Connectivity is key to success

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor has become a “flagship” of the China-led Belt and Road Initiative, according to Mushahid Hussain, a Pakistani senator and chairman of the parliamentary committee on the corridor.

He said the BeltandRoadInitiative— anumbrella term for the SilkRoadEconomicBeltandthe 21st Century Maritime Silk Road — will result in land and sea routes that will connect countries in Asia, theMiddle East, Africa and Europe.

“Infact the corridor is not justaboutPakistanand China, it is also about the region. It is about connectivity, it is about corridors, it is about cooperation,” he said, refering to its influence beyond the South Asia region.

Noting the “great” location of Gwadar Port, a meeting point of the Belt and Road routes, he said connectivity will be “key” to the initiative’s success.

“Today, the corridor is a factor of national unity in the progress and prosperity of the people of Pakistan and the provinces of Pakistan, particularly the less-developed regions, in the quest to build a better and more prosperous future,” he said.

He recalled the reply he gave to a journalist’s question during an address at Harvard University inMarch about the challenges facing the corridor.

“I said the corridor will succeed because it is a demand of our time, and it is what the people and the region want— abetter life.

“Also, the leaderships of both countries have the political vision and determination to take this forward together, with the support of Pakistan and the people of China,” he added.

He quoted a famous maxim by Chairman Mao Zedong:“Nothing is hard in this world ifyoudare to scale the heights.”

A staunch supporter of bilateral friendship and cooperation, the senator is also chairman of the Pakistan-China Institute, a think tank that worked with the China International Publishing Group to translate President Xi Jinping’s book, XiJinping: TheGovernanceofChina, intoUrdu.

Hussain has good relationships with the leaders of both countries; his contact with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif stretches back to the 1980s and he has met withXi several times.

“Both leaders have a common vision of development, of connectivity and promoting cooperation in theirowncountriesandthe region as a whole,” he said, adding that Pakistan and China “have a model relationship”.

“Andthis bond, this tie and this rapport has withstood rigorous changes in both countries in the last 50-plus years,” he said.