ISLAMABAD: Outgoing Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Yao Jing has said the security of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was a major ‘concern’ and Pakistan and China were working together, including through intelligence cooperation, to counter the designs of ‘externally-supported elements.”
CPEC has seen Beijing pledge over $60 billion for infrastructure projects in Pakistan, central to China’s wider Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to develop land and sea trade routes in Asia and beyond.
In an interview with Pakistani newspaper Pakistan Today, the ambassador said the security of CPEC projects was one of the main topics discussed during a recent visit by Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi to Beijing.
“There are some externally-supported elements who are working against the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor; there have also been some terrorist attacks recently,” the ambassador said.
“Such elements are a major security threat to Chinese companies working in Pakistan. However we are very grateful that the Pakistani government has adopted very comprehensive security plans for CPEC and the Chinese companies working on these projects.”
“The Strategic Security Division (SSD) has been established and just last year, they opened a new division called Southern Division. We are going to collaborate with law reinforcement department, basically ministry of interior and the police,” Yao added.
He said China and Pakistan were planning on having more local base stations to allow for a greater exchange of experience and collaboration, which would result in better capacity building of forces tasked to secure CPEC projects.
“We are also having some kind of police related capacities in different provinces, as well as jointly monitoring external elements who are detrimental to CPEC,” Yao said. “We are also having intelligence cooperation between Pakistan and China.”
The ambassador said another major concern around CPEC was that Pakistani officials lacked expertise on how the Chinese government and companies operate.
CPEC was on the right track but Pakistan needed to appoint experts that knew the workings of the Chinese government and markets and could advice Pakistan on how to navigate these mechanisms, the ambassador said.
“CPEC is now well connected, much to the satisfaction of both sides,” he said. “The biggest concern if there is one is that Pakistani officials lack expertise on not just how the Chinese government works, but also how Chinese companies operate.”
“In China, for example, we have some experts that advise us on Pakistan’s functioning model. But there is a lot more to be done for Pakistani authorities to learn the functioning of Chinese markets and government,” Yao said.
Last month, Pakistan approved its costliest project to date as part of the CPEC agreement, giving the go-ahead for a $6.8 billion project to upgrade its railway lines, known as Mainline-1 (ML-1), on a cost-sharing basis between Islamabad and Beijing.
“ML-I is the biggest of our mega projects,” Yao said. “We were stuck for a while on this, but now we have made a breakthrough on it and we are moving on to the commercial part. Although the commercial loan issue remains yet to be settled, but it is in the process of being finalized between the two governments.”
“Hydropower stations are another example of some of the mega projects under CPEC,” he said. “We are currently working on two different hydropower projects, and even more are coming. Then of course there are other infrastructure projects like Motorway (M-6) and some highways construction in Balochistan, and expansion of the Karakoram Highway.”
