Belt and Road Initiative to boost China-Pakistan cooperation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road are international trade and infrastructure projects proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping when he visited Central Asia and Southeast Asia in September and October 2013. The former is an overland network focused on bringing together China, Central Asia, Russia and Europe; linking China with the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea through Central Asia and West Asia, and connecting China with Southeast Asia, South Asia and the Indian Ocean. The latter is a maritime network designed to link China’s coast to Europe through the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean in one route, and China’s coast to the South Pacific through the South China Sea in another. During Xi’s ongoing two-day state visit to Pakistan, which started Monday, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a planned network of roads, railways and energy projects linking southwest Pakistan’s deepwater Gwadar Port with northwest China’s…