Special to WorldTribune.com

By Brian M Downing

China and Pakistan announced with considerable fanfare, especially in Islamabad, a $46 billion dollar investment program to build a transportation corridor from the western Pakistani port of Gwadar to Xinjiang region in northwestern China.

In time, the route will link with Chinese railways bringing Afghanistan’s wealth to world markets.

The agreement will give China a land route with the Middle East and Central Asia that does not pass through potentially-contested chokepoints near Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, and India. The move may bring greater prosperity to the region but there are risks of greater tensions and unrest too.

The India-Pakistan Rivalry

The arrangement will not be welcome in India.

Its security bureaus will see it as part of China’s “string of pearls” strategy of surrounding India with potential foes and military assets, with the intent less to prepare for war than to establish preeminence. India knows well that the deal was preceded by the announced sale of eight Chinese submarines to Pakistan.

Only last September, however, China inked a $20 billion arrangement with India, agreeing to modernize railways, develop industrial parks, and allow Indian products greater access into China. The aim of the Pakistani deal, then, may be less to bolster China and Pakistan vis-a-vis India than to strengthen China’s influence with both countries and to benefit from greater cooperation and trade between the rivals.

There will also be concern – in India, the U.S., and elsewhere – that China will one day establish a sizable naval base at Gwadar, the port that China developed over the last few years which is three hundred miles from the Strait of Hormuz.

Pakistan publicly offered such a base at a Beijing parley but China rather pointedly declined, much to Islamabad’s embarrassment. Nonetheless, the prospect of a military base so near vital oil supplies will appeal to parts of the Chinese state, especially the navy whose ambition may be edging toward a Mahanian one.

Three Insurgent Groups

The 1800-mile route will pass through some of the most unstable parts of the region and likely aggravate local irritations. The southern terminus is in Baluchistan, a mineral-rich region comprising forty percent of Pakistan’s territory. Unfairly deprived of its autonomy by Pakistan over the years, at least in the view of separatists, the region has seen continuous unrest.

Prosperity in Pakistan has not been shared equitably, especially in the Baluch region, and the boon that the China deal promises is unlikely to usher in a new era. Wealth will continue to go disproportionately to Punjabis in the the military and business elites.

Baluch grievances will be underscored; the ongoing insurgency will almost certainly grow. Chinese workers have been targeted in recent years and they may be again. This may contribute to China’s coolness to establishing a military base at Gwadar.

The transportation network will not run through restive Pashtun tribal areas. However, Afghan iron, copper, and other minerals will pass through the storied Khyber Pass, a Shinwari- and Afridi-Pashtun region.

Pashtuns have never been adequately integrated into the nation. They have enjoyed considerable autonomy, stemming from nineteenth-century treaties with the British that Islamabad has generally respected. The Pakistani Taliban has battled state encroachments and will continue to do so. Regionalist and fiercely Islamist, they are unlikely to welcome a greater Chinese presence, even if it comes at the expense of the U.S.

The northern terminus is in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, home to ten million Uighurs who resent the increasing economic and political dominance of Han Chinese.

Uighurs have rioted in Xinjiang and attacked train stations in eastern China. Perhaps most unsettlingly, Uighurs have gone abroad to learn the skills of war from Al Qaida fighters in eastern Afghanistan and the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant in the Middle East.

The new link to South Asia and the Middle East will bring new wealth, greater Han dominance, and new paths for fighters returning to the Uighur homeland.

Pakistan has shown little ability to assuage local unrest with counterinsurgency programs. It maintains its large military geared toward India and toward fomenting insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir rather than countering ones at home. China too has opted for repression over fairer administration in Uighur lands.

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The investment agreement with Pakistan will make China even more of a world actor. China is heady with its remarkable economic success over the last few decades. But this zeal to return the country to a leading position in the world may cause it to overlook the problems and perils that come with involvements around the world.

Tensions with India and danger of insurgency aside, China is tying itself more closely to Pakistan – a country that is politically unstable, desperately poor and overcrowded, and held together if tenuously by an extreme form of Islam. China is likely to steer clear of being drawn into the ambitions of Pakistan’s officer corps and intelligence services, the leaders of which have undoubtedly convinced themselves that they now have China firmly on their side.

Brian M Downing is a Contributing Editor at WorldTribune.com. A political-military analyst, he is author of The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: Social Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam. He can be reached at brianmdowning@gmail.com.