Foreign Affairs
Related: About this forum"Pakistan Enters The New Silk Road" --Pepe's Latest
By Pepe Escobar
April 25, 2015 Now how do you top this as a geopolitical entrance? Eight JF-17 Thunder fighter jets escorting Chinese President Xi Jinping on board an Air China Boeing as he enters Pakistani air space. And these JF-17s are built as a China-Pakistan joint project.
Silk Road? Better yet; silk skyway.
Just to drive the point home and into everyones homes a little further, Xi penned a column widely distributed to Pakistani media before his first overseas trip in 2015.
He stressed, We need to form a 1+4? cooperation structure with the Economic Corridor at the center and the Gwadar Port, energy, infrastructure and industrial cooperation being the four key areas to drive development across Pakistan and deliver tangible benefits to its people.
Quick translation: China is bringing Pakistan into the massive New Silk Road(s) project with a bang.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry, also on cue, stressed that Pakistan would be in the frontline to benefit from the $40 billion Silk Road Fund, which will help to finance the Silk Road Economic Belt and Maritime Silk Road projects; or, in Chinese jargon, One Belt, One Road, that maze of roads, high-speed rail, ports, pipelines and fiber optics networks bound to turbo-charge Chinas links to Europe through Russia, Central Asia and the Indian Ocean.
The Silk Road Fund will disburse funds in parallel with the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which has already enticed no less than 57 countries. Chinas assistant foreign minister, Liu Jianchao, has not delved into detailed numbers, but he assures China stands ready to provide financing.
So no wonder Pakistani media was elated. A consensus is also fast emerging that China is becoming Pakistans most important ally from either West or East.
Beijings carefully calibrated commercial offensive mixing Chinese leadership concepts such as harmonious society and Chinese dream with a win-win neighborhood policy seduces by the numbers alone: $46 billion in investment in Pakistan ($11 billion in infrastructure, $35 billion in energy), compared to a U.S. Congresss $7.5 billion program thats been in place since 2008.
The meat of the matter is that Washingtons help to Islamabad is enveloped in outdated weapons systems, while Beijing is investing in stuff that actually benefits people in Pakistan; think of $15.5 billion in coal, wind, solar and hydro energy projects bound to come online by 2017, or a $44 million optical fiber cable linking China and Pakistan.
According to the Center for Global Development, between 2002 and 2009 no less than 70% of U.S. aid was about security related to the never-ending GWOT (global war on terror). As a Pakistani analyst wrote me, just compare Xis vision for his neighbors and the history of America in Latin America. It is like the difference between heaven and hell.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article41686.htm
Cross-posted from "Asia Times."
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)I mean I can't blame anyone for preferring actual trade in commercial goods, over gifts of weaponry the state uses mostly against its citizenry...
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)and Laos.
China will win the world with mega-project infrastructure, not mega-military interventions, that is SO yesterday's failed policies of America.
That America objects to the substitution of imperialism by war for imperialism by peace is irrelevant and of no consequence.
It is China's money to do with as it pleases.
MattSh
(3,714 posts)high speed rail between Beijing and Moscow.
KoKo
(84,711 posts)waiting for that investmentwe were promised. But, we can keep our Pentagon, NSA and the rest funded. Even adding funds because we need to pay for our disruption and devastation in the MENA.
So far....that issue isn't even addressed by any 2016 Candidate.