Corridor Calculus

Corridor Calculus
China Pakistan Economic Corridor
& China's Comprador Investment Model in Pakistan
I. A DONE DEAL
Soon after the PPP formed the government in 2008, President Asif Zardari
put forward a very ambitious proposal costing around $60 billion for around
70 mega projects to Pakistan's Western donors who had formed the Friends
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of Pakistan group. The proposal was later tweaked to present it as a solution
to the terrorism running rampant in the country and was packaged in the
form of a plea for a Marshall Plan type of scheme for the troubled FATA
region. Figuring that they might be on to a good thing, the Pakistanis
broadened the scope of the proposal and made a pitch for an ambitious
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Marshall Plan for the whole country. Mr Zardari plugged the Marshall Plan
line at the Friends of Democratic Pakistan conference in Tokyo and even
raised the amount of money needed for aid and reconstruction to rebuild a
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terrorism-ravaged Pakistan to $100 billion. But Western donors were
neither interested nor ready to sink in this kind of money.
Pakistan had to wait for another five years before the Chinese stepped in
with the offer of an ambitious infrastructure and trade corridor proposal —
the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) — that is regarded by many
Pakistanis as the Chinese version of the Marshall Plan that the US had
devised to rebuild post-World War II Europe. Interestingly enough, around
the same time that Mr Zardari was making a pitch for a Marshall Plan for
Pakistan, Chinese officials were deliberating a mammoth $500 billion plan
to stabilise the economies of developing countries in order to foster new
external demand for Chinese goods. This was touted as the Chinese version
of the Marshall Plan, though the official who floated the idea preferred to
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call it 'Shared Development Plan'.
After months of delay because of a political agitation in the centre of
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Khalid Mustafa, 'Pakistan seeks $ 60 billion investment from FOP', The News International 20/11/2008, accessed at
http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=18468&Cat=13&dt=11/20/2008
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'Pakistan needs a Marshall Plan: Haqqani', Daily Times 09/04/2009, accessed at http://archives.dailytimes.com.pk/main/09-
Apr-2009/pakistan-needs-a-marshall-plan-haqqani
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'Zardari urges Marshall Plan type aid drive', The News International 17/04/2009; Also see Najam Sethi, 'Finally some good
news', The Friday Times 25 Sept-1 Oct 2009
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'Xu Shanda: Chinese version of the Marshall Plan for an $ 500 billion', Daily News 06/08/2009, accessed at
http://finance.sina.com.cn/china/hgjj/20090806/07566578273.shtml (translated into English using Google translate)
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