CPEC

Subject: IR

Context:

India has categorically rejected the reference to Jammu and Kashmir in the joint press release by China and Pakistan pertaining to the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project that passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).

Concept:

• The CPEC is part of China’s larger regional transnational ‘One Belt One Road’ (OBOR) initiative, whose two arms are the land-based New Silk Road and the 21st century Maritime Silk Road, using which Beijing aims to create a Silk Road Economic Belt sprawled over a large patch of Asia and eastern Europe, and crisscrossed by a web of transport, energy supply and telecommunications lines.
• It consists of clutch of major infrastructure works currently under way in Pakistan, intended to link Kashgar in China’s Xinjiang province to Gwadar deep sea port close to Pakistan’s border with Iran.

• Several other road, rail and power projects are associated with the corridor, and the project seeks to expand and upgrade infrastructure across the length and breadth of Pakistan, and to widen and deepen economic ties with its “all-weather friend” China.