Pak-Bangla corridor: Chines President Xi must be smiling at Nawaz

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Dr Hassan Shehzad

Saturday will be remembered as a milestone in the history of Pakistan. It is the day when three-time Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif landed back in his home town of Lahore after concluding his self-exile of over four years.

Nawaz has always been a regional player in politics. In his first speech at the reception gathering at Minar-e-Pakistan, he laid out his regional agenda. He regretted the fact that Pakistan had to be dismembered back in 1971.

He talked about construction of a corridor from Pakistan to Bangladesh pressing on the magnitude of trade potential in the region. We believe that Chinese President Xi must be smiling at him.

Bangladesh is an emerging Asian economic power. It has been registering strong economic growth over years.

The country set an ambitious GDP growth target of 7.2 percent for the fiscal year 2021-22. At the 76th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina echoed the promise to revive the country’s economy in the post-COVID “new normal” and achieve developed nation status by 2041. As for the corridor Nawaz referred to, infrastructure and communications are the two major components to achieve this goal.

It shows that China is determined to go on with BRI in Bangladesh with or without India.

Now put China in this equation. “China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) aims to strengthen regional cooperation by creating tantamount economic partnerships by linking the subregions of South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. Though the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor – one of the six corridors of the BRI – has proven dead on arrival due to India’s concerns about China, Bangladesh can still harness the opportunities for enhanced commerce and connectivity through the BRI,” writes The Diplomat.

It shows that China is determined to go on with BRI in Bangladesh with or without India.

In the recent gathering of over 130 leaders of world, including state heads and businesspeople, President Xi maintained that Gawadar Port is important to China’s BRI. If a corridor is built between Pakistan and Bangladesh, as proposed by Nawaz, it will reduce China’s reliance on India to access Bangladesh.

In the same breath, Nawaz also talked about building “friendly relationships” with “neighbors”. No country other than India fits this definition of neighbors.

Friendly bonds with India are in favor of regional stability. Track-two diplomacy to break ice on the relationships between the two countries had already started ahead of Nawaz’s comeback. Good Pak-Indian relations are as much in the interest of China as the US. The two giants, however, look at these relations from different perspectives.

The idea of building corridors, however, is Chinese. There is no surprise that Nawaz has taken up this idea of building bridges. We believe that this is a long overdue step in the right direction.

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