year copyrights etc).
It's not all great since 99 years is a long time but Sri Lanka might actually have something at the end of it if they don't screw up their own country. In contrast the US approach tends to involve screwing up countries as part of the plan...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 29 2018, @12:31PM
At least somebody around here knows what they are talking about. Unsurprisingly it's an AC.