'US can’t dilute China’s strategic influence in Pakistan'

Activists from the Pakistan Democratic Movement shout slogans as they take part in an anti-government demonstration to protest against inflation, unemployment and other economic issues in Karachi. Pic/AFP

Chief of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) Authority has accused the United States (US) of sabotaging the multi-billion dollar project, the economic lifeline of Pakistan, a media report said. The ambitious CPEC was launched in 2015 when Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Pakistan. It aims to connect western China with the Gwadar seaport in southwestern Pakistan through a network of roads, railways and other projects of infrastructure and development.

"From the point of view of the emerging geo-strategic situation, one thing is clear: the United States supported by India is inimical to CPEC. It will not let it succeed. That's where we have to take a position," Khalid Mansoor, the Special Assistant to Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on CPEC affairs said while addressing the CPEC Summit at the Institute of Business Administration in Karachi on Saturday.

Islamabad is the seventh largest recipient of Chinese overseas development financing with 71 projects worth $27.3 billion currently underway as part of the CPEC. Many Western think tanks and commentators have termed the CPEC an economic trap that has already resulted in bloated public debt levels and disproportionately high Chinese influence in Pakistan's economy, a report in the Dawn newspaper said.

The premier's aide said the US and India continue to "make attempts to manoeuvre Pakistan out of" China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) - a global infrastructure development plan under which the Chinese government has been investing heavily in about 70 countries, the report said. "There's no way Pakistan will forgo any of its benefits. It has more than once burnt its fingers in (the Western) alliance in the past," he said, adding that their attempts to dilute China's strategic influence in the region will fail.

2015
Year the CPEC project was launched

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