Pakistan is hosting a major port and a land line of communication from China to that port in order to take part in China's "New Silk Road" (now called "One Belt One Road") to Europe to foster overland trade with Europe.
But so far Pakistan isn't seeing a trade benefit:
Costing tens of billions of dollars, the road links western China with Pakistan, part of Beijing’s “One Belt One Road” Initiative, which seeks to rekindle ancient Silk Road trade routes linking China with Europe and Africa and is a central tenet of President Xi Jinping’s leadership, said professor Steve Tsang of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.
“The government is committed to do whatever it can to make sure that it is successful,” Tsang said. “So a lot more money and resources will be put into it to support that.”
But figures show that since the Karakoram Highway was built, Pakistani exports to China have fallen while imports have increased, raising concern China’s new Silk Road could become a one-way street.
Any Chinese loans to Pakistan as part of this initiative will not generate the income to repay the loans.
Another problem is that a lot of the motive for pushing this investment corridor isn't to promote a more efficient trade route between China and Europe but to move some of that trade to overland routes in order to move economic benefits from China's already prosperous coastal provinces to the still-poor interior provinces.
For a long time, China was content to rule their continent-sized (and complex) empire, feeling they needed nothing from the outside world.
But economic needs are pushing them to expand the reach of their imperial influence via the New Silk Road initiative.
Will countries on those routes react to China's expanding reach in hostile ways if the expansion doesn't help the local countries, but instead bolsters the Chinese core?
Is Pakistan just a leading indicator of how China's initiative will make the regions mere "fly-over country" between China and Europe, promoting growth that doesn't reach the "highways?"
