CHINA’S NEW CHICK

HOW CHINA IS BUYING OUT PAKISTAN WITH MASSIVE NEW INVESTMENTS AND WHY INDIA NEEDS TO WORRY

When Mao Zedong’s People’s Liberation Army marched into the restive Muslim-majority region on China’s western frontier in 1949, the Chairman decided to christen the People’s Republic’s newest province Xinjiang, literally meaning ‘new frontier’—a historical name used intermittently for China’s borderlands. Today, for many in Beijing, Pakistan is China’s new new frontier. If the 20-year blueprint envisioned by China’s leaders and Pakistan’s current government comes to fruition, Beijing will soon have a say in how almost every aspect of the Pakistani economy is run.

In the three years since the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project was launched, this transformation has already begun to unfold. A draft CPEC masterplan—conceived of by China’s National Development and Reform Commission and Pakistan’s ministry of planning, and published by Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper—and the most sweeping Chinese assessment till date about the project—an internal review undertaken by Beijing’s Renmin University and shared with india today—both underline the enormous