22vPaX

asia policy
doing more, but keeping the relationship with Pakistan in decent working
order is a higher-order objective for Beijing than any of these individual
goals. In addition, even when there are aspects of discomfort, Pakistan
gains far more from having its closest partner as the rising heavyweight
power in the region than from any plausible alternative. The presence of a
$46 billion carrot helps too. China is laying out—all at once—the package
of benefits that can accrue to Pakistan if it is able to ensure a domestic and
international situation that is sufficiently stable to make the investments
possible. There is some degree of political consensus in Pakistan that this
opportunity should be seized, despite concerns about whether the country
has the capacity to do so quite as quickly as China would like. But if there
are problems with specific projects, or the conditions for the investment do
not obtain, the initiative will simply be scaled down. Either way, many of the
principal beneficiaries of the supposed largesse will be Chinese companies.
As risks go, CPEC is not especially egregious.
The greater challenge may actually be if a substantial proportion of
the project moves forward. China’s standing in Pakistan, which includes
persistently stratospheric ratings in opinion polls, has partly reflected its
remove from everyday politics. Now Beijing is embroiled in battles over
corridor routes, debates about the social impact of its investments, and
criticism over the entrenchment of Punjabi economic privilege—all of this
even before a new wave of Chinese workers arrives in Pakistan. The fact that
economic ties had been limited to a weak set of trade links and a few grand
projects meant that the more quotidian aspects of the relationship were
kept to a minimum. My bet is that a great deal more will come out of CPEC
than the most skeptical views suggest, which will make for a more balanced
relationship but also one that is increasingly demythologized.
The final question is how to define the relationship. Khan understandably
reacts against the connotations of the term “axis” in the title, but his
analysis demonstrates the challenge of finding a more appropriate
term for a partnership that is palpably more than just a “friendship” or
“entente cordiale,” yet lacks the obligations of a formal alliance. Scobell
describes the use of axis as “controversial” but “appropriate,” and Bruce
Riedel’s elegant formulation in a review elsewhere—that, alongside the
U.S.-India relationship, this will be one of the “dual axes…central to the
global order in our times”—frames the term in the neutral sense in which
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