Corridor Calculus
corridor-calculus-china-pakistan-economic-corridor-and-china-s-comprador-investment-model-in-pakistan
corridor-calculus-china-pakistan-economic-corridor-and-china-s-comprador-investment-model-in-pakistan
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<strong>Corridor</strong> <strong>Calculus</strong> : China Pakistan Economic <strong>Corridor</strong> & China's Comprador Investment Model in Pakistan<br />
Chinese navy, but also as a base for Chinese submarines, which would deter<br />
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any possible blockade by India of Pakistan's sea-lanes. The strategic<br />
environment at this time was that US forces had moved into Afghanistan,<br />
and India and Pakistan were in a military stand-off as a result of the terrorist<br />
attack on the Indian Parliament. Even after the Gwadar port was ready in<br />
2007, Chinese scholars, keeping alive the fiction of 'peaceful rise of China',<br />
continued to insist that Gwadar was 'not a fort to scout and dominate the<br />
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Indian Ocean'. But after the Pakistani defence minister publicly declared in<br />
2011 Pakistan's desire to have a Chinese naval base in Gwadar, the fiction of<br />
China's benign intentions in Gwadar have been exposed.<br />
Many security analysts in the US, India and other countries see Gwadar as an<br />
integral component of the so-called 'String of Pearls' strategy of China.<br />
Incidentally, the term itself is not coined by the Chinese but by the<br />
st<br />
Americans. The former have another name for it — 21 Century Maritime<br />
Silk Road! For their part, the Chinese are insistent that they neither have any<br />
plans to dominate the Indian Ocean nor to build naval bases outside their<br />
territory, and the ports they have been investing in do not have the<br />
capability of forming a military chain. Even Gwadar isn't regarded as a<br />
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strategic asset and 'would be a flawed pearl if aimed for military use'.<br />
Notwithstanding the Chinese ability to dissemble on strategic issues, there<br />
is some substance to the fact that using Gwadar as a naval base for<br />
projecting power in the region suffers from inherent limitations.<br />
The only country with the wherewithal to blockade Malacca is the US and it<br />
will be an extreme step, virtually a declaration of war. If such an unlikely<br />
event was to unfold, then to expect that Gwadar will be secure from any<br />
interdiction by the US forces is unrealistic. In fact, it will be far easier for the<br />
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US to target Gwadar than to blockade Malacca. As far as India is<br />
concerned, any Chinese naval presence in Gwadar is certainly no cause for<br />
327<br />
Ahmad Faruqi, 'Comments: Impact of 9/11 on Sino-Pak ties', Daily Times 18/06/2002, see POT Pakistan Series Vol. XXX No.<br />
204 pp 4121-23<br />
328<br />
'Karachi: Beijing won't use Gwadar to dominate Indian Ocean', Dawn 08/03/2009, accessed at<br />
http://www.dawn.com/news/976719/karachi-beijing-won-t-use-gwadar-to-dominate-indian-ocean<br />
329<br />
'Hu Zhiyong, 'India wears unreal String of Pearls', Global Times 29/07/2013, accessed at<br />
http://services.globaltimes.cn/epaper/2013-07-29/29970.htm<br />
330<br />
Andrew Small pp 103<br />
81