CPEC won’t lead to new colonialism in Pakistan: Daily

A Chinese journalist has denied Pakistani claims that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) will lead to “a new form of colonialism”.

“People often use warnings from history, but those warnings can sometimes be misplaced,” Wang Jiamei said in a commentary in the state-run Global Times.

“The allegation that the CPEC – a flagship project under the Belt and Road initiative – would be a new form of colonialism seems to be an obvious example of the deceptive use of history,” he said.

Pakistani political economist S. Akbar Zaidi said in a lecture on Friday that Islamabad will become a colony of China once the CPEC was ready.

He had alleged that CPEC “will enslave Pakistan and will undermine its sovereignty”. Wang said that Zaidi was “not the first and probably won’t be the last person to raise such concerns though there are no facts to support his theory”.

The commentary said it was hard to understand how some infrastructure projects, particularly China’s, could threaten any country’s sovereignty.

The economist also said that Pakistan should be alert to the debt risks brought by Chinese investment, which “turned sour in Sri Lanka, Tajikistan and several parts of Africa”.

Wang said: “The accusation is essentially a conspiracy theory which, without any foundation, presents China as an evil investor...

“If Pakistan wants to achieve industrialization with China’s help, it also needs to make adjustments on its own toward the goal.”