Regional linkages and shared prosperity
Courtesy:- Malik Muhammad Ashraf The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) arguably is the pivot of the Chinese One Road One Belt initiative, which envisages not only the revival of the centuries’ old Silk Road (for trade and cultural interaction) but also a participatory process of sharing the fruits of economic development made possible by regional and global linkages that it desires to orchestrate. It is really a matter of great satisfaction that due to an abiding commitment both by Pakistan and China to see this project implemented within the envisaged time frame and their priority for the Early Harvesting Projects (EHP), a number of first phase initiatives costing $18 billion likely to be completed by 2018 are already under execution. Another set of ventures with an accumulated cost of $17 billion is under different stages of approval. CPEC involving an investment of $46 billion covers wide-ranging areas including energy, roads, railways, ports, optic fiber, oil and gas pi...